I doubt this has anything to do with your Focusrite drivers. It's something on your system.

LatencyMon is great at finding these problems ... sometimes you need to DOWNGRADE a driver that was recently updated. Sometimes going into Device Manager and uninstalling a network or graphics drivers can fix issues (it'll re-install automatically). Your problem is solvable. 100%. It always bugs me when people "settle" for clicks and pops and think it's normal.

However, I've also found issues where LatencyMon doesn't help. E.g., I recently had a Crucial SSD (running Windows), that was doing some background caching (to improve its performance) -- LatencyMon didn't spot this. Every time it happened, there'd be clicks/pops -- that's basically because the CPU cannot keep up as something "more important" is going on (the caching). In fact, if I had LatencyMon open -- for whatever reason, the SSD would NOT cache and the audio problem went away -- which was very confusing. The fix was to turn off the caching, using the SSD's management software.

So do some troubleshooting, remove unnecessary hardware, disable unnecessary software temporarily -- try to use LatencyMon, etc. Does it occur at particular internals? I.e., every 40 seconds? Or is it all the time? Does it persist once it starts? Try to narrow the problem down -- it is somewhere, it isn't something you need to live with.

Final note, I notice 1024 on my Focusrite is buggy, last time I checked, I was getting clicks at that rate -- for other easons. I didn't look into it as I'd never want to use that anyway. If I'm mixing, I'd use 512 or so to give my system room. If recording, I use 128.

 

i have my focusrite asio on 256smp 6ms and it runs without glitches win 10 64x 20h2 modded

 

Laptop? Bad idea for a USB powered audio interface. Sound like a USB/power plan issue to me

 

what boing_cr said is true

get latency mon to work
its def some WIFI driver or some rouge intel AKA chipset driver problem
those focusrite are fine.

never listen to those "its your old computer" (exept if its a 486 LOL)
and Laptops work fine too# powerplan is important though!

CHECK!
no hub, good cable, drivers, system drivers
nearly all usb interfaces should get about 10ms or less

 

disable integrated soundcard plus your interface is old and electronics going mad ... have saffire 6 with same problems but now have 8i6 3rd gen and no issues ...

 

try different versions of drivers for your audio interface
i have a 2i2 first gen
when i was on win7 all focusrite drivers where buggy until i found the beta driver that solved al my problems
now im on win 10 and installed the latest driver without problems

 

I have a Scarlett 4i4 3rd Gen per USB-C on my Lenovo P51 (Xeon E3-1505M v6 4c/8t, 16Gb RAM, 2 SSDs). All is fine with 64 buffer and above.
The main thing is for me to set the Windows energy power plan to High Performance or it will be crackle the sound on some time..

 

Here is my latencymon display, I don't see anything in the red (while playing the ableton project)

My system is i7-3770k, OC 4.2ghz, powersaving enabled in BIOS (electricity bills are getting way too high these day), 8GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 750ti (lower latency if you remove the nvidia card), SSD for windows and ableton, updates disabled So out of the suggestions I might try to replug the audio interface into a different usb port since it's being shared with my mouse and keyboard.

But none of this is a problem I was just curious why it was like this, I have no issues at all using directx in my workflow

Also: I just remembered that at the time of the first post I had chrome running and it was acting up with CPU usage, when I load up the project now it plays fine and the CPU usage in ableton is low, but the fact remains that at the the edge of CPU utilization ASIO was the first to show signs of breakage on my system compared to directx under the same conditions, I have noticed this with multiple sets of drivers from Focusrite.

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2022

Start with your BIOS settings:

• Turn of Power Saving
• Reverse OC settings
• Set memory to default XMP profile if any (overclock memory instead of CPU)

Windows:
Uninstall NVidia driver, reinstall with graphics drivers only. No HD audio, no desktop app, etc...
Try disabling internal/on-board sound device in Device Manager.
Diasble Startup items (Task Manager 'Startup' tab)

The idea is to eliminate any known causes for poor system performance overall.

 

Before you chase your tail too much. If you are comfortable opening the machine, reseat the RAM chips. it takes 2 minutes, and I cannot count how many times it has fixed weird performance issues. just saying.

 

While on the subject of RAM:

• 8GB is a bare minimum
• If RAM is 'Single Rank', your memory bandwidth is limited.
• If RAM is mismatched, random memory controller issues are more like than not to happen.
• Best to use 'Dual Rank' memory in groups of two if the motherboard supports it.

 

I own Scarlett 2i2 3rd gen, I think it was specified in the manual that you should use USB 2.0 port only for the interface. If you're using 3.0 maybe that's the problem (just saying)

 

usb will just transfer at the rate of the slowest cable or port. if the computer is either usb 3 or thunderbolt 3, it will supply data in and out to the computer faster than the usb 2.0 port of the 2i2 interface will allow. therefore, it is not creating the transfer bottleneck you suggest.

I had an 18i20 running the exact same way, and it was never a problem. I also ran it off a hub with a usb A cable sometimes, and that was never an issue either.

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2022

I didn't realise there were beta Focusrite drivers as they aren't mentioned on the downoad page so thanks @itisntreal for the tip - they seem very stable over a 6 hour session and latencymon reports crazy low figures (lower than the old 265.5 drivers).

Setting both the Windows power plan and the Nvidia to high performance modes has a massive effect reducing DPC latency on my system, I used to have pops and dropouts but now, if I ever have an issue it's really only when I inadvertently have Balanced mode set. So I've put two shortcuts on my taskbar for DAW Mode (i.e. a modified High Performance power plan) and Balanced Mode, so if I'm recording I can just click DAW mode and move on.

