Working on Windows 11 with Studio One 6.0.2, Lenovo Legion 5 laptop with AMD Ryzen 7 processor. Processor monitor in Studio One is reading 100% with the attendant audio glitches one would expect. Checking performance monitor in task manager however shows only 7-10% utilization when Studio One reads 100. Is this something to do with threading in the software? Can I change any settings to improve core utilization? Or is it a matter of third-party plugins not playing correctly with the DAW audio engine or the CPU?

Is anyone else experiencing this issue? Has anyone else run into a solution? Any perspective is appreciated.

 

Change multi-core into single core. When working with a daw only single core will matter. Try that and see if it helps. Make sure you stop all other programs and background processes running

 

If you run Audiogridder as a server host (on the same machine), you can use additional plugins inside it to utilize additional cores.

 

Absolutely not. S1 is capable of using multi cores and multi threading due to its coding (since v4.6 or ealier, I think). And AFAIK, you can't disable this, at least there's no option for this in S1 v4.

This can absolutely be. As soon as one core hits 100% this (the highest) value is shown in S1 and this will already lead to dropouts. When you have for instance 6 cores and 12 threads and one of them is at 100% the overall CPU load in the task manager is shown as 8.3% (if there's nothing else to be processed). Means, they will most always deviate from each other.

In the Performance Monitor you can see which plugin is causing the highest CPU load (sort by CPU). Maybe you can split its task among two or more tracks?

 

Hallo @howmanybuses, have you already optimized your notebook?

PreSonus - Optimizing Your Computer for Audio - Windows 10
https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-...Optimizing-Your-Computer-for-Audio-Windows-10

Don't let audio glitches ruin your performances!
www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree/

 

Turn monitoring off, if you're not recording.
If that helps, than you should change your buffer size.

 

If all else fails, reseat your RAM.

 

it has something todo with realtime performance.I think there is a video somewhere explaining this.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Feb 5, 2023

have you made the regular BIOS energy changes? (hopefully they are similar on AMD, i do not know that, take a look here https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/...t-up-and-optimize-a-Digital-Audio-Workstation)

if you already have then you have something clashing besides simple setting changes and in my experience its hard to pinpoint just like that. Often it requires a fresh installation and one at the time installation of each software,until you find the culprit.

 

Wow! Love the enthusiastic and helpful responses for a first time poster! I should hang out in this community more.

Never heard of this, will try it out and come back if I need some guidance.

Do you mean creating a bus for multiple tracks and applying the same processing? In this case the main offenders are Waves plugins: SSL EV2 and Abbey Road Plates. Specifically I have the SSL EV2 on one of two amp tracks that feeds my Guitar 2 bus, which also has an instance of the EV2, which along with the Guitar 1 bus feeds into the Guitars bus, which also has an instance of the EV2, and the Guitars bus has a send to the Abbey Road Plates aux. All those EVs have different settings relating to the needs of each track and bus so can't really apply one to all unfortunately.

Definitely have followed the steps in the first guide, hadn't seen the second though. Will explore that further if it offers substantially different advice from the Presonus resource.

Meaning Low-latency monitoring setting? Yeah definitely off.

Good suggestion, any idea which settings might be relevant?

Will look into this, hadn't encountered the suggestion on disabling hyperthreading before.

Thanks all! Will make efforts to try these things and report back!

EDIT: Also! My GPU is just sitting there on the sidelines, is there a way to get that involved?

 

That's very true.

Nooo, I meant splitting the processing of one track among two, if that is possible. Happens with weaker processors and stereo mastering more often. So instead of inserting 8 plugins into a single track, insert four, route it to a folder/subgroup and insert the rest.

 

Oh, the irony...

 

A bit annoying when several tracks are overloading the threads, but sadly the only solution I know of - apart from buying a new CPU (MB, RAM, drive, ...).

 

DAW DSP and Computer CPU are 2 totally different things. It's normal to max out your DAW DSP and not your computer CPU. Studio One, Cubase, Pro Tools, Mixbus they all do that.

I'm not sure if a DAW that has 1 to 1 ratio with the Computer's CPU exists, meaning 25% usage on DAW will equal 25% usage also on computer CPU.

 

Jokes aside I agree because it's the only logical solution I can think of. Still seems weird though, I checked that CPU specs and even compared to many desktop 8-core CPUs is powerful.
What I mean is this problem should be much more frequent if it was purely a one-core maxing out among all the cores/tracks handled by the DAW. Both Ryzen 7 and Windows 11 are quite new, so who knows.
May be even a weird BIOS/Windows bug could the problem and some update will fix it.

Besides, the OP doesn't use Maat plugins. With that shit I can believe any messed up thing but not the case

 

Um, this method adds a lot of latency, that's how the trick is done. If you're trying to play through it, Audiogridder probably won't help. It's great for mastering, though.

 

S1's CPU Meter uses Max function.
Lets say U(i) = Core Utilization of i-th core.
Say A cpu has n number of cores.
So, S1 CPU meter shows Max [U(i)] for i=0 to (n-1).
Which means it shows the output utilization of the particular core that is showing maximum utilization.
Inside Task manager, you don't see this 'Max [U(i)] for i=0 to (n-1)' thing.


Also, solution:

Set this (Red Marked) to as low as your interface can handle. 32, 64, 128 are great options. Mine glitches at 16 samples and so I set it to 32 because it doesn't glitch. Some interface can handle 16 samples without glitch. So this is an interface-specific option.


Set this (Blue Marked) to maximum which will yield the Process block size to 2048 samples automatically.
This is only for S1 as we have dual audio engine.
This is an universal option, irrespective of the interface you are using.

Also, enable Plugin nap.


Playback RTL - 132 ms. Again, who cares?
Recording RTL - 5.46 ms for Audio.

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2023

holy cow 132 ms latency ?!