At my wit's end with CPU spikes.

hey, just wanted to mention those registry programs you use....365 wise & ccleaner
they were useful programs in Windows7 and XP for keeping the registry in order...
i'd be very weary in running those types of programs.... cos once a registry issue begins as a result of using those programs... they will be near impossible to undo...
i havent used registry cleaners in a long time... thats a testament to the Windows10 os handling of the registry...
having 3rd party software poking around and re-ordering your registry is a issue just waiting to occur...

i view it like this...
unless something is majorly wrong in the OS and programs failing or getting BSOD's... where a fix requires you to manually change registry values... i wouldnt bother with letting a 3rd party mess with your registry... let windows handle it

 

Thank you to everyone who replied to this thread. I modified the 'balanced' power profile for my computer rather than using the 'performance' profile by setting the CPU minimum state at 40%. This seems to have solved most of the problems, I could set the minimum state at 50% if needed. I would seem that it spent most of its time at a very low power state and that whenever an intensive app such as a Native Instruments VSTi swung into action, the CPU jumped into overdrive to catch up with the demand which seems to have been the cause of CPU spikes and audio breakup.

 

CPU throttling is quite often of this kind of problems. CPU speed goes to the limits, but it may stay up there just for seconds. And then..... CPU clock must go too low (to cool CPU). And here comes the click. And after while CPU speed goes to the sky again for several seconds. And deep down later on.

Current Intels are very prone to it.

 

Throttling is based on cpu temperature in some machines so it slows your cpu speed down . It saves fans and batteries Good idea lol Think throttling can be turned off in the bios too. Also cubase might havee a setting to turn off plugins in stop mode, It should.

 

Cubase supports turning off plugins if they are not in use but only for vst3 plugins, as far as I know it's only possible with them, but that's maybe wrong.

Uwe

 

I would hope some programs have a single button to turn off all effect for easy comparison.

 

As far as I know you can do that in cubase. Per channel or all fx.

Uwe

 

how generally optimized is the computer? i had similar problems back when i first bought my native istruments interface, i think it ended up being the drivers that were the problem which they eventually fixed, but before i went through the whole rigamarole of troubleshooting possible windows bottlenecks to uninterrupted USB audio. like for instance setting windows to handle background processes better than programs

i wouldn't set the minimum that low. usually with intel, anything below 99% turns off turbo boost. once you have the heat situation no longer a problem, set it is as high as it will go, and don't give it any % to work with. its pretty well established that its the CPU changing clock rate that really slows things down, so one steady value is always preferable to +/-. i have two power plans, one set to full blast, one set to 90%

 

honestly, i bet its the USB drivers, or some random process causing too many page faults for the USB to keep up. there use to be a good audio performance system watcher that would tell you all that stuff but that was many years ago for windows 7

 

If page faults is the problém, more RAM might help, I guess.

What program was good audio performance watcher? I am still on Win7 and my systém is so, so. I am about to update to new one, but wait for AMD ZEN3 APU chips and small factor motherboards. I want to replace old notebook with something decently powerful, easily carriable and not ruining my wallet.
So, I need to survive for few more months.... And basic tuning might help. With comming Cremona Quartet my notebook scratches its head. :-DDDD

 

Latencymon is a good program to check what's going on with audio performance.

Uwe

 

Thanks Uwe.

 

yes, that was the one, good call!

 

man, i just got a brand new notebook with a decently powerful i7, now im wondering if i should have given AMD a closer look. but yeah, it was that latencymon program, which as it turns out works for windows 10 as well

 

I think both are fine with audio programs now you can't go wrong with either of them. I have ryzen in my main machine and Intel in my laptop.

Uwe

 

yeah so far it seems to work admirably. i went for the highest turbo boost speed i could find for an i7 in my price range (4.6ghz), which was paper thin lenovo. considered returing it for a gaming version with a slower clock rate before it arrived, but all in all i have no regrets

even my secondary, which is a ten year old laptop with an i7 seems to do the job just fine, which i think is further indication that OP's problem is probably not the processor

 

It may be CPU, mainly current Intels on steroids, if using inappropriate power management settings. Current Intels to compete with Ryzens go far behind sound technological limits..... So, they are prone to throttling.... But if that is/was cause of OPs problems is another question.

I experienced severe dropouts because of too low amount of RAM. Doubling amount of RAM (to 16 GB) made things almost OK even for relatively heavy projects. But I should have even more RAM for my projects, there is still pretty much memory swapping when using big Kontakt libraries. :-(

Looking forward to Ryzen APU 5700G (8C/16T, 3.8/4.6 GHz, 65 W - real 65W, not like Intel's that také up to 2-3 time more the paper specs). Easy to cool, may be put in lightweight small factor case. It will be 6x more powerfull comparing to my current setup (multicore), and about 3x more singlecore. Along with 64 GB of RAM and 2 TB SSD it should do for few years.

 

Lenovo is really good