That could definitely be speedstep - power options. I have never encountered any CPU spikes with any of Kontakts on my computers, even with 5.6.5 that people and even NI claim suffers from it. It's just that your computer is not set up properly. You can start by using "high performance" power scheme in Windows power options, but what really makes a difference is disabling SpeedStep [tm] in BIOS. It might be called "CPU power saving" or similar. Doing this can only help, it's mandatory for an audio workstation. This will lower your OS' DPC latency a lot.

Next try disabling network, or any wi-fi adapters and Bluetooth that you might have enabled.

If that doesn't work, you could try tweaking the USB, for example. You should disable "power management" on all "USB hub" devices in device manager. This is also mandatory on audio workstations so just do it and forget it.

You might also try adjusting the "processor scheduling" to "background tasks". This sometimes helps with high CPU loads [when you're running many plugins and CPU is pegged at 80%], sometimes it is better to leave it on "programs". You have to test both settings under high CPU load and see if the audio starts crackling sooner or later. A couple of u-he Divas playing string chords can be helpful to determine this.

Next would be disabling some unnecessary services. Have a look here: http://www.blackviper.com/service-c...dows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/

I'd start with disabling display services and all unnecessary auto-start programs, all services related to updates and backup, printer spooler, unnecessary network services... there is a lot of shit happening in the background. Try using Viper's "tweaked" services settings.

To edit the list of auto-start programs use AutoRuns: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx and disable all unnecessary shit there. The less icons in the systray the better. This program should come with Windows, as well as CCleaner, but the newer the OS the less tools we get for some reason.

No matter how new and how powerful your computer is, you always have to do these things because MS systems are bad for real-time processing at default settings. So it is not your computer that sucks, it is the OS. You simply have to adjust some [many] things to make Windows work properly with audio. Sometimes it takes half an hour, sometimes it takes whole afternoon to do it.

LatencyMon can help you determine if the DPC latency of your OS is acceptable for working with audio.

I would never use Windows 10 for audio. That might be the problem, too - way too much shit in the background that has absolutely nothing to do with audio! Crap system for audio. You should use W7 or W8 that suck a bit less. The older the OS the less it sucks. That's a rule with Microsoft OSes.

I hope this is going to resolve your problems, and help others with the same problems, too.

Have a good day!

 

Last edited: Mar 27, 2017

etc
I was supposing he's done all these already lol
.

 

What people do wrong is think that when they buy a new computer it should run everything smoothly and even bring you pizza without you doing anything.

All computers no matter how powerful have to be tweaked in the same way to be able to work properly with audio. OS-X computers, and Linux computers, too. Many will seem to work OK without any tweaking, but will not be able to play any demanding projects with high plugin count without starting to crackle at about 50-60% of CPU usage. Doing all that I mentioned can bring that to about 80-90% and that's usually the limit when even a properly set up computer will start to crackle, be it i7 or i3, Ryzen or Athlon XP. Of course, it also depends a lot on the driver quality and the OS you use, too.

W10 is one of those OSes that takes whole afternoon to tweak it for real-time audio. With XP I need an hour, with W7 a bit more. W8 is just a little bit more complicated than W7. OS-X is easy to tweak for audio, and Linux, too. Generally an hour tops. Thankfully my hour is paid well.

 

Last edited: Mar 27, 2017

It could be the Network ! Disable the Network Card in the Hardware Manager ,, Test it

 

Thank you all for your replies. I couldnt try any of these tips since I was in the middle of a project.
Today I've been checking and tweking all these tips you guys adviced.

1) I disabled speedstep (in BIOS)
2) I set high performance power scheme
3) I tryed disabling network, or any wi-fi adapters and Bluetooth etc.
4) I disabled windows defender
5) Downgrade to Kontakt 5.5.2

With all thse I got a better performance but the problem is not gone. I still get CPU overload clicks and noises suddenly.

I read It is better to set cubase (I am using 9.0.1) multi processor on and Kontakt multiporocessor off. I had it like that. Then I set Kontakt multiporocessor on (16 cores) and the CPU load got much better. But still getting those peaks and overloads....

I tried to disable HPET, but not an option in my ASUS DELUXE II BIOS. I read that anyways windows 10 dont use it by default, unless a program it realy need it...dont know...

Finaly I run LATENCY MON....but I don't know how to properly analyze the results, so if any of you were so kind to take a look and help me with the diagnosis...that would be awsome.

ATTACHED LATENCY MON FILE

EDIT:
You find this in the Pagefault:
NOTE: some processes were hit by hard pagefaults
I checked the processes tab and cubase was at the top (highest score)

 

From another forum:
"Asus x99 boards only support Windows 7 and newer operating systems and processors with constant-rate TSCs. Because of this there is no user option needed or available for HPET".
"Hard pagefaults occur when the page is not located in physical memory or a memory-mapped file created by the process"
I saw the latency mon results. Do a double check on your ram, best free util out there is memtest, if you have a buggy ram chip it will detect it:
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/

 

Thanks taskforce for your reply.

1) I run 9 windows of memtest, each one set to analize 2047MB of RAM. (I have 4x16 64GB TRIDENT Z 3200 CL14)
After 30 minutes I got 0 errors in all windows

2) I notice that even without playing any music just with one instrument trackwith Kontakt 5 and one single instrument (piano) loaded in Cubase 9, I get ramdonly overloads (100% peak) without playing one single note!

3) I run again LATENCY MON. Here I attached 5 more windows tabs if anyone could take a look and help to find the problem.

Thanks in advance

 

What Latency mon shows is ok. The Hard page fault don't mean anything bad.
It only means, that cached memory pages are not found in memory any longer and must be reloaded. Thats not an error, it's by design.

 

This was the best advice here. Step by step going back to find the problem.

