Hi all, I'm having a very strange problem and I have no idea how to solve it.

I had studio one 6.5.2 r2r running absolutely perfectly on my machine (high spec windows laptop) and could run very large sessions without much problem and also record via OBS at the same time.

The other day I had some weird DNS problem using Canva and did some troubleshooting on it. Following this my Studio One deactivated saying "This computer is not authorised to run studio one, manage your activations in your presonus account".

This was weird as it was rock solid beforehand. I got around it by adding a firewall rule to Windows defender and doing a fresh install.

However I'm now having a bizarre issue of getting 90-100% CPU spikes when I have S1 and OBS open on pretty undemanding projects when before I was doing perfectly.

I've already been through processor affinity, CPU priority, latency mon and the usual suspects but I am baffled by this as it seemed to kick in right after changing some internet settings (cleared by chrome cache and did a few other things like change my DNS server). I think the DNS server caused the problems with the authorisation but I am clueless about why I'm now having CPU problems which I never had before.

I'm on the verge of just doing a fresh windows install to try and stop it but that is quite a lot of work reinstalling everything so I thought I'd check in here first. Thanks!

 

weird behaviour = CLEAN INSTALL
Erase that windows partition, reinstall everything,...

 

Look for a post by @ThePirate on the subject if you are going to do the Windows reinstall route. The same sort of issue generated a very strong recommendation of Oprekin Windows build for Studio One with CPU spikes.

If I had CPU spikes happening because of changed internet settings, I would make sure you have a firewall installed and working properly. I would firewall the DAW application in also, so it cannot be successfully sending any outbound traffic. I mean a good software application firewall for Windows like Glasswire or others. (I don't use Windows). I would probably look and see what is also happening in Wireshark: https://www.wireshark.org/download.html

And I would comb through Studio One looking for menu options marked like "send us diagnostic usage information or check for updates". Don't just jump to conclusions. Try disabling your NIC card and Wifi. That kind of stuff first. It sucks to wipe Windows and have to reinstall a ton of plugins because of some stupid little detail. I would even recommend you check the changelog for Studio One and make sure the updated version causing your problem even fixes anything you had wrong with it; or if there are new features you cannot live without. Make sure your Malware/virus scanner are up to date and the computer is not already infected with something.

 

Last edited: Mar 30, 2024

try run Latencymon for 10 minutes and see what drivers that causes the issue

 

Odds are you'll continue to have issues (whether you rebuild it or not) if you keep that machine (the one you're running warez releases on) connected to the internet. The best solution is to run warez versions of everything and keep the machine completely offline. More than likely windows update itself, the A/V, or possibly some other "legit" piece of junk running on that machine phoned home and caused an issue. If you rebuild, disconnect the internet and turn all that crap off. If you need to apply an update to OS or apps for some reason, get the offline update package (downloaded by another machine) and apply it manually.

 

Last edited: Mar 30, 2024

run task manager - performance and make sure you can see the spikes.
run process hacker, sort processes by cpu.
double click whatever takes the top of the list when the spikes occur. then you`ll know.

 

Thanks for all the helpful replies so far everyone!!

The thing is, I've been running warez for many years and this specific machine has been totally rock solid for the past 6 months (when I switched daw to S1).

However after posting earlier what I think happened is that I changed my DNS server to avoid the DNS issue that I was having. That caused my S1 issue. I then reinstalled S1 (although the authorisation issue remained). I then firewalled off S1 in windows as well as changing the host file to exclude a couple of presonus sites. I then started having all of these processor issues. As I said, before this week I have had 0 issues for months and everything has been running extremely well.

Now I'm getting single instances of plugins using 25% CPU. It's also interesting that when I run OBS alongside S1 it seems to roughly double the CPU usage I'm experiencing in S1, even though I've got my processor affinities all set up as they should be and again, previously I was having no issues with the exact same set up. I feel like a total idiot for not having a restore point set up.

But I do feel like reinstalling windows may wipe away whatever settings are causing the issues I'm having at the moment. I will run a longer latency mon test later on but when running earlier it didn't pick up anything untoward.

