I have done this you could try it ,,take 8 gigs of ram and install a ram disc ,,http://superspeed.com/desktop/ramdisk.php
Is what I have purchased ,,RamDisk Plus
64-bit (x64) $79.95
install all or the most intense of your vst's or programs on the ram disc ,then your programs will run at ram speed
they have trials or you could look other places to "find" it from other sources
SuperSpeed offers a Microsoft Certified RAM disk software called RamDisk Plus®. These products create virtual disks from the server's system memory (RAM). Although in many respects a virtual disk behaves like a physical hard disk, in one key area it does not: it is much, much faster, up to 50x faster or more. Like a physical disk, a RAM disk can be assigned a drive letter and contain a file system (including NTFS with compression). Applications can copy, move and delete files on it. It can be shared, so other computers can access it on a network. Additionally, it can be mount point to ease integration into application file paths.

 

Both encryption and decryption require plenty cpu cycles and automatically introduce a very unwelcome (and wholly unneccessary) data bottleneck in realtime systems i.e. DAWs. Indeed, such encryption is only essentialon specific folders - i.e.those that contain sensitive personal information e.g. important passwords, state secrets, vids of you engaged in dangerous acts of breathtaking sexual creativity with light fixtures etc., - but for the OS and audio drives as a whole, imho it's simply asking for trouble...

 

Last edited: Feb 12, 2019

I recently bought lenovo thinkpad x1 notebook.
When I test DAW, Dropouts occurred.
I checked that notebook and founded Thinkpad's default SSD was BitLocked encrypted.
That's why i ask verify bitlocker.

 

Do you have a decent cooler for the 8700K It is a beast. Check your temps oi idle and on workload

 

the issue is the focusrite, its driver
i use to travel with one, my apollo gives no issues nor does my OrionHd even with my laptop that i can do anything and everything on

 

I repeat EVERY step after a fresh install of Windows, it helps, maybe its a puzzle piece , if not, its still pretty useful imho

 

Please try enabling Rapid Mode - only for the OS disk. This is directly related with ram and enabling more than one disk will lower your RAM resources - AFAIK it dos not make so much sense using this feature other than the OS disk...

 

Dude mine happened the same.. Im a studio one user.. and the problem is that some daws have dificult to spread the plugins betwn cores, for example st1 fills the cores per tracks .so sometimes give a uneven spread of tasks among the cores making a overload in some cores thats why the pops.. our hope is on the next updates in our daws fixes core ,more eficiency distribution of tasks ..or windows best updatez.. but what worked for me was in the power manage.. i set the minimum speed core to 100% ..that defalut is 5% ..and seted e eryting to best performance..
including manage energy... everything 100%.. it spends more energy but for me did the trick

 

just for notice that my processor is a i7 8550u and my interface is focusrite 2i4 scarlet 2 gen.. now is working great.. and I can run double plugins that i cold before

 

I had similar problems: check 1) Bluetooth (always disable, services,etc) 2) Wi-fi (off, airplane mode) 3) HDMI if you use it, disable the audio out from the hdmi cable)

 

your system should be working fine "out of the box".
with todays hardware you should not need to fix bios or doing anything to the os, unless there is a clear offender in your system causing the troubles, if you cant single out what it is you could keep "tweaking" till you drop. you will be able to attenuate many problems though without solving them. one of the main "attenuators" is to disable all bios halt, parking cpu features. and of course set the energy scheme in windows to max performance, that will help in many cases.

the (in my experience) most common offenders are the graphics card its driver ( then hard-disc driver or a problematic motherboard). uninstall the graphic card from the system manager and tick "delete driver", turn off your computer and pull the card out of your machine. now use your internal graphics. (you gain nothing by using a gfx-card thinking you will spare you cpu) now check if you get unjustified audio spikes as before.

all above is just in case you are not simply pushing your system to hard, imagining others run "much more".

 

Last edited: Feb 12, 2019

the 8700k has a relatively slow standard single core cpu speed (3.7 GHz). It MUST be overclocked. Otherwise it's slower than a 7700k. The sweetspot is between 4.7 and 4.8 GHz. You will need a watercooling system to do so but it's 100% worth the effort. Plus the NVME SSD has to be (passively) cooled. NVME SSDs slow drastically down when overheating.

 

1. set you power profile to High Performance
2. Go into the bios and switch off c states
problem likley cured at this point
3. Download LatencyMon and run for 30 mins, take note of results and look for ways of resolving them.

