CPU or RAM/DFD problem?

[andengras]

Hi.
I keep getting what seems to be CPU related problems, but since I am new to sampling I don't know for sure. Any advice on this will be deeply appreciated!

Two problems occur more or less together. First, during playback I keep getting these sounds that resemble what you hear if a guitar jack plug is held half way into the socket of the instrument and/or amplifier. Terrible "scratching" sounds. Second, also during playback, the various TX-programs I am running leave out sounds/waves/notes here and there. Also for audio mixdowns individual sounds are left out. It seems that the higher the MIDI note density (more instruments playing at the same time, shorter notes), the more notes are left out.

I notice that some of the waves I've mapped out in my programs are played back in RAM mode, some in DFD (although they were dropped in the same region and group simultaneously.

RAM DFD.jpg

I am running TX16Wx (3.0.11 5054.945) as a VST instrument plugin in Cubase AI 7 on an old PC (Intel Core i5-3450 CPU, 3.10GHz, 8 GB RAM, x64 bits, 170 GB free storage).

EDIT: I've tried increasing the DFD buffer from 4096 to 16.384, and it might have improved these issues somewhat, but not nearly all of it.

[elcallio]

While the machine is not super fast, and even with a spinning disk, it should be enough to drive quite a heavy workload. Can you provide the samples and the mapping program so I can analyze its performance? You might have a just legitimate overload here. But might be some real code issue.
You can also try to set all regions to RAM and decreasing playback quality to "normal" and see how you performance is.

[andengras]

How do I provide you with the samples and mapping program?
I have five VST instruments (drum kit, bass guitar, organ, piano and sax). A total of 3911 .wav files or 2747 MB.

How can I switch from DFD to RAM in one batch operation? It will take three days to click through each individual sample.

BTW: My Yamaha Steinberg USB Driver was set to 512 samples which gave input/output latencies of 16.145 / 19.116 msec.
I tried it at both 128 and 2048 samples (=50-54 msec!), 128 increased the CPU noise even more, while 2048 made it better bot still not good enough.

[elcallio]

To change all regions in a group, just select all in the region list, then click-hold the DFD/RAM selector for one, the menu will open. Pick RAM and all the selected groups will change.

I'd suggest isolating the issue to one or two instruments that cause playback issues and zipping it/them (plus samples) up and putting on for example http://wetransfer.com/ (seems to be all the rage lately).

Changing buffer sizes mainly address issues with processing overhead (i.e. stuff needed to be done once per block). Both 512 and 256 should be quite fine normally for TX. However, it also has impact on your DAW and transfer to the sound card. So if you have a slow computer or bus, low buffer settings will kill data rate to the DAC. But while old, your CPU should not have any real issues here.

[andengras]

For my drum kit, setting all regions to RAM actually worsened the situation. So I tried setting all to DFD, but for a few regions it proved impossible to change from RAM, it just bounces back immediately.

[audiojunkie]

While the machine is not super fast, and even with a spinning disk, it should be enough to drive quite a heavy workload. Can you provide the samples and the mapping program so I can analyze its performance? You might have a just legitimate overload here. But might be some real code issue.
You can also try to set all regions to RAM and decreasing playback quality to "normal" and see how you performance is.

I experience this issue as well, even with the DFD buffer maximized. I open Reaper's CPU/RAM/HDD usage meter, and everything is very low (meaning that I have lots of resources). LinuxSampler runs the same SFZ that I use more smoothly, as does Sforzando. I suspect that it may be an issue where TX16Wx needs a little "tuning" to run more efficiently. I haven't had time to dig into it further, but I wanted to mention that I'm experiencing the issue as well. Also, increasing the DFD buffer, like the original poster, helps but does not completely eliminate the issue.

[andengras]

Through various tweeks, I'm now rid of all CPU-noise (hissing, buzzing, scratching etc), but the problem with notes NOT playing is still absolutely evident. It sounds a bit like pressing FFW on a CD player, just skipping through the music, hearing random notes here and there.

The load is way down:

VST performance.jpg

[elcallio]

I will repeat: Please send a copy of the programs/project, then I might be able to do more than make educated guesses.

[andengras]

Will do.

