Audio crackling in ASIO is driving me up the wall.

[crashby]

Ever since I've upgraded to 7 there has been a problem with audio crackling in ASIO. Even with a large buffer there is audio crackling during playback. This was never a problem using Music Creator Touch. In fact loading songs created in 7 into Touch, plays back with no problems, although they are missing the new "effects", Max, Wide and Grit. These effects seem to cause problems too.

CPU never really goes much about 5%, but 7 is unusable, as to get any kind of audio stability requires maxing the buffers, but this messes latency big time.

I'm running a gaming laptop with Realtek HD. I've tried ASIO4All, Realtek native drivers, and even using an external USB sound device (a Line 6 guitarport).

Everything works fine with Music Creator Touch, but whatever method I use in 7, gives crackling audio.

Anyone else experience this problem?

[GibsonPro-Audio]

We're sorry you're running into this. First thing I would do is delete the existing MC7 audio config file.

First, set MC7 to asio then go to:

C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\Music Creator 7\

AUD.ini is the config file. You can safely delete this with MC7 closed, and It'll be recreated with new settings on launch.

Try that, but I'm sending you a friend request, we can go through additional troubleshooting via chat.

[opjose]

Make sure that MC7 is set to use ASIO4ALL.

Open the ASIO4ALL control panel.

Click on the wrench icon on the lower right.

On the latency slider at the bottom move the setting about 10% to the right hand side or so to increase the amount.

Save/Exit and try again.

Note Realtek drivers are notoriously IFFY.

Some versions of the drivers are much better than others.

Also many laptops and desktop computers come with "enhancements" that foul up DAW programs like MC7.

You are best off removing and disabling all enhancement software on your computer.

Turn off all equalization and other audio effects too.

Don't forget to permit the Realtek drivers to "share" access with other programs too.

[crashby]

Thanks for the tips. Upping the ASIO buffer size eliminates the pops but the latency is 60ms which is unusable for real time playing

I have no problems in Music Creator 6. Playback is flawless in that version with low latency.

I have an i7 5700 and cpu never goes above 10%.

The same issue occurs with my Guitarport, which has its own ASIO drivers.

Again, this has never been an issue with any previous versions of Cakewalk that I have used.

This is the first time I've had these sort of issues. I was using 6 Touch for months, and upgraded to 7 during a special offer.

[crashby]

Hmm, interestingly the issue appears to go away if I disable the SI-Bass Guitar. This plugin causes horrible clicks and pops.

It doesn't happen in the 6 version, but the 7 version version sounds better.

[opjose]

For real time playback you really have to go with a different audio device. Even an ASIO USB device will have sub 20ms latency.

The Realtek relies too much on the CPU, which in turn is very busy with everything else.

[GibsonPro-Audio]

Originally posted by crashby:

Hmm, interestingly the issue appears to go away if I disable the SI-Bass Guitar. This plugin causes horrible clicks and pops.

It doesn't happen in the 6 version, but the 7 version version sounds better.

Hmm, thanks for that tip of info. That's interesting because there's no difference between SI in MC6T vs MC7. Let's try resetting your audio config file:

Go to C:\ProgramData\Cakewalk\Music Creator 7\

With MC7 closed delete the AUD.ini file in this folder.

Then restart MC7 and test again.

[crashby]

That's odd, becuase the SI bass actually sounds better in 7 (crackling not withstanding).

Regarding the Realtek being CPU dependant, CPU use never goes much above 10%, and real time playback is not an issue in v6. Works flawlessly.

[opjose]

Yes CPU percentage utilization has nothing to do with this, though high utilization just makes things worst.

The CPU is very busy dealing with many things. It has to devote time to drive the D/A converters directly, as opposed to a dedicated audio card or device.

With the latter the CPU merely queues up audio output whenever it has a chance, and the audio device parts out the output at it's own speed completely independant of the CPU.

With the Realtek drivers that does not happen. The CPU must stop what it is doing to attend to audio output.

10% is actually quite high utlization and indicative of how hard the CPU is working just on the audio output. With a dedicated device, you'll typically see 1% dedicated to audio.

That is why latency is not such a big issue with dedicated devices. They handle the I/O without loading up the CPU..

[crashby]

Just an update in case any one else was having this issue.

Recently my Windows 10 updated to Anniversary Edition, which completely broke my laptop audio! After much faffing around I checked the laptop manufacturer (MSI) website which had newly released audio drivers released straight after the Anniversary Edition update.

I installed these drivers and this got the audio working on my laptop again, and I'm also happy to report that it completely eliminates the audio cracking and popping in Music Creator 7!

[GibsonPro-Audio]

Originally posted by crashby:

Just an update in case any one else was having this issue.