 

There are a bunch of users (5 +) on another site with R2R 6.5.2 problems as of Mar. 26th. People with it locked out, so it sounds like it timebombed. Another user mentioned same problem with 6.5.0 so switching to that might not help anyway. Since the program has some internet features, if it deauthorized you could see it looping through attempts to re-authorize itself. Or other things like that. Block the entire list if you haven't already.

This is the most inclusive steps posted by someone. This line was added intentionally this way

::1 www.presonus.com

because of some issue with ipv6.

#presonus hosts file i.e. C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
127.0.0.1 registration.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 updates.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 api.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 api.presonus.com.cdn.cloudflare.com
127.0.0.1 ::1 www.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 presonus.com
127.0.0.1 www.presonus.com

I think you might see a new release from R2R over something like this issue. It would suck to wipe out an OS drive, all your plugins, etc. Just to find out it was all just the result of a timebomb.
If you did not mention doing other work with your DNS, internet, etc. This would probably have been more obvious to you. Bad timing for a coincidence.

 

Last edited: Mar 30, 2024

Have you tried resetting CPU power management?
If you are in Balanced mode, switch to High Performance mode.

 

Thanks for this advice. I think I tracked the CPU issues down to the system kernel and actually resetting the power plan settings to default cured those spikes somehow.

I think you're right and that messing with my DNS settings caused the time bomb. Interestingly I wasn't getting the time bomb on 6.0. I'll add those settings to the hosts file on top of what I've already got and see if I can disable the Windows firewall as that is causing another issue.

I think it was just an unlucky coincidence that made me think that the time bomb was caused by my own settings changes, although maybe it was triggered by my change of DNS server.

 

- Make sure wifi is turned off (it slows everyting down for me)
- Make sure ot check your buffer size. In some installations after a fresh windows installation for example sound interface my buffer size is just set higher than other times, which does not make sense, but it it still does it. So iwas confused why everyhting seemed harder on the new installation.
- make sure no slow external drive is connected, as I have often found my whole windows slows down when an USB flashdrive or laggy hdd is connected. I am not sure why it happens, but it does.
- Do the problems you have still happen if you are disconnected from internet?

 

Are you on a Asus ROG PC?

 

Lots and lots of weird advice in this thread. Let's approach this rationally:

Unrelated. As stated by others, this happened to everyone. Presonus added a new check that wasn't blocked by anyone because it didn't exist yet.

Edit for safeguarding: as for how it got updated, the reason is that if you didn't fully block the DAW or keep your PC offline, the backend of the DAW is still updating all the time. A new block is bound to happen at any time unless you fully cut it from the internet, but as of now, we're safe until Presonus decides to push another one.

A DNS server is no more than an address book. I run one inside my own house, and I dealt with that daily at my job. The DNS job is to translate queries. You type "audiosex.pro", your DNS looks into it and gives you back an IP that takes you to the website. The speed it takes to give you this information is what makes a DNS special, since it can cache queries to deliver it back to you in miliseconds.

That said, a DNS issue can not and will not affect your CPU. The reason for that is because there is no processing from the DNS in your computer. Your computer asks, the DNS server delivers. The only cycle your CPU does is the asking, which is the same for every DNS.

The Chrome cache thing is also irrelevant. Cache is just a bunch of files stored to get you somewhere faster. Imagine having to redownload this forum's default avatar every single time you accessed here.

It seems useless to do a fresh reinstall because it did work before, and your suspicion makes little to no sense as to why you're having this issue. Though, you seem to have solved the issue (laptops have their own power management issues, and that seemed to be it). I'm just writing this up because a lot of people are quickly to suggest things without even thinking if it makes sense.

 

Thanks for the reply. I'm still having the timebomb issue unless I completely firewall the DAW, which is annoying when trying to run OBS alongside. Is there another workaround? I already added the new domains to the host file but that didn't work.