[elcallio]

No luck reproing this unfortunately. I loaded the saxophone program you sent, and while being almost comically overly multisampled, it plays back flawlessly for me, both set to RAM or DFD (even from a spinning USB disk) at DAW buffers of 256. In fact, on an 2.6GHz i7 from ~2015 I can run it playing chords on offline 2 quality and only tax a single CPU ~20%. I.e. I cannot see any obvious reason why this program would cause any hickups on even a slightly slower (and your CPU is only marginally poorer in performance, and even has higher CPU clock so...) machine.

Are you sure this program in its raw form is what caused the "FFW" noises you mention? You did not set up any modulation that maybe behaves in an unexpected way?

The "FFW noise" thing sounds a little like you are getting a processing stall, i.e. a single/several DSP blocks take way to much time and get "flushed" to the sound card -> jumble. How is your free memory when running the sampler? Is any other processes conflicting? (Should affect any other instrument, though samplers are of course more sensitive to memory/cache overloads).

It could be a cubase issue also. I don't have AI 7 to test, but I can maybe check on some machines again with v8. Are you running the VST2 or VST3 plug-in? (Not sure which 7 supports).

[elcallio]

Small update: Installed and tested the program on Cubase 8. It works fine for me, but I did notice some really weird CPU spikes in the cubase VST perf meter. Some googling suggested that running your machine in "balanced" power mode causes weird CPU behaviour for cubase (thank you steinberg). Indeed, setting my machine to "performance" did put the cpu meter back in a nice, flat ~3% load. Might be worth testing.

Or upgrade to REAPER. Not only does it perform much better, it is also much harder to use!

[andengras]

If by VST2 or VST3 you mean which version of TX16Wx, I am on version 3.0.11 5054.945.

Now, I got this error on start up as well (did get that when these problems started, but haven't seen the message in a while and been able to take a screen shot):

warning.jpg

Perhaps it's related to this issue?

Except for a web browser, I am not running any applications on my computer, besides Cubase. During playback, I seem to be using around 25% of the processor, 85% of RAM and 50-ish (36 - 65%) of HD.

(When not playing, the stats are down to 10% of processor power, 81% of RAM and 5% of HD/C:)

minne.jpg

[elcallio]

If by VST2 or VST3 you mean which version of TX16Wx, I am on version 3.0.11 5054.945.

No, I mean if you are using the VST 2 or VST 3 plugin. They are two different standards.
The TX installer installs both, but lets assume for now that you are using the VST2 version.

Now, I got this error on start up as well (did get that when these problems started, but haven't seen the message in a while and been able to take a screen shot):

warning.jpg

Perhaps it's related to this issue?

Not as such, though thank you for spotting this.

However, this would indicate that you have set the quality mode on your program slot to something other than default. This might be to much for your CPU if there are a lot of other things as well. Try setting it to "normal" or any other low setting.

Except for a web browser, I am not running any applications on my computer, besides Cubase. During playback, I seem to be using around 25% of the processor, 85% of RAM and 50-ish (36 - 65%) of HD.

(When not playing, the stats are down to 10% of processor power, 81% of RAM and 5% of HD/C:)


minne.jpg

Sounds about normal. But again, you could try to revisit your windows power options as Cubase apparently has issues with CPU throttling (dynamic frequency changes).

[andengras]

Small update: Installed and tested the program on Cubase 8. It works fine for me, but I did notice some really weird CPU spikes in the cubase VST perf meter. Some googling suggested that running your machine in "balanced" power mode causes weird CPU behaviour for cubase (thank you steinberg). Indeed, setting my machine to "performance" did put the cpu meter back in a nice, flat ~3% load. Might be worth testing.

Or upgrade to REAPER. Not only does it perform much better, it is also much harder to use!

I missed this reply. Will check out my power settings today, and see if that helps.

[andengras]

Maybe this solves it:
(...) the latest Yamaha Steinberg USB driver for Windows (...) version 1.10.1. (...) resolves an audio drop-out issue that could occur in some cases.

https://www.steinberg.net/en/newsandeve ... SHA&lan=EN

...Or this:
version 1.10.3 resolves an issue in which noise might occur when the ASIO buffer size was set too small.

https://www.steinberg.net/en/newsandeve ... -4932.html