I have the same processor its running at 4.8 with all cores fixed, on Win 10, its as sweet as a nut and eats vsti for breakfast.

EDIT: BTW latency 96 samples.

 

Last edited: Feb 12, 2019

Oh my god this is really overwhelming hahaha i didn't expect so many people jumping in this discussion, trying to Help. I will of course try to take a look into all your advice but it's been so much so far, I really dont know how long this will take.
First I will try Latencymon now, hoping to find out more about this Problem. After that I will follow @The Pirate s instructions.
I'm really Sorry to Put all this up since I know the reason could be like everything and im also Sorry for the Lack of knowledge i seem to have. Really ive struggled through so much already the last 10 years and solved so many problems, I was sure im of course no geek but I thought I have a Bit of knowledge but now I realize i really dont know anything

Next thing is I will of course Check if anything is encrypted eben though I think I should know since I bought my ssds seperately

for the NIC, I have no Network card im my System because I knew from the Start on that I would keep this system offline. But I will now Boot my PC and look into that too. But by the way I already did a Bit of that but left components active which I didnt know what they were for.

I'm also using no usb Hub, so this wont be the Problem. But it's a good point though. Since this PC only has 2 usb2 Ports and a lot usb3 Ports, I plugged like all you did the interface there First, which forced me to use the mouse for example on a usb3 Port. I will do some Tests on this too.

For the win 7 people: I wish I had asked you that in june of last year. I struggled a Whole Day in the uefi coming from a regular bios and even though this looks a lot easier, it actually Wasnt for me. I then found out that I cant use the samsung 960 pro as a Boot ssd on win 7 now rwalizing seems to be not True even though I didnt find a way to do so.
I really didnt want to switch but honestly its been from june til now and ive just finished Installations last week. If there is absolutely no way I would of course try that But I really like to try everything else before because maybe another thing is the Problem and i will gain nothing by that, no even mentioning all the time Id have to invest, not Remembering every Single Tool i have now and working myself 1000 times through my 10tb back up hdds all with rar files like 88274.rar... this really takes so much time and as @Foobar said there are people running a great audioSystem on win 10 with good components like Mine.
I really dont want to act like I know better because ya'll obviously know better than me and if this is the way I have to go, I will of course try to roll back to 7 but this really would be the last Option. If I do so... Back then I used my original win 7 ultimate. I was then able to get the free upgrade on my usb officially even though in june the free upgrade period was already over but Once again i struggled my way through this.
Would win 7 lite like @The Pirate said be better? Sorry for all These questions but I have no experience with that. I always installed official win frim disc or usb since I had a badly cracked win XP back in 2000 or so.
@korgrog thanks for the idea, also never heard of that but I will look into this now. I just came home now.
@Margot Menace
Yes i have a corsair h80i v2 cooling System.
@Hybridstudios
Thanks, I was already Planning on getting an apollo for years But yea I had to go for the Computer and other Stuff First but I will 100% sure switch as soon as I can, which is another thing I want to try before reinstalling everything.
@Gwydion i have a corsair h80i v2 water cooling System, so this should be no problem But I dont have a Clue how I could cool my m.2 960 pro. Could you give me a little more Detail on that?
Really i'd like to apologize for my nooby appearance But I have not touched overclocking since I had my old 4 core AMD where I had to push 4 to unlock all cores and i never found the Option to lock them again haha so I think I will need someone guiding me through those topics.

@EddieXx thank you my man, you nailed it also, this is exactly what I thought. I bought this system by thinking if I now spend this much and dont try to save money on any components, I wouldNT find myself running into such problems, of course still having to do a few tweaks. I started with the Performance Mode.

@techdevil thanks for your Feedback, another one running it smooth on 10 so I guess there is hope. since I didnt touch the uefi this could be the tweak. Thats the next thing im gonna do as soon as I finished writing this. Sorry for all this, but my System langauge and Mother tongue isnt english which makes it even harder for me to know what ya'll talking bout hahaha

@AX-AT i have no wifi nor Bluetooth but I use hdmi so yes maybe this is an idea.

@PrettyPurdie Sorry I overlooked your comment. Thank you very much, I will definetely follow the instructions on this Video.


To all of you, i'm now on the Computer and will try thing after thing. I could give you more Details now, give you Screenshots.

