Poor performance: Cubase SX

When I'm running audio kontrol 1 with cubase sx 3, the playback randomly stutters from time to time, tried all the latency timings with just about the same results. All my audio configs are set properly just like the manual says.

I was wondering if that could be related to my track's bpm, since I'm making some pretty fast frenchcore at 214bpm with a couple of vst's and plenty of effects running.

With my m-audio revolution 7.1 PCI (which is far from being a high-end interface btw), cubase runs flawlessly, no hiccups whatsoever. So right there this proves the problems is with the unit's hardware or software.

Am I the only one experiencing this?

 

Many users encoutered somehow the same problem. For instance, as far as I'm concerned I had to disable the dvd drive in order to get rig of this behavior. (I followed the steps described in the troubleshooting manual and it worked for me, i.e. I disabled devices one at a time tracing in the same time the latency cheker provided by thesycon).

But, once again! This doesn't explains for instance the fact that my DigiTech guitar workstation GNX3000 works better for audio streaming in ASIO mode without disabling anything. (this comparison was done using a large latency on both units.)

One more thing, I have to be honest and recognize that after disabling the dvd drive AK1 provides by far a better performance.

 

I have a fast and very stable latency (average 37 µs). My computer is super fast so the problem doesn't rely here.

I tried disabling devices like you suggested and I also disabled usb power saving just like the AK1's manual says and I still get the same hiccup and pitch changing playback within time to time, in cubase sx.

I tried playing my track at 180 bpm (was 214), no hiccups or any anomalies whatsoever. Hmmmm this thing won't flawlessly run high bpm track I guess. I have the latest firmware programmed inside of this unit running windows xp SP2 with all the latest drivers.

Although my m-audio rev. 7.1 will run very very fast bpm track's flawlessly, I guess that this just shows the AK1's bandwidth limitations. I mean it's a USB connection, you just cannot compare it's bandwidth to a PCI audio interface which is directly connected to your motherboard without passing through cables, I guess...

Does this make any sense to ya'll?

 

Oh and another weird thing with this unit: Whenever I do something outside cubase (let's say I play around with Reason ReWired) and I scroll in reason, the sound crackles a lot, i mean really, this is like terrible.

The sound simply crackles whenever I'm outside cubase doing some other stuff, while the music plays back. Never had this before with my trusty revolution 7.1. I tried several USB ports, I unplugged everything, just kept the bare minimum plugged in (keyboard and mouse) and I'm still having same issues.

For example, my track is playing in cubase, I click on my toolbar to open up an explorer window, right there as soon as I click, a crackles occurs.

Well into further testing, the glitches occur even at lower bpm so it's not bpm related

 

I have just recorded the playback of my AK1 and my m-audio revolution 7.1 since it's kinda hard to explain how my sound gets screwed. Note that everything is set to 48khz.

Listen closely.

http://www.shellshocked.ca/audio/AK1_output.mp3
http://www.shellshocked.ca/audio/M-audio_output.mp3

As you can hear, the Ak1 is really terrible, while the m-audio is crispy clear, without any glitches whatsoever.

 

I listened to about 20 seconds of each sample and I honestly couldn't detect any significant differences between the two. Are you certain the snippets you provided are from two different sources? To my ears they both sounded like garbled, disonant noise.

All that aside, you should have no trouble getting good performance from the AK1 on a fairly fast Desktop PC. (Laptop is another issue entirely) If you're having problems I would first eliminate system/hardware configuration issues; perhaps even BIOS or system chipset driver updates. I often recommend creating two separate hardware profiles in Windows (one normal, one for audio recording) and turning off unnecessary devices that might be creating conflicts or eating up resources.

 

Yes they are from 2 different sources and they sound different, no offense but I guess your earing is pretty bad. I tried everything in the troubleshooting, I have the latest chipset driver (nforce 9.53 for nforce 680I). All bios settings are correct too.

