cubase audio dropout problems

[s34nsm411]

i just got a new pc and after installing all my stuff back on it, in cubase the audio keeps dropping out at random times on random channels it seems...

like for example if i play through a mix within like 10 seconds either the guitar or drums or vocals or something will get choppy while everything else plays fine, and if i look at the bus for that group it appears the meters jump up and down even though i will be hearing no audio

normally this wouldnt be a huge problem and i would chalk it up to me having too many plugins at once, but unfortunately this issue prints the coppyness to track when i do an audio mixdown, rendering my mixes unusable which is killing me right now]

if anyone had any helpful info i would greatly appreciate it

 

[s34nsm411]

heres a mixdown of something im trying to work on... this is the direct audio mixdown from cubase and its pretty much just what it sounds like if you try to play through the song in cubase

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=635157
"cubase problem"

 

[s34nsm411]

after playing around with it more, i found out that if i disable a lot of plugins and listen to the song, it makes it through the whole way without any of the channels cutting out at all.

but on my old system when it started to get bogged down with plugins it would atleast be able to create a mixdown without the skipping in it. is there anything i can do to get that sort of situation back?

 

[Mutant]

More details (all hardware components, os, cubase version, plugins used, sample rate) please if you want someone to help you !

 

[s34nsm411]

good idea


right now im on winxp pro 32bit edition with sp2
intel core2duo 2.4ghz
gigabyte 965p-ds3 motherboard
4gigs ddr2 800
sound blaster live soundcard (same one i had on old system when everything worked fine, the onboard hdaudio is doing the same thing also)

using cubase 3.1.1 at 44.1, 24bit with mostly waves/voxengo stuff

 

[Mutant]

sound blaster live soundcard

With kxdrivers installed ?
Or maybe those crappy creative drivers ?

 

[s34nsm411]

i was using the crappy default ones... installed the ones you linked too though. it might have made it slightly better but not that noticible... thanks for the suggestion though looks like it atleast made the latency lower


edit: playing around with it, i found out that if i put the latency as low as it goes in the kx drivers control panel, it makes lots of pops in the audio playback, but the dropouts im used to hearing are just as consistant and sound the same as they are at a high latency

 

[Deaf Ear]

What hard drive are you using? I've seen this problem happen with disk cache dropouts. You are using one drive for the OS and programs, and another one for the audio right?

 

[s34nsm411]

What hard drive are you using? I've seen this problem happen with disk cache dropouts. You are using one drive for the OS and programs, and another one for the audio right?

right now i have 1 internal and one external hd, i usually keep all my mixes on the external and install my programs on the internal... i already tried copying the project folder to the internal one and opening the project from there, but the same problem is still there

 

[Brett - K A L I S I A]

Increase your latency

 

[Mutant]

Is this problem only present when you are using cubase or in other hosts/sequencers too ?

 

[Mutant]

Increase your latency

He said:

but the dropouts im used to hearing are just as consistant and sound the same as they are at a high latency

 

[s34nsm411]

Increase your latency

tried it with interesting results, like it said, when its as low as it goes there is lots of popping, but the audio dropouts that are my problem are still there, and they remain the same at any latency setting

 

[Mutant]

Is this problem only present when you are using cubase or in other hosts/sequencers too ?

?????

 

[s34nsm411]

?????

sorry i missed that...

the only other thing ive tried is nuendo, and it has the exact same problem

i dont have any other sequencers to try though

 

[Mutant]

i dont have any other sequencers to try though

http://www.reaper.fm/ <- cubase killer if you don't need advanced MIDI (IMHO)

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/index.php

http://www.mutools.com/products.html

http://www.angryredplanet.com/sequitur/

 

[s34nsm411]

well, it would be hard to say anyway since im trying to bounce down a fully mixed project with lots of plugins and stuff that would take a long time to set up in another sequencer

ive noticed that the dropouts go away when i turn all the plugins off so computer load seems to have something to do with it

on my old system though, when plugins would start to bog down the system it would sort of lag, not have random dropouts. and no mater how many plugins i had on my old system i could still make a mixdown that would sound perfect, which is what im trying to achieve now

 

[Mutant]

that would take a long time to set up in another sequencer

Well if you dont care enough to force yourself to do it...
At least you would know that it is not your new hardware's fault.

 

[Deaf Ear]

If reaper can read OMF files, it would take two minutes. It sounds to me like a glitch in one of your plugins though. Either that, or bad ram, or a bad driver on whatever is running that external drive. (but you say even from a different drive you have the same problem)

 

[kev]

Your cpu & RAM are great, so its not that. I was freaked out last year, as i was using an old riva TNT GFX card, i swapped it at Christmas for a geforce and my pops and clicks went ( when i used to use the scroll bars on the side of the screen it was using like 100&#37; cpu). You're not running an ancient gfx card by any chance?