Also, the problem has come back in a very strange way. Whenever I run OBS alongside S1 I'm getting huge CPU spikes where all the plugins suddenly double the load they use even with the session idle. It's bizarre. And also only seems to happen with OBS open. I'll upload a video of the problem.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nbns...em-1.mp4?rlkey=8givjlm20u8ch1uh9hpb10ty0&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0vyv...em-2.mp4?rlkey=g9oxw6fvissx4s60k46hbh5ks&dl=0

 

If you are still getting the timebomb, there's a chance you didn't fully block all domains. Double-check the list:
127.0.0.1 registration.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 updates.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 api.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 api.presonus.com.cdn.cloudflare.com

If you want to do easy hosts editing, check out Microsoft's PowerToys. It comes with lots of really useful tools, including a hosts editor.

On the CPU spikes, consider the following:
- Have you checked if your CPU is not throttling? Temperature is usually a common reason for it.
- How about going back in time with a restore point? If it worked before, it will still work now if the issue is system-related.
- Have you checked if you aren't running very low buffers or a very high sample rate? If your CPU is not throttling, maybe your settings are wrong somewhere. The spikes you showed in your video reminds me of plugins wanting more CPU under low buffers. They will spike all the time like that, happens to me when I mix large sessions (25+ tracks + oversampling) in 64 samples @ 48khz.
- Do you have a dedicated GPU or Intel CPU with Quick Sync in your laptop? See if OBS is encoding with CPU instead of hardware accelerated (Nvidia Nvenc, AMD AMF, Intel Quick Sync).

 

I've got all of these in my hosts file on notepad. Ran as admin and saved successfully.

0.0.0.0 registration.presonus.com
0.0.0.0 updates.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 ::1 www.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 presonus.com
127.0.0.1 www.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 registration.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 updates.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 api.presonus.com
127.0.0.1 api.presonus.com.cdn.cloudflare.com

CPU is fine, the fan is barely running at all - the spikes start as soon as OBS opens and cease immediately once it's closed even though the processor affinity for S1 and OBS has no overlap. Overall CPU remains very long even though S1s single core load is obviously overloading.

Incredibly annoyingly I had restore points set off and forgot to turn them back on as I was uninstalling a load of stuff using revo. Stupid mistake on my part otherwise I would do just that.

My sample rate is 48k and buffer 256. Again, identical settings to what I had before and was rock solid. I have a GTX3080 laptop graphics card and am encoding us x264. There is an nvidia 264 option available but it made my system really laggy before, although I could try it again. I am so confused about this loss of performance that coincided perfectly with the timebomb and me reinstalling S1.

I'm still considering reinstalling windows as I have no idea what else to do.

 

Firstly, check if you can access presonus.com. If you can, that means something is not right with the hosts file. It is supposed to override your router and DNS, but I don't know if it's possible to override that somehow. I think it's impossible, but maybe you have something that overrides it (like an antivirus with integrated firewall?). Change those 0.0.0.0 records to 127.0.0.1 too.

Also, definitely try going with nvidia encoding. It's not supposed to lag because it uses a special part of the chip where video encoding and decoding happens, it's reserved only for that purpose. x264 is CPU encoding, so it's no wonder you're having trouble. Why only now I can't really tell you, but you're combining two CPU intensive actions on a mobile CPU that has limited TDP because of the form factor.

 

Thanks for the help. I just checked and I CAN access presonus.com which is very strange. That clearly explains the need for the firewall but I'm not sure what has caused the problem. I'm just using standard Windows anti-virus and firewall, no 3rd party stuff at all.

I also checked my OBS settings and switched to Nvidia but the true culprit was DPC Kernal latency which surfaced again when I rechecked latency mon. Spent all day trying to track it down and eventually got to a decent level but it's not perfect and still occasionally spikes but I have got rid of that weird CPU issue where it doubled load every few seconds.

Baffled about the hosts file thing though - any ideas? I'll do some googling as well. Cheers

EDIT: Ok solved the hosts file thing and now presonus is blocked and I've been able to disable the firewall which is nice too. Hopefully things will run fairly well now, but still have some DPC latency that it would be ideal to get rid of but I'm honestly not sure it's possible on this system.

 

Last edited: Apr 3, 2024