30% is not normal and can't think of anything in the wallpaper that would impact the system process. It seems well beyond the scope of what a webwallpaper should be able to impact.

My first bet would be if it happens again to open the resource monitor, go to the disk tab, add a checkmark before system to search for the files its accessing and seeing what it might be doing. It might give some indication where to start searching for this problem. Might not, but i think it would be worth a try. High usage of the system process could also indicate driver problems or many other issues.

I would also be curious if any other my other audio wallpapers, or if any other audio wallpaper and/or webwallpapers have the same problem.

So I've tried a couple of other audio wallpapers from WPE and so far the only one that does it is this.

Your suggestion does show that system is constantly accessing the C: drive, however I'm not sure what that would mean for my system. The issue only arises when running this wallpaper. I REALLY want to use this.

Is there a way that I can send you system logs or something? I think you would probably have a much easier time sorting the issue than I. I'm a hardware guy. Not really software.

I should also add that it happens constantly while your wallpaper is applied. Not just sometimes.

I tried a couple of your other wallpapers and this is the only one that causes high CPU usage on the system.

I've found more information!

It seems that when I apply your wallpaper, it also causes System to use ~8% GPU. While when I apply another wallpaper it says that wallpaper32.exe is using X% GPU

Really weird. Are you using the default settings of the wallpaper? Are you using background images ( in the wallpapers own settings that is )? Does it also happen if you play audio, or only if you don't have audio playing?

I can try some stuff over the weekend to see if I can reproduce anything, but my hopes are not high as I really expect it to be system specific. I even tested the performance on a 10 year old AMD, half the cpu power you have, before publishing it. So that 30% is very abnormal.

Nope. Completely unmodified. I'm going to uninstall and re-install the wallpaper to see if that does anything.

No background image used at all.

It happens all the time. Audio playing or not.

Here's another data point for you. When I have it applied as my background, it's choppy and slow. When using the window preview, it's smooth.

While I'm using the window preview "System" is using ~16% GPU and "wallpaper32.exe" is using ~10% (presumably because of the other wallpaper that's currently applied. BUT System is on'y using about 3% in this preview mode instead.

Is there a more thorough way that I can uninstall and re-install your web theme? Maybe is there a copy of the files that I can delete from my folder and replace?

More updates. It seems that it only works well in single display mode. All other times it literally makes my computer chug.

I can't seem to really pinpoint any problems with the wallpaper. The GPU usage could be normal, 8% doesn't seem extreme. 30% on the cpu does though. With default settings it should be less than 5% on your cpu I think.

I reposted your question on the forums in the hope someone might have a clue. You can see that post here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/431960/discussions/1/2632849318061704818/

Thank you for your help Squee. Please let me know if there's any more information/anythigng that you'd think may help.