Since I built my PC a year ago, I've been experiencing random CPU spikes in S1 that would cause clicks and pops. Up until recently its been a nuisance because with my i7, 16GB ram and 3 SSD drives my PC had more than enough overhead to persevere through it. But last week I got fed up with this little itch I've had for the past year. I contacted Presonus.

Though they were really nice and had decent ideas and took the time to go through my computers diagnostics, they came up short. Meanwhile I was tweaking the BIOS turning off EIST, Hyper-threading, Turbo Boost, C-States.

Nothing worked.

Despite my interface (1818vsl) being plugged directly to my computer I disconnected the hub i used for controllers and peripherals. THAT SOLVED IT.

I began to reconnect the devices one by one and found that the culprit was the god damned iLok2 dongle.

Reconnected the hub with everything except iLok and it still worked.

My theory is that its calling home every 5-10 seconds either taking up the entire USB bandwidth or distracting the attention of the system driver.

Now i have to contact PACE.

NOTHING IN LIFE NEEDS DONGLE PROTECTION OTHER THAN NUCLEAR LAUNCH CODES.

 

Nah,its a cpu hog even for those without the ilok.

 

Before somebody turns this into a _____ vs Reaper thread.

S1 might not be the best at CPU usage, but the workflow clicks with me (and some other people), the results I get are fantastic. I own it, I'm sticking with it.

 

If you are using win 10, then your theory is wrong. theres a thread in the presonus forums about problems with ilok and studio one on win 10. Seems to be something presonus did that they say is the correct thing to do but it screws around with iloks. They wont change it , they expect every single developer who uses ilok to rewrite their vst's code.

if you aren't using win 10, then all i can say is that i have never had any problems with my ilok in win 7 with studio one.

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2016

You're so predictable. having a mole in here being so efficient, Steinberg have their money well spent. a true bot. too bad they have to go that low.

 

I'm on 8.1 and in no rush to upgrade to 10 but it might be the same problem.

 

I don't understand why people say S1 is a CPU hog. I'm currently mixing my latest song, it has a 40+ track count



I took this screenshot during playback and I'm running a shitload of VSTs, and my performance is as good as in any other DAWs I tried. Of course it doesn't have Reaper's fantastic performance but I don't think it's nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. Maybe I'm just lucky, who knows.

 

Its all perspective, I don't think S1 is the best DAW with respect to performance on a lighter system like a pentium 4 or an i3. When you get to the prosumer grade specs like my i7 (and yours from the looks of it), there is enough overhead that it doesnt make a difference. I honestly doubt I could ever max out my CPU, at 256 buffer, I got 200 and some instances of decapitor, with 40 tone generators playing signals through them

 

It is not the iLok. It is the fact the iLok is not plugged directly into the computer. Clicks and pops are the reason most all audio peripherals are supposed to be plugged into the CPU not a hub even if it is a powered hub. Too much on one usb cable.
My CPU spikes were from my antivirus software. So I don't have it on my music PC anymore.

My dongle needs protection once in a while.

 

I agree,its a nice workflow.
With just some little cpu optimization it will shine.

 

Friend, lucky you

But I can see there is not a single vst instrument in the image. All are audio files. May be you have mistakenly uploaded a wrong pic here.

 

look better, I see 3 on his first track alone

 

Ive spent this last week or so trying to sort my dhcp latency /cpu spikes out!
Nightmare,as soon as one probs fixed another pops up....
I ended up going into dev manager and disabling "ACPI compliant control method battery"
dev manager/sys devices " intel managment engine interface"
Other things too like i disabled my diskdrive and toucpad/web cam/wlan/atheros and alot of other stuff from the servies panel
But the ACPI Battery and Managment interface being swithced off did specifically solve my dhcp latency and spikes out by about 95%
"

 

I know dear Kwiss. I should have been more clear but you see I was talking about vst instruments though . It's on fx channel; fab filter and native strip. Just some effects is not a 'shitload' of vsts friend

I will applaud if you run tons of vsti and vst along with big kontakt libraries. Let me know of your cpu spikes running arturia Analog lab one instance. One test only.

Edit: and Kwissbeat no arguments from me. I am missing S1 because of this very cpu performance

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2016

Once you have your Kontakt or any virtual instrument track recorded the way you want it, you can transform it to an audio track in S1, which is what I always do, and then there is no CPU usage of MIDI any longer, which frees up CPU usage considerably.

 

I did tests running Studio One alongside Protools 11, Ableton, Reaper, Cubase 8 and Bitwig. Simple really, one instance of Diva set to multicore on "I can't believe it's not analogue" running the same midi content. Studio One responded really well, in fact I couldn't make it fall over. Compare that to Ableton which idled at 40%. Batshit crazy that Ableton's audio engine is bar far the worst I've ever used. I totally despise forking out so much money for it. So much so I bought Bitwig the other day, but I digress. S1 holds her own, don't be so hard on her, it could be worse. You could be running Ableton

 

It's not different when I'm using VSTs, and I'm using huge ass orchestral kontakt libraries.

 

Try to recreate the same project in 24bit/96khz and let us know.

 

So why is Ableton so popular then? I've noticed the PDC problems too,Bitwig is better in that section but lacks age you know what i mean.
And if im using an i3 cpu then what DAW should i choose? Dont like GUI of Reaper...like Ableton but lags are way off...only EDM music.

 

Same here but far more bitter experience. And this is coming from an experienced (S1) power user. Anyway, I believe you. Enjoy and as I previously said good for you.