Recently my Windows 10 updated to Anniversary Edition, which completely broke my laptop audio! After much faffing around I checked the laptop manufacturer (MSI) website which had newly released audio drivers released straight after the Anniversary Edition update.

I installed these drivers and this got the audio working on my laptop again, and I'm also happy to report that it completely eliminates the audio cracking and popping in Music Creator 7!

Thanks for the update on this issue!

We've been having intermittent reports re: the Anniversary Edition, glad it worked out okay.

[crashby]

Sorry to bring this up again, but the problem never really went away and it's as bad as ever under Sonar Home Studio. However, I've now tied this down to the MAX MixStrip plugin. If I don't use this, then the audio popping is almost entirely eliminated. As soon as I enable MAX I get stutters, pops and crackles. Increasing ASIO latency helps but never really gets rid of it.

I'm working around by using Boost11, however this has the problem of being in the wrong place in the chain if I want to use it with gate. I know I can specify the MixStrip plugins to be Post or Pre FX, but it's all of them or none it would appear.

[crashby]

And no sooner that I post this, that using another Boost11 causes the popping and crackling. It appears then I can't use more than a few VSTs and FX without this happening. My CPU never goes above 15%

Back to the drawing board.

[GibsonPro-Audio]

Originally posted by crashby:

And no sooner that I post this, that using another Boost11 causes the popping and crackling. It appears then I can't use more than a few VSTs and FX without this happening. My CPU never goes above 15%

Back to the drawing board.

Crashby, send me a friend request and PM. I may be able to accommodate you with SONAR Home Studio. It had a whole host of audio updates, including the addition of WASAPI Shared and WASAPI exclusive that would far better with internal sound hardware than ASIO4ALL.

[crashby]

Hi Seth,

We are already friends on Steam. I also have SONAR Home Studio, and the problems are just as bad with that. I get varying degrees of success with each method by generally it goes like this.

I'm running an MSI GE62 2AF Apache Pro laptop with an i7, and 16GB RAM, also with SSD and HDD, OS on SSD, cakewalk on HDD. Win 10 64-bit

CPU never goes above 14-15% through all of this.

On a track with 6 VSTs, each using between 0-4 effects in SONAR Home Studio

1. WDM/KS - doesn't work at all. No audio at all.

2. ASIO w/ ASIO4All - works very well with low latency at first, until I start adding more effects and instruments. The MixStrip effects seem to cause the biggest problems especially MAX. I've also tried with a Line 6 Guitarport which has native ASIO drivers, and it's even worse.
Buffer size of 512 samples, works well with a few instruments, but rapidly declines with effects and instruments. Am able to get reasonably stable playback with 2048 samples and 20ms buffer offset, but this has really bad latency for realtime playing

3. WASAPI - Exclusive, unlistenable at 512 sample buffer and below. Higher buffers improve playback but latency deteriorates rapidly. At very high buffer size, tracks are all out of sync! Worse than ASIO4ALL

4 WASAPI - Shared. Seems fine at first, but as soon as other tracks start it stutters all over the place. Buffers are not adjustable in this mode. Worse than ASIO4ALL.

5 MME 32-bit - The best by far. Stutter free playback with 10 buffer playback queue and minimal buffer size. Effective latency is 90msec, which is too slow for realtime playing. I'm surprised this gave the best performance.

Thanks,

[GibsonPro-Audio]

Sorry, I have a couple hundred people in my list now, I didn't see you when I looked. Moving forward, let's focus all troubleshooting within SONAR Home Studio. That will be receiving a sizable maintenance release soon and if any fix is required, I want to try and make sure it gets in there.

First thing to check is make sure Home Studio didn't inherit bad configurations from MC7 and we try Native ASIO drivers.
1. Make sure SHS is closed.
2. Go to C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Cakewalk\SONAR Home Studio\
3. Then delete the AUD.ini file and the TTSSEQ.ini file.
4. Make sure ASIO4ALL is uninstalled
5. Make sure the Line6 Guitarport is installed and running with its native ASIO drivers.
6. Relaunch SHS, go to Edit > Preferences > Audio and set your driver mode to ASIO if it isn't.

That will remove any prior settings which could be impacting performance through your testing.

If that doesn't clear it. Have you run the latencymon tool yet? This may give us a hint technically what's going on. I've had ASUS motherboard monitor software impact my ability to record before, as well as video card utilities, so there's a chance something else is going on.
http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Also, if you can, go here: https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013196/Collecting-info-for-Cakewalk-Support

Can you grab a system info file like it describes and send it to me? If you PM me your e-mail I'll e-mail you a message that you can reply back to.