SOUND ON SOUND

[Will_m]

I'm having an issue in Cubase (10.5.20), I'm getting large audio dropouts every few seconds. It looks like the disk meter is pretty low then it will suddenly spike to 100% and the dropout will occur, which makes me thinks its disk related. I also get a spike on one of my drives as I'm using the resource monitor.

If I increase my audio buffer setting the dropouts decrease in number but even at 4096 (RME UFX+) they don't disappear entirely.

The problem is also intermittent, as in sometimes it won't happen at all and then all of a sudden it starts.

The projects are pretty large 250+ tracks, they are not all playing back at the same time though.

I have a Ryzen 3900x CPU, 64GB of 3600 speed memory and all disks are SSD's.

Could one of my disks be the issue here or should I be looking at something else?

[CS70]

The fact that the problem is intermittent and apparently random suggests that something in the OS is indeed swallowing all your I/O or CPU capacity for short period, and that something is unrelated to the DAW.

It could be the disk, but most likely is either some application that wakes up and does something, or even a Windows task (if you're running Windows 10) even if this is much less the problem it was in W10 early days.

Typical culprits are traybar programs that "call home" to check for update and start the download automatically, services installed by questionable software or in some cases viruses of some sort - which wake up and send data home. It can also be some corruption in your system, DCOM servers may behave bizarrely if they crash, with repeated retry and restarts which hog the system.

A disk check of course is never amiss, if you're using a rotating hard disk. That done, I'd start with checking the Event Manager to see if there's something amiss, look at the Taks execution schedule (also check that there aren't Windows updates in download and that you have scheduled "business hours" correctly - if you work in the evening the default probably won't work for you), check your services, use https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint ... s/autoruns to check for suspicious autoruns.

[OneWorld]

I'm having an issue in Cubase (10.5.20), I'm getting large audio dropouts every few seconds. It looks like the disk meter is pretty low then it will suddenly spike to 100% and the dropout will occur, which makes me thinks its disk related. I also get a spike on one of my drives as I'm using the resource monitor.

If I increase my audio buffer setting the dropouts decrease in number but even at 4096 (RME UFX+) they don't disappear entirely.

The problem is also intermittent, as in sometimes it won't happen at all and then all of a sudden it starts.

The projects are pretty large 250+ tracks, they are not all playing back at the same time though.

I have a Ryzen 3900x CPU, 64GB of 3600 speed memory and all disks are SSD's.

Could one of my disks be the issue here or should I be looking at something else?

Hmmmm interesting. My usually reliable Cubase started playing up today with an error:to many recording channels and Groove Agent seems to have decided for itself what bpm it is going to play at. I did an internet search on “too many recording channels” and it says on the Steinberg site “check for failing disk and/or fault could be faulty graphics driver” But just by pure ‘pure coincidence’ Win10 updated yesterday. My data drive is a newish sad with plenty of space and my graphics driver is nothing fancy, but I seem to remember one Win10 update caused havoc and it was fixed by updating the graphics driver, which Win10 broke.

[The Elf]

I saw something similar when I had my RME interface plugged into an incompatible USB card.

[BJG145]

It could be the disk, but most likely is either some application that wakes up and does something, or even a Windows task.

...yep, maybe you could keep an eye on Resource Monitor while it's happening to see if some process is hogging CPU/disk/network/RAM. (Presumably you've done all the usual tweaks like prioritising background services.)

[OneWorld]

I'm having an issue in Cubase (10.5.20), I'm getting large audio dropouts every few seconds. It looks like the disk meter is pretty low then it will suddenly spike to 100% and the dropout will occur, which makes me thinks its disk related. I also get a spike on one of my drives as I'm using the resource monitor.

If I increase my audio buffer setting the dropouts decrease in number but even at 4096 (RME UFX+) they don't disappear entirely.

The problem is also intermittent, as in sometimes it won't happen at all and then all of a sudden it starts.

The projects are pretty large 250+ tracks, they are not all playing back at the same time though.

