Hey,

I already did so much Research and optimization before buying and afterwards, I really have no Clue what i'm missing but First my specs:

I7 8700k
32 GB ram
Win 10 x64
Boot ssd: samsung 970 pro nvme ssd
Storage ssds: 2x Samsung 860 EVO 4tb

I've also added a gfx card just to make sure this is not wasting cpu.

this machine is exclusively used for making music. I dont play no games on it, dont use internet or anything else, its just for working.
I have no anti Virus disabled the Microsoft real time Protection, Went through Microsoft 10 audio optimization, everything.
I've had this System for half a year now and now im close to finishing it and compared to my old machine its of course a Performance boost but the point is, I never ever pushed that machine to its Limits or where they should be but in fact i already reached Them.
In fl studio im already on 512 smp Buffer most of the time, in pro tools when Mixing most of the time 1024.
in fl im purging samples, I decrease the timebase and i can still experience heavy loads of cpu, lagging gui, dropouts and Spikes even with a few instruments in one instance of Kontakt even using midi out.

Dont get me wrong for the Most Part my PC is a beast and im fine with it but
1) i see people handle a lot of Fully loaded instances of Kontakt making heavy orchestral Arrangements with way less Power than I have and im following their advice so I should be able to at least do the Same
2) sometimes i dont see the reason. Im using heavy big libraries yes, but on a Strong machine and sometimes even a drum pattern or smaller libraries, Things that should Not take up a lot actually Do. Yesterday i was at over 20 % with just a few drums. Not much headroom. Today I lost a project because I reached 100% for the First time and my fl loves to freeze even with small simple projects sometimes.
In pro tools (1024 buffer) i pushed the Limits by just doing my Mixing Stuff. Rap projects. . Simple waves files, a beat a few vocals and a few plugins and i get the memory is getting low message, Levels are Displayed delayed and so on and im Not even finished. How am I supposed to mix a big project with midi data and Stuff then?
I'm even in some cases experiencing problems i didnt have on another machine. I had no problems with 8dio libraries, now I have to make Them bridged or they slow everything down like hell as soon as I open a Patch of them and

I had to go back from omnisphere 2.5 because no matter what I did, it Took sooooo fucking long to load Patches and i couldnt preview them. Now im back on 2.4.0f running smooth and im scared to try it again because it Took me a lot of time to make it work again.

What the fuck am I doing wrong? I Took more than 3 years before I actually bought this PC because I wanted to make sure I can do anything i want with it and will have a Monster. Like I Said its ok for the Most Part but thats not what I Expected from all the Hardware I Put in there. Thats more what I thought I would get for 2k.

Sorry for the long Story but this shit id driving me crazy

 

Increase buffer to 2048 for mixing.
Maybe disabling real-time protection for anti-virus is not enough, try installing a lite antivirus that replaces Microsoft one, and then disable it.
What audio interface do you use?


People who disagreed with me, please watch this video about windows defender. I have tested all the anti-virus software, the best in terms of an effect on the system performance, protection, and being free is Comodo Internet Security. Also, it is great for music production systems because you can disable all the components, and even disable the startup lunch and it won't have any effect on the system. When you wanna go unsafe places and download things you can enable that.

Windows defender takes resources even when you disable real-time protection.

 

Last edited: Feb 17, 2019

You mentionded nothing about an audio interface or card. The audio driver is most responsible for dropouts, cpu spikes, etc. Download the free asio4all driver and test it in your DAW to see if it resolves the dropout issue. As far as memory.. check your computer properties to make sure your 32gb ram is showing up/allocated. You might need to reseat your ram, and make sure you push it in the slot with enough force until you hear an obvious click. When ram is not allocated, the cpu is used as virtual ram.

 

hi there, I got similar issues. is there a way to check if RAM is working well? a benchmark tool, or something... just for RAM

 

Hey thanks for your answer. I'm using the focusrite scarlett 2i2 mk2.
I didnt mention that because I thought by saying i already did a lot of optimization it was clear my drivers are up to date. I have the focusrite asio driver and followed the focusrite win 10 optimization Guide as far as possible for me.
And for the ram, its all recognized properly, my System specs Show me i have 32 GB of ram

 

Anything over 48 kHz sample rate in audio settings ends up turning into a pain in the a** for me. Check out the buffer too cause if you're not recording anything in real time you might be able to set it to a high number like metaller said, 2048 or something.. and make sure in task manager that the cpu is running at its highest.. Modern cpu's change speed constantly for heat prevention and power saving and there should be a way of changing it in power options or bios settings so it forces it to work at its fullest

 

And @Gabriel Rodrick
Thank all of you already for your Quick answers. My Interface, daw or whatever doesnt give me the Option to increase the buffer to 2048. Highest available buffer there is 1024. It's the focusrite scarlett. drivers of course installed and up to date.
I Double checked, though I already knew, I usually dont mess with the sample rate, always using 44100.

 

Get another audio interface. Focusrite interfaces are known to be buggy. And turn off the Wifi while producing audio.