I also plugged in my back up hard drive and installed a fresh copy of windows xp pro to see if it had anything to do with the drivers/software installed, and the same glitches would happen even with a fresh copy.

As I mentioned earlier on, I disabled all devices except essentials devices, and the anomalies would still occur as often.

 

Hi Grafdude; I feel your pain. IMO the tempo of the track shouldn't make any difference to the audio reproduction. I have listened to your tracks and there is a difference between the two, the AK1 being dull in comparison.

Maybe worth a try but ASIO runs as a background service, so it maybe worth adjusting XP accordingly. If you do not know how to adjust the settings try this: Open Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance settings/Advanced/Processor Scheduling/Select: Background services.

Sorry if you have already done this, but it may help.

Good luck.

 

Hi Short Scope Boy,

Thanks for the feedback, but you have to listen carefully to both audio output's, yes the sound may sound a little bit more dull on the AK1 but that's not my actual problem. The problem is at the end of some beats, the kick gets like a high pitch shift for no reason and gets kinda out of sync, and the sound also crackles, especially at the start of the track (I did this crackling sound by purpose cause when I multitask with cubase that's what's up). But yes the m-audio beats the AK1 with no exception in my case.

So the problem is not the actual sound as a whole, it's at the end of beats, but not all of them sounds like that, they randomly do it from time to time.

Short Scope Boy, I don't know what you mean by adjusting the Asio driver, I don't have anything related to ASIO in my services nor my background tasks.

 

OK. Please goto SX3, click Devices(menu bar) and Device setup. Click on VST Audio Bay make sure you have Audio Kontrol 1 as your master ASIO driver.

 

Oh, yes its already on Audio Kontrol.

 

Back to the drawing board then mate

 

I think my only hope is the next firmware/driver update...

 

Wrong.

From the descriptions you're giving, it sounds more like a nVidia issue. nVidia chipsets with PCI-e graphics tend to have issues with crackles and audio because of the bandwidth taken up by the graphics I/O; google it and find out more about the issue than you really wanted to.

Why more prevalent with the AK 1? The combination of a steady stream from the USB ports and the stream from the graphics card.

The solution? Use a cheap graphics card; it'll use less bandwidth. It's what I do with my nVidia machines.

And, Short Scope Boy was right. ASIO is a background process as far as XP goes.

ew

 

Thanks for this critical info ewistrand, I will try the AK1 on my other rig:

Opteron 146 2.0ghz
2GB dual channel
dfi lan party ultra-d (nforce4)
radeon ax300 se (low-end pci-e video)
enermax noisetaker 485w

Will let ya'll know of the results.

 

but not every nforce seems to be crackling... my one works fine with cubase 4 (nforce 4) :S

 

Depends on your graphics card as well as a lot of other things. I've never had problems with my nF4 setups or my nF570 that's my main machine these days. However, I've always followed my own advice about graphics cards and system maintenance- that's probably a big part of the reason why.

ew

 

On my Opteron machine, I still get sound anomalies, but less often.

Too bad for some people with nforce boards, like me.

 

The problem is that PC specs are all different; NI can only do so much to ensure reliable performance. However, it is known that high end video/graphics cards can interfere with audio, hence the very careful selection and testing on high end machines, such as Carillion etc. The outcome being that most high end DAW’s will not fair well as a gaming machine and vice versa.

My concerns for the future are that Vista will exacerbate these issues; considering that Vista is geared towards multimedia and the fact that large amounts of RAM are required just to run it, and as standard high end hardware is required; this undoubtedly will interfere with processes such as ASIO etc.

Will Vista push us towards MAC?

 

No, I'd say stick with windows xp, I just received my copy of windows vista ultimate 64 bit and I'm quite dissapointed of it so far, it's slow, and I don't like the workflow, I'd say it's eye candy more than anything else.

Yes I guess the AK1 will not perform well on a gaming rig, which is too bad, I guess I'll have to stick with a PCI interface which I never had any problems with.