CPU Performance vs. Real-Time Performance in Digital Audio

I took the topic title from this 9 years old video:

despite the video's age all the new comments are like these:
"2024 and this 8 years old video got more quality than 90% of todays' videos"
"Great video. A must watch if you have a DAW."
"this video is a gem, thank you!"

So, what is this video about? You have a power CPU, a lot of RAM, SSD and bla-bla-bla, but despite this you still have spikes, cracles and audio dropouts...
so, watch this video to know whay it all may happened,
and share your experience

 

With all due respect to the video but he has no clue into the depths of the issue.

1- Consumer grade CPU's are not meant for real time audio
2. Consumer grade OS from Microsoft and Apple are not meant for real time audio
( Although Mac OS internal audio runs more tight with the kernel)
3. Go back to number 1

We do not have a Real time OS for Audio work running on our consumer computers, so this means the OS itself
must be setup for extremely running with barely anything on.

With consumer grade OS we have the issue that it's a daily "all in" machine so that means it has to run as many services
in order for all your games, office applications, network, system tools to function properly.

This means that we need to disable almost everything that is not needed for audio as the extra services run cpu cycles and also in ram memory as well. This is not a concern on the memory side since we have lot's of it today but cpu spikes YES it is a concern.

If our computer is not a ZERO CPU during idle ( with no applications running) in task manager you need to do some work on that OS
and that includes Mac OS as well not just Windows. All computers period end of story should be at zero CPU and ZERO drive hits during idling this is not a option it must be that way.

You needs to disable dozens of useless services which are not needed when working with a DAW

Windows 10 and 11 include more services than previous windows versions which now are tied to others this means that some services will be a challenge to disable since one service might take down an important system service. This also applies to Mac OS as well as it now has a stack of services a page long.


The bottom line is CPU spikes from non essential services must be stopped this is what leads to pops when running lower latencies.
There are limits to what our machines can do after all they are not really dedicated for Audio Only, since they also play games, office suites, online connections etc.

Learn the Services in Mac OS and Windows that is the key to a great setup.

 

What is a consumer grade CPU? Are you implying only Ryzen EPYC and Intel Xeon CPUs can do audio work? Because I can assure you they don't. I used to set up computers (servers) that cost $2000+ an hour to run. Servers with 128 cores, more RAM and storage you could ever find a way to use. They definitely don't perform audio any better than a consumer grade Ryzen 9800X3D.

 

Ranting about any of that doesn't change anything for that video, why would he even bother, "Hello guys, before we dive in, here's little rant and history lesson.... now let's dive in on actual subject" then end with "Microsoft, Apple, Intel, AMD, if you are watching this, please, give us what we want, this is unbearable, thanks"

 

Spoiler: Troubleshooting DPC latency

Troubleshooting DPC latency

Overview

DPC (Deferred Procedure Call) is the operation that Windows uses to assign a priority to processes/drivers that run at the same time in the same system. If processes that aren't involved in streaming audio take up processing time for longer than they really should then this can prevent audio drivers from being able to send/receive data in an appropriate amount of time, leading to audible issues (e.g. pops/clicks, dropouts, 'glitchy' audio and sometimes even device disconnections).

A common cause for DPC latency is out of date device drivers and Windows processes that are not optimised correctly. Many processes/drivers are involved in streaming audio, and many other processes/drivers can cause interruptions in the audio stream.


Analysis
To analyse whether DPC latency could be the cause for any pops, clicks, or disconnections you might be experiencing, you can run the following software tool: Latency Mon (Windows 7 and later).

To run the tool, click the Play button and then play audio from any application through your audio interface for a couple of minutes. If there are no DPC problems, the scan will report this:



If there are problems, the reporting text will be black/red and the drivers/processes that are the likely cause of the problem will be displayed:



Solving DPC Latency issues

Updates for some processes/drivers are often delivered via Windows Update. It's recommended that you ensure that your version of Windows is fully up-to-date should you encounter any DPC problems, you can update Windows by following these steps:

• Windows 7: Go to Start > Programs > Windows Update > click 'Check for updates'
• Windows 8: Go to Control Panel > Windows Update > click 'Check for updates'
• Windows 10/11: Click the Windows icon in the bottom left corner of the screen > Settings > Updates and Security

If you use an Intel-based system, you can use the Driver Update Support Assistant to find driver updates for your system. This tool can be downloaded here.

If the DPC problems persist after installing all Windows updates, then the next step is to try to deduce the device that's causing the problem. Common problematic areas are:

• Network/Wi-Fi adapters
• Card readers
• Other sound devices that aren't in use
• Bluetooth adapters
• Graphics card

To narrow down which device causing the issue, you can try disabling the above components in Control Panel > Device Manager (only disable your graphics card if you have on-board graphics as well) and then run the DPC test again. If this fixes the problem then this would be a strong indicator that this particular device is the cause of the issue - you can then either leave this disabled when working with audio or check for any updates from the component manufacturer.

Source: https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/articles/208360865-Troubleshooting-DPC-latency

How to FIX High DPC and ISR Latency in 60 Seconds

 

With all due respect for your answer, but...
1) You said that consumer CPUs aren't designed for music production, which isn't true (it used to be that way). Consumer CPUs are designed to handle all tasks, and with features like SSE and AVX, consumer CPUs are even better suited to running plugins/DAWs (which, of course, must also be used by the plugin/DAW). A good audio interface is recommended for this, but not essential.
2) You say that consumer operating systems from Microsoft and Apple aren't designed for real-time audio. Steinberg, for example, invented ASIO for Windows PCs, and ASIO Guard in Cubase. It's worth noting that today's CPUs have a fairly large Level 3 cache, which also provides an additional boost. Some CPUs have the 3D V-Cache, which also adds a significant amount of cache, but slightly lowers the clock speed. And, as we all know, clock speed is more important than cache for some DAWs, so you'll have to look at it.
In addition, today's CPUs are so fast that you can hardly use them to their full capacity with the DAW and plugins.

I use a translator from German to English.

To show what audio power the Ryzen CPUs have, here is a short video.

 

I never disable any "useless" services in MacOS for audio, the way people do for Windows. I would be very skeptical of anyone claiming you "need to disable" any services in MacOS for audio production. Anything I even remove after a fresh MacOS install is just apps I never use, but only because they waste space on the system disk.

Out of every process running, only 22 of them are even registering higher than 0.1% cpu use; and those are things I installed. In fact, other than Logic; the instance of Activity Monitor I am using to check this is the most CPU usage-heavy process I have running.

Someone trying to tell you that you cannot just buy a new mac, install Logic and your audio interface, and be up and running without doing a bunch of system tweaks has some kind of their own agenda. Any Apple Silicon mac will not even blink due to "useless services".

 

1.Did you see the video?
2. yes, it's 9 years old, and you state "To show what audio power the Ryzen CPUs have"...hm, ok, just few days ago we had a topic exactly with this build:
OS: Windows 11 Home
DAW: Cubase 14 Pro
I/O: SSL 2+
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core 3.4GHz
MOBO: ASRock X570 Taichi
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX2080Ti
RAM: 128GB 2667Mhz (4 x 32Gb Corsair Vengeance PRO DDR4 360)
Cooler: Be Quiet Dark Rock PRO4
C Drive: Samsung SSD 980 PRO 1TB
Project Drive: Samsung SSD 850 PRO 128GB
VST Drive: Samsung SSD 970 EVO 1TB
And the owner still complained about crackling in Cubase:
https://audiosex.pro/threads/good-system-on-paper-but-ongoing-cubase-performance-issue.80349/