 

when you start to put anything on inserts, you need to increase buffer. also you need to increase it if you use synths that eat cpu. what i do, is that my buffer is always increased and i get max latency BUT as i work in logic i have LOW LATENCY MODE for midi recording. BUT if i record live instruments, i bounce instrumental as one track wave and then record in separate project with lowest buffer possible. what can i suggest is that you run latency mon software because you're on windows and windows is not optimized for audio. google for latencymon and test it. if you have nvidia gfx card than almost 90% problem is gfx drivers. AND optimized doesnt mean "i have the latest drivers", latest is not always most stable

 

I had numerous problems with a scarlett 2i4 and the problem ultimately turned out to be connecting it via USB3 - i switched to a USB2 port on the back of my PC and only then did it start behaving properly...

I see you've already optimised your PC, but (just in case you missed it before now) also check your windows power/performance options and ensure that USB selective suspend setting is set to disabled and that your windows is set to 'High Performance' and NOT 'Balanced'.

As @Hans242 mentioned, if you're using a Wi-Fi interface, you MUST disable it while working on your DAW. They're ALL notoriously bad for introducing DPC hiccups. Indeed, it's much better overall (if you use the machine to surf etc) that you use the ethernet connection to your router.

As @Grandy mentioned, you should definitely download LatencyMon, which will undoubtedly help you diagnose where things are going awry...

Finally, if all else fails, back up your installation as it currently stands, then install Win7 sp1. Before you do though, ensure you get an appropriate win7 NVMe driver and have that available on a usb stick - windows 7 won't see your NVMe without it...

p.s. if searching for a general purpose PC hardware monitor tool, you could do a lot worse than check out HWiNFO64 - very informative and free to boot!

 

Last edited: Feb 11, 2019

no thats not the problem, i have focusrite 2i4 and have lower latency then with uad apollo which is 10 times more expensive. its about drivers

 

Well, I already thought About getting another interface, which I will for sure at some time as I already thought of this being the Problem but as @Grandy stated there are a lot of people having no problems, and a lot of people having problems. I think I wont know before I have a new one.
As stated above, buffer is Already at 512/1024 most of the time at least at Mixing stage.
And i didnt install Any Kind of Network card or wifi, so theres nothing I would have to Put off
@Grandy thanks for the idea to Check out latencymon. Will give that a try.
And no i was aware of the nvidia problems and Went for an AMD gfx card.
@Paul Pi yes youre right i Once had that Problem too, when I had usb3 for the First time, but from there on the First thing i Stuck into my usb 2 Ports was the scarlett just to make sure :P
But it's a good idea, been through all of that, as well as changing cables to ones i had from other monitors, not knowing they were unbalanced, having noise from there, switching back to the old ones and so on hahhaa
And for your optimization Suggestions, I think I already did that but I will definetely look into that.
Thank you all so far

 

Sounds like the weakest link is the sound card drivers. But the thing is most sound card companies all use the same damn generic drivers. Only a few companies like RME, MOTU and a few others actually write their own drivers. I love my RME Babyface Pro!

 

Thank you for all your Effort so far. I will definetely give Latencymon a try. I swear you nailed it right there. The only thing i didnt take care of before was that I Wasnt able to install win 7 using my m.2 ssd as Boot drive. Thats the only reason why I ended up using win 10.
Well it Took me half a year to Set it all up now and its all working so far. Like I Said for the Most Part its absolutely ok. It's just that I think all the components i chose should be able to produce a more stable performance even on heavy projects.
So I really dont know if I would take it this far, not even knowing for sure that it will be better afterwards.
And its been a clean install, I since have never installed nothing not audio related except for a few adobe cs Programs which is Kind of the Same category for me.

As I dont want to install nothing not audio related, I didnt want to install too many Performance tools but if you say this will not waste space or Performance and is really a plus, I will of course do anything to increase the Performance

 

I found fl studio and kontakt with my own setup do not work very good no matter what i do
my pc could be older than most users here do lol
Now im using studio one with kontakt and its about 50% better

You can have a look here at some settings and vids for fl studio that could help
he also updates his page when he finds better settings to use for himself so wort a drop in on youtube.
https://audiosex.pro/threads/composing-orchestral-music-in-fl-studio-tips-tricks.39103/#post-350563

Much as i love fl music still comes first so im using what works best
and i can still use fl for other none kontakt stuff ,hope you can sort something out for yourself
there are lots of very helpfull users here ta keep you going till something falls into place

 

what gfx card are you running?
nvidia drivers can cause drop outs

 

Verify that the hard disk is encrypted with bitlocker.

 

Okay, I should have been more specific. The Focusrite drivers are absolutely crap. I have owned 2 Focusrite cards in the past. To sell them was the best decision I ever made.

 

I have no inclination to starting an OS face-off slugfest, but I built a snazzy PC a few months back and, like you, initially installed win10. After weeks of daily effort, i finally got it 'optimised', but it was always a bit flakey, with crackles here'n'there. After establishing that win7 WAS possible with NVMe/M2 i switched over to win7 and never looked back. BTW, if you've a spare PC you might also consider employing that as kontakt slave server with Vienna Ensemble Pro?

 

Last edited: Feb 12, 2019

Does this happen on all DAWs you use on this system???