Ive just booted up, core temperatures are between 29 degrees C and 33 degrees C

Can give you Screenshots of this as well tell ya'll what Latencymon tells me.

Thanks Once again

 

Last edited: Feb 12, 2019

No prob, hope you get sorted but please be aware Win 7 is a dead OS, nothing wrong with Win 10 as long as you remember set your privacy settings. There is very little you really need to do, most common problem these days is Wintel's new obsession with saving you power.

8700k run a bit hot, expect about 45/50 once you ramp up the CPU

 

There are tons of tutorials out there on how to overclock your 8700k CPU. As techdevil mentioned, 4,8 Ghz should be your goal. But you won't achieve that wit your h80 cooler. It's just a single fan cooler. No way for 4.8 Ghz imho. I recommend a corsair 150 or Thermaltake Floe Riing 360 cooler with 3 fans.

Cooling your NVME is quite easy. Grab yourself a NVME cooler at Amazon for about 10 bucks. And take care for good housing fans.

 

Last edited: Feb 12, 2019

Of course this is Kind of what I want to hear and i really dont know but it's the Same with everything some people say so, some say so and at the end of the Day we'll always try to go for the Option that is the closest to what we've wished but i'm sharing your opinion on that.

Thats what I was thinking too. I dont want to switch to win 7 now just to find out that they cut Support for win 7 and at some Point like with the m.2 have to switch back again or FindIng out that in 2 months there Comes a win 10 update making it way more stable than 7 ever was.
Like I stated i loved 7 and i would have never changed and now that I have, for the Most Part its Not that Bad like I thought and like I Said, its Not that I cant run a project on that machine. It's not that I cant work with it. It's just that I think this cant be the Limit, it has to run smoother.

But well i will tweak now and we'll See, and when worst Comes to worst i can still go back to win 7.

 

Thank you, you bought me back to something i Wasnt thinking about anymore.
I have samsung magician on this machine and i simply cant Activate rapid Mode. My 2 860 evos are recognized properly and i can enable rapid Mode which I havent but for my Boot m.2 it says its Not supported. I have installed All the drivers and it works just fine. It tells me its a samsung ssd 960 pro 2tb pcie gen 3 x 4 nvme driver samsung, trim Status active, capacity 1908GB 1271 free... but however rapid Mode: not supported.

Like always i read a few Things about it where people Said dont use samsung magician and as everything seems to work i didnt think About this anymore but yea... Thats a Problem i really forgot about.

 

Rapid mode can only be enabled on one disc.

Personally, before delving into making all these myriad changes I would set about getting a bunch of benchmarks and diagnostics.

Latencymon is perhaps most important, first. It will list processes that are running/interrupting audio system. Run it and see what it says - leave it go for a while, at least until you get a fairly clear view if anything is causing problems - and what it is.

Also, get CPUID - and post images of the various tabs, maybe along with a hardware list, such as HWInfo provides.

Some temperature readings........
Some RAM benchmarks.......
Some disc benchmarks......
the results of Latencymon......
MAybe some other gfx/cpu benchmarks.....

Run this little suite - get a comparison:
https://www.userbenchmark.com/Software

I would leave making changes until you have a slew of data to work with. Otherwise it's fishing in the dark. What changes you make might work, but they might not.

FLStudio ASIO is far better than ASIO4ALL imo.........I used 2i2 on Win7 for a long time with good performance. I doubt it is the drivers, but there's always a chance.

I have an inferior CPU and get decent performance. I think there is clearly something up with your machine, but whatever it is should show on some diagnostic/benchmarks. I'd suggest trying to get good data first.

 

Thanks thats what i think too but to be honest like you may have noticed, im a little trapped alone and therefore really need and appreciate all the Support ya'Öl offering me.

I will now Provide you with some Screenshots of what I already got apologizing for making them with my cell but like stated no Internet so its the quickest way. Hope ya'll dont mind.

Sorry the pictures are flipped 90 degrees, I really dont understand why everythings so messed up








Should I click stop now and give you the log?
And Please excuse me for the magician pics i cant change language there but there are the results of a benchmark test but I will go with CPUID and User benchmark next and give you these results too.

I also have this if this is of any value


And the other tabs but I guess i'll have to Press stop and give you the log.
I will wait for your answers and in the meantime go on with your Suggestions, testing and giving you results.

Really i appreciate all of you for taking so much time and Effort for looking into MY Problem