I have a Ryzen 3900x CPU, 64GB of 3600 speed memory and all disks are SSD's.

Could one of my disks be the issue here or should I be looking at something else?

Hmmmm interesting. My usually reliable Cubase started playing up today with an error:to many recording channels and Groove Agent seems to have decided for itself what bpm it is going to play at. I did an internet search on “too many recording channels” and it says on the Steinberg site “check for failing disk and/or fault could be faulty graphics driver” But just by pure ‘pure coincidence’ Win10 updated yesterday. My data drive is a newish sad with plenty of space and my graphics driver is nothing fancy, but I seem to remember one Win10 update caused havoc and it was fixed by updating the graphics driver, which Win10 broke.

I have just been checking my Win10 updates, and sure enough it installed a new graphics driver (AMD) last night, this morning - problems! eg error:too many tracks recording

Fixed!!!!!!! - I went to the Settings/Windows Updates and forced some installs that were for some reason 'pending' even though I had done a few cold reboots, to no avail, but clicking the restart from Settings/Updates has fixed the problem (phew - I had been working on a track for the last 5 days and it went all wibbly wobbly, even the back up track)

[Will_m]

The fact that the problem is intermittent and apparently random suggests that something in the OS is indeed swallowing all your I/O or CPU capacity for short period, and that something is unrelated to the DAW.

It could be the disk, but most likely is either some application that wakes up and does something, or even a Windows task (if you're running Windows 10) even if this is much less the problem it was in W10 early days.

Typical culprits are traybar programs that "call home" to check for update and start the download automatically, services installed by questionable software or in some cases viruses of some sort - which wake up and send data home. It can also be some corruption in your system, DCOM servers may behave bizarrely if they crash, with repeated retry and restarts which hog the system.

A disk check of course is never amiss, if you're using a rotating hard disk. That done, I'd start with checking the Event Manager to see if there's something amiss, look at the Taks execution schedule (also check that there aren't Windows updates in download and that you have scheduled "business hours" correctly - if you work in the evening the default probably won't work for you), check your services, use https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysint ... s/autoruns to check for suspicious autoruns.

Thanks! I'm not too sure what I'm looking for in Event Viewer or the task scheduler. I do have my business hours scheduled correctly and can't find anything suspicious in my services or autoruns.

Its an SSD drive I'm using, I've got a few but after checking this is my oldest one (over 8 years) so I could probably do with replacing it anyway and hopefully this may rule out the drive.

I also grabbed this screenshot to show what the drive is being used for although the list does change from minute to minute.

It could be the disk, but most likely is either some application that wakes up and does something, or even a Windows task.

...yep, maybe you could keep an eye on Resource Monitor while it's happening to see if some process is hogging CPU/disk/network/RAM. (Presumably you've done all the usual tweaks like prioritising background services.)

This is what I'm trying but its tricky to see what's happening in the list, I do indeed have my system tweaked for audio.

I saw something similar when I had my RME interface plugged into an incompatible USB card.

I'm using mine over TB, its an add in card for the mobo that connects to the TB header. I've been using it from the start though and this issue has come up only recently.

[2pods]

Is your SSD one of the newer Samsung QVO models ?
I read in one of the reviews that this type (Rather than the EVO) depends on a very large cache, which once the drive is reasonably full slows down.

Could be wrong, but just a thought.

[Moroccomoose]

I see you have found the cause, but for information, I had a similar problem where I had a disk spike every 15 mins causing glitches. It turned out yo be the autosave in cubase, so I turned it off which fixed it. Of course it means I must take care to save regularly though.

Stu.

[adrian_k]

Is your SSD one of the newer Samsung QVO models ?
I read in one of the reviews that this type (Rather than the EVO) depends on a very large cache, which once the drive is reasonably full slows down.

Could be wrong, but just a thought.

I recently upgraded to a Crucial MX500 SSD and was getting dropouts until I disabled the cache using the Crucial disk manager.