Bit tricky to set that up but there are good instructions here:
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/windows-music-dev/quickly-switching-your-power-plan-on-windows-10/

 

I did this with a batch on my Laptop:

Code:

@echo off

:: Start batch if bluescreen. Devices get re-activated
SCHTASKS /change /TN \Eigene\XenoAudioBatch /enable

:: High Performance Profile
powercfg -s 8334924e-2791-4fa8-b858-653b89261eb9

:: Kills processes and services
pskill.exe RestartOnCrash.exe
pskill.exe procexp64.exe
pskill.exe fancontrol.exe
start /min E:\Cloud\Audio\Doks\Windows\kill_apps.bat

:: Deactivate devices
:: Realtek High Defnition Audio onboard sound
::pnputil /disable-device "HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0298&SUBSYS_17AA224D&REV_1001\4&311BCC33&0&0001"
:: Microsoft ACPI-Kontrollmethodenkompatibler Akku
::pnputil /disable-device "ACPI\PNP0C0A\0"

:: Mute system sound
"E:\Cloud\Tools\Windows\NirSoft\SoundVolume\SoundVolumeView.exe" /Switch "{0.0.0.00000000}.{bc4b4eb6-1575-4b0a-8cf5-604065ecd181}|#%b{A9EF3FD9-4240-455E-A4D5-F2B3301887B2}|1%b#"

start "Bitwig" /high /wait /b "C:\Audio\Programme\Bitwig 4\Bitwig Studio.exe"

:: Re-activate devices
::pnputil /enable-device "HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0298&SUBSYS_17AA224D&REV_1001\4&311BCC33&0&0001"
::pnputil /enable-device "ACPI\PNP0C0A\0"

:: Un-mute system sound
"E:\Cloud\Tools\Windows\NirSoft\SoundVolume\SoundVolumeView.exe" /Switch "{0.0.0.00000000}.{bc4b4eb6-1575-4b0a-8cf5-604065ecd181}|#%b{A9EF3FD9-4240-455E-A4D5-F2B3301887B2}|1%b#"

:: Balanced Energy Profile
powercfg -s SCHEME_BALANCED

:: Starts processes and services
psservice.exe start "Cloud Station Drive VSS Service x64"
psservice.exe start RtkAudioService
psservice.exe start "Realtek Audio Service"
psservice.exe start SynTPEnhService
psservice.exe start "Lenovo Instant On"
psservice.exe start "Dolby DAX2 API Service"
psservice.exe start "Intel(R) Dynamic Application Loader Host Interface Service"
psservice.exe start "Intel(R) Graphics Command Center Service"
psservice.exe start "Cloud Station Drive VSS Service x64"

start "" /elevate "E:\Cloud\Tools\Windows\Restart on Crash\RestartOnCrash.exe"
::start "" "C:\Tools\Fancontrol\fancontrol.exe"
::start "" "E:\Cloud\Tools\Process Explorer\procexp64.exe" /t
::start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\EasyJoin\EasyJoin.exe" --start-minimized
start "" "E:\Cloud\Audio\Doks\Windows\EarTrumpet.lnk"
start "" "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\EasyResume.exe"
start "" "C:\Windows\System32\SynTPEnh.exe"
start "" "C:\Users\Cris\AppData\Local\CloudStation\CloudStation.app\bin\cloud-drive-ui.exe"
::start "" "C:\Tools\Lively Wallpaper\livelywpf.exe"
::start "" "C:\Optik\RoundedTB\RoundedTB.exe"
start "" "C:\Users\Cris\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\28017CharlesMilette.TranslucentTB_v826wp6bftszj\ttb.exe"
::start "" "C:\Users\Cris\AppData\Local\SidebarDiagnostics\SidebarDiagnostics.exe"


SCHTASKS /change /TN \Eigene\XenoAudioBatch /disable

::exit

:: Disable and enable network
:: netsh interface set interface "RUDEL" disable
:: netsh interface set interface "RUDEL" enable

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2022

Regardless of the CPU specs, this is really weird as both the OP and @No Avenger say.
I know for a fact DirectSound is by far the worst option.

 

You should always, 100% of the time, use the drivers that the manufacturer provides you for your interface.
Never, ever ever use MME/DirectX for anything if you can avoid it. It is truly the worst. Latency is ridiculous.

 

pretty old CPU with release date 2012. What is your motherboard? You probably have to update your bios to the latest, and after update:

Do this in bios:

• Disable "C States" in the BIOS (probably in CPU settings)
  
• don't turn on any power saving mode (very bad idea since your Interface needs power through USB)

In Windows do this:

• Set Power Plan to High Performance
• Set your Nvidia card to Prefer Maximum Performance

Since your audio interface need power through the USB port any saving mode is a bad idea. That C States thing in bios is probably a must since your CPU is old as hell. Also I agree on the statement that 8GB of RAM on Windows 10 is bare minimum. You should turn off absolutely any unnecessary program running in the background.
Have you looked at the task manager while running a project in Ableton? My guess is that both CPU and Ram are almost using 100%.
I usually don't recommend this but since you have old hardware running Windows 10 you should run a Speed up and Debloat Windows 10 script as shown here:

If you do all above maybe your audio interface will behave much better with the Focusrite drivers.

 

Last edited: Feb 7, 2022