I 've had a continuing issue that I've tried to troubleshoot, but haven't come up with a solution for.
Any PA Plugins, from Brainworx, SPL, etc., work fine when I first set them, wicked low CPU and no issues, but when I re-open a session, after a few minutes, any and all of them have random CPU-topping spikes that occur every 10-30 seconds, or so, crippling any audio that's playing (though, it also happens even if there's no audio playing.)
I'm running Win7Ult.x64, and use Studio One, but the same thing happens in Win10 when I set up S1 on that PC. The really odd part is that, upon reopening a session, if I remove and then re-add the same plugins, the issue goes away but, needless to say, this is not an optimal for getting anything done. Also, once I do this, the issue reappears if I close and then open the session again.
I've found people mentioning this happening in other DAWs, as well, though I can't confirm that any of those claims are true.
Any ideas or thoughts on this would be appreciated because, though I do keep a solid collection of my presets, none of this is doing me any good as per overall workflow.

Thanks in advance.

 

crypto miner spikes

 

Nah, I only use my 2nd-hand, expendable Win10 PC for practicing The Dark Arts, Mr. Mustaine.
Seriously, my Win7 set up is strictly an offline audio machine.

 

Hello everyone, Please give us more info about your PC !!
Anyway, there is a free tool LatencyMon could help! Good luck

 

Last edited: Jul 21, 2020

From the description, I don't think LatencyMon will tell me anything that I don't already know, or have checked, but I'll give it a go; thanks.
As for my PC, I don't have the specs in front of me, but it's a HP Workstation (the final year that they made them,) with 4GBs RAM and an....i7, I believe...like I said, I don't have it to check, right now. The thing is a beast, for what it is, and it runs much more than it should be able to. Hell, I can run a handful of large, all-MIDI (much more CPU-heavy than audio,) Kontakt instruments with a slew of plugins on the tracks, plus eight MIDI outs from Maschine, and still be fine, which, with such low specs should be an issue, but isn't. I do have a (...*guh* I can't remember what it is, now,) very respectable graphics card, which is set up to handle the brunt-end of a lot of my heavy-usage, so that obviously makes a difference. Basically, my audio PC is fine handling all other high-resource plugins and actions, and only does this with Plugin Alliance affiliated companies. I just thought maybe....I don't know--that it might have a known issue of clashing with something else?

 

I'm sorry that I don't have a serious answer. Anecdotally speaking I had similar issues (over a few years) when testing PA plugins on my old MBP and current iMac so I don't think this is a specific issue only you're having. I speculate that their internal oversampling then downsampling algos are not properly optimized but I can't point to anything that would prove I'm right or wrong. Its a shame because I did enjoy how their tube modeled distortion stuff sounded and would give their plugins a strong 8/10 overall. Best I can do is offer some alternatives based on which of their plugins you like the most.

 

I have the same problem with Studio One, but without pa plugins. Random cpu spikes, when i look at cpu usage during this spikes, it almost doubles for all plugins

 

Last edited: Jul 21, 2020

known studio one issue. did they fix it in the new version?

 

Don't know, for now i switched back to version 4.1.2, its more stable

 

I don't have that with Win7 and Reaper. Maybe PA pluggies don't resonate well with some DAWs?

vs

That's surprising.

 

You can also try to change "Dropout protection" to maximum

 

Okay, sorry for the MIA status--life gets stupid and busy.

Interesting theory, with the oversampling/downsampling. Thanks for your input.I don't really need alternative, as I can find them, and in most cases have, but I appreciate it.As you kind of said, it's just kind of a shame to have quality plugins on the outs.

Ironically, that's one of the reason that I like Studio One; it *never* has had that issue, that's why this is so odd.

??? I don't know anyone who has had this issue...and I know a lot of people who have switched over, or have been using S1 for days.

I've now found more than a handful of people that have issues with PA plugins and all of them use various other DAWs, a few use Studio One. Some of their problems are similar, and a few, the same as mine, so issues in general aren't unique to me, apparently.

Haha, that I can run anything at all? I agree. Seriously, a tech guru guy who has been throwing together custom computers for a couple decades set it up and tweaked it, so it's very much molded it to handle heavy audio/video stuff plus, HP's are die hards that have always been able to handle more abuse better than any other PC's I've used--though, Toshiba gets an honorable mention, for their laptops. Basically, my life is far too erratic to get a desktop--it's just the sad state of things, currently--but the next PC I get is going to be a nice, custom setup that's more-than-capable...but, until the day I have my shit straight, I'm thankful that I had someone in the know set up my current PC.

I did that, but thanks for your input.

UPDATE:


So, after tooling around with Brainworx, SPL, Dangerous Audio, etc., here's what I've found.
I can usually load a few Brainworx plugins without issues and reopen sessions, and it's fine (though a few are always spiking, straight out of the gate, like their stereo widener and LPF/HPF but, surprisingly all of their consoles don't really spike out a session.) Dangerous Music's BAX EQ is usually fairly docile (thankfully,) but if added with Brainworx or SPL, it starts spiking about half the time, though not as frequently as the other two. SPL fucks with *everything;* if I add more than one SPL plugin in even a dry session, the spikes occur immediately, and sometimes even one gets angry...and these are their lesser plugins as well as their heavier ones.
***It should be noted that the spikes occur no matter what the plugins normal CPU consumption is.
*BUT*
I have found a workaround. So, I'll try and make this as simple as possible. Basically, you have to disable--not just bypass--all of the PA plugins in a session after adding a new one to a track, wait 5-10 seconds, and then turn them all back on and it nearly always quashes any CPU spikes...until you add another PA plugin.
On the off chance that the issue continues (though this works 3,928 times out of 4,008--seriously, I wasted waaay too much time on this shit,) disable them, save the session (and sometimes you have to close the DAW entirely,) then reopen it, and it works fine...until you add another PA plugin.
The exception to this is SPL which, with more than a handful of SPL plugins being loaded onto tracks, about a third of, to half of, the time (I didn't find any rhyme or reason for why,) requires you to disable everything, but afterwards, you have to save your session, and then reopen it...and, if that still doesn't work, sometimes I had to disable them, save the session (with them disabled,) close S1, and reload it, tweak something so as to save it again, and only them enable them. SPL is by far the worst offender here...which I guess is kind of a solid, foe me, since I lean more towards Brainworx, and BAX EQ is an invaluable go-to.
My conclusion? This is kind of a pain-in-the-ass workaround, but it's far from the end of the world.

I should also add that all of these things happened before and after reopening sessions, restarting my DAW, and after setting up instances with numerous combinations and various numbers of plugins (with only PA plugins being used, to narrow down the problems,) on a few, basic audio tracks.

So, that's as good as it got for me. Hopefully that works for some of you having similar issues.

I appreciate all the responses.

 

Did you hear what i said? Its not PA plugins, i have session with Fabfilter and Valhalla and the same problem exists

 

Instead of complaining about not successfully hijacking this thread, you may like to open your own and describe the problem in detail?

 

Last edited: Jul 26, 2020

I read your comment--did you read mine? I said that Studio One has never had that issue, as in, has never had that issue with *any plugins, short of the PA plugins. I don't know anyone, personally, anywhere, who has had CPU spiking issues with anything other than very specific plugins (or plugin companies,) in Studio One; that's not to say it's not a real thing, but I've never encountered a situation where a large amount of plugins won't run properly. Savvy?

Good call, @No Avenger , but you're always going to have people piggybacking threads. Besides, this is 2020--if people don't get an immediate, satisfactory answer to their problems, they feel as though they're being slighted, somehow. I believe the word is "Entitled."