If you can't solve it this way, I'd really cosider to set up the PC from ground up, installing Windows and directly after setting up hardware drivers, and a backup of course, I would install Kontakt and see if it works ok.

It's my routine to make a backup after each successful step when setting up a PC, so I can go back to every given state, without losing too much time.

 

Thanks twoheart for your reply,

I read this in the Latency Mon results:

NOTE: some processes were hit by hard pagefaults. If these were programs
producing audio, they are likely to interrupt the audio stream resulting in
dropouts, clicks and pops. Check the Processes tab to see which programs were
hit.
Process with highest pagefault count: cubase9.exe

This is something normal? so I don't have to worry about it, right?

 

I left Latency Mon on for a long time (some hours) without doing anything else with the computer, and I got some bad conclusion. Any help on this?

CONCLUSION
_______________________________________________________________________________
__________________________
Your system seems to be having difficulty handling real‐time audio and other
tasks. You may experience drop outs, clicks or pops due to buffer underruns.
One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear
to be executing for too long. One problem may be related to power management,
disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS
updates.
LatencyMon has been analyzing your system for 4:06:28 (h:mm:ss) on all
processors.

I attach all Latency stats files:

Thanks.

 

I would also start from scratch, clean win install, drivers, cubase and kontakt with one library.

Also, double check tweaking win 10 for audio. This thread is fine for that:

http://vi-control.net/community/threads/windows-10-settings-stuff-you-can-turn-off-for-music.49446/

I am on win 10, i7 5820k (plus slave via vep6), rme hdspe aio, Cubase 9.0.1 and huge amount of kontakt libraries (still on 5.5.2)...everything is working like charm. In my case, the best performance is with multi-threading (all cores) enabled on everything, cubase, kontakt and VEP. AG on normal, audio priority on boost.

Since you are coming from mac, it's very possible that you are missing something system-wise. Win machines are wild beasts! But there are really experienced guys here who can help you... just keep trying, I am sure the solution is right around the corner.

 

Last edited: Apr 10, 2017

I would tu Si tu bafouer cas like reaper to see. Cubase is not the best daw for multiprocessors

 

@pehierre Lets not start a discussion what's the best DAW on this one. It's definitely not the DAW making the problems here, but Kontakt, as the problem appears on Kontakt standalone as well.

@monk_mingus There are a lot of processes running on a machine. All of them are using RAM, IO and Interrupts concurrently.
At this state follow the suggestions in @shomyca 's post above, they are fine.

Also, you can try to unload some further processes the system doesn't need for music producing. It's a lot of crap started at boottime.
(by the way, unnecessary services and processes should be stopped by default. It's a good idea to set up a machine without internet, so you don't need a anti virus protection. These guy steal the most of resources)

I myself use a batch file to stop normal processes and background services when I start Cubase or Ableton. This is, because my machine isn't a dedicated music producing PC but also used for 3D stuff.

You can make a batchfile easyly yourself with the editor and saving it with the ending .bat . You must start this batch with administrative rights. Here are two examples for normal processes and background services:

taskkill /f /IM DTAgent.exe
sc.exe STOP nvsvc

The names of the processes you'll find in the Taskmanager (Ctrl-Alt-Del) and in the service manager applet (c:\windows\system32\services.msc or type "services" in search box).


p.s.: All this isn't because windows is a bad OS, but because the OS is used for hundred of different manufacturer's mainboards for millions of different people doing a vast variety of jobs in many cases on the same machine. So an OS is complicated by design, this is true for MAC but especially for Windows & Linux.

 

Last edited: Apr 10, 2017

Hmmm. Stopping services does require some experience. Trying to troubleshoot the problem by disabling services that you are not sure what they do, might lead to more trouble instead of a solution. Anyway a system with 64gb ram won't have any problem running any background "junk" like nvidia or radeon services etc. Since you passed the memtest, the only thing atm that can be hardware related, is the cpu cooling. Check your cpu's thermal behavior (and possible throttling) with something like Aida64 extreme (trial) and Cpuid hardware monitor.
https://www.aida64.com/downloads
http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/hwmonitor_1.31.zip
Make sure you have no apps open, run the hardware monitor app and scroll a little down so you can see all cores' temperatures. Leave it open and visible on your screen. Run aida64extreme, from the tools menu there is a selection called "system stability test". Run this and be ready to hit stop if you see any cpu core(s) reaching 100 Celcius. Many people leave soft like aida64 (or Prime95) to run for hours so they can be really sure of what their cpu (and cooling respectively) is capable of, but in your case a starting 5-10 minutes test will do, if of course the cpu does not hit extreme temps as i mentioned.
Needless to say if the cpu passes the test, it would be best to format and start with installing Kontakt first as suggested previously. Also i know it may sound bland, but you can always try installing something like Win7 Ultimate Lite version (less background junk) or win10 LTSB.
Let us know your news. Hope you sort it out

 

Oh it's Win 10? Start going to church. It may help you. Good luck!

You could use some marijuana maybe. It opens your brain.

 

I had the exact same problem. But i can't be of any help. I solved it by downgrading to win7

 

yabiss, yes, you can be of big help. Could you please explain in detail all the problems you had and how better everything became once you switched to windows 7?
Thanks in advance

 

I have the same problem. Cubsae9 64bit, RME UFX, fast CPU, 4 high speed SSD & 2 Big HDD, Kontakt5 64bit. but mine is win7.

Stop using Dual monitor, or not using Intel's onboard video improved it a little bit for me.
Sorry, bad English.

 

Ok. obviously it's not Windows (vs. MAC), it's not Windows 10 (vs. Win 7). I think something went wrong during the setup of Windows.

@monk_mingus Do yourself a favour and reinstall the OS (backup) and directly after hardware drivers (backup) install Kontakt (backup). So you always can go a step back.