This problem started happening out of the blue 2 weeks ago. I did my usual practicing at home with my Scarlette 4i4 without any problems. When I went to my band rehearsal at my church and switched to Dante’s Virtual Sound Card, the sound would drop out at random. If I stopped Dante and restarted it, I would get the sound back, but all glitchty. If I restarted the Cantabile’s engine after restarting Dante, everything would be fine… for a while, then it would do it again. We assumed maybe it was a Dante problem that would be resolved on performance day (Sunday) when our whole system rebooted. Then, when warming up in the greenroom with my 4i4, it started doing the same thing. Sound would stop and I would have to power-cycle Cantabile to get it back. Same problem performing (3 sets) with Dante.
So I started trying to troubleshoot starting yesterday. Today (rehearsal day), I started having the same problems with my 4i4 practicing at home (different set). I messed with all sorts of settings. I think what solved my problem at home was doubling the buffer size and turning off the “Double Buffered Audio” tickbox that I’ve had on for years. I played the set several times without incident. Then at rehearsal, now running Dante, I had the same problems. I tried changing Dante settings and buffer sizes, etc. Nothing helped.
So, I need to figure out what’s changed. I’ve been using this same computer for a few years. A Dell G5 i7 with 32GB RAM, 1TB SD for the system, 2TB FireCuda for most of the content. I upgraded to Win 11 a couple of months ago and redid the whole system. I didn’t have any problems until last week. I need to nail this down before Sunday.
I’m posting links to the log.txt and log-previous.txt files, hopefully showing what might be making me lose what I’m guessing is the audio driver.
LOG: http://twistedtim.com/?p=3 http://twistedtim.com/?p=1431
TIA for your help. Might need @brad for this one!
brad
July 7, 2022, 4:26am
2
Have you tried swapping out any usb cables? You’d be shocked how often I hear of issues like this that turn out to be related to cables.
Worst case of random “weirdness” for me was a flaky PSU. You could also restore to a time when you knew there were no problems and see what happens if those files/restore points are available on your audio machine. Also suggest MEMTESTing the system overnight to see if anything shows up with RAM and CPU. Not sure about how to test the SSD.
AFAIK, Dante works via the Ethernet port, not a USB connected device, so if this happens both to Dante and to the Scarlett, a dodgy USB cable can be pretty much ruled out. Unless, of course, both the Ethernet and the USB cable are broken…
Overall, eliminating hardware components as a source of the problem by swapping out sound card and USB / Ethernet cables (also audio cables) is a good first step. If the problem persists across all hardware and cabling configurations, this points to an issue inside your laptop - that’s when the serious dive down the rabbit hole begins…
Had a quick look at the logs - the first one shows that the system isn’t able to initialize the Dante audio driver, so either it’s blocked by another app or not connected (Dante virtual sound card not started?). Not much beyond that.
The previous log seems to show a functioning Dante connection, nothing that signals issues to me. The only thing beyond that is that you seem to have the “balanced” power plan activated. This isn’t ideal for audio applications, since in balanced mode, the OS tries to save energy by throttling the CPU, shutting down some services when they aren’t needed, etc. For audio applications, you should go to a “maximum performance” mode - and of course apply Brad’s “glitch free ” suggestions
Cheers,
Torsten
2 Likes
Yeah, each of my 3 setups (home, greenroom, stage) have different USB cables. I ruled out the Ethernet cable since it was happening to my 2 4i4s as well. It’s definitely the computer. I just hope it’s not a hardware problem. I can’t really afford a new laptop right now.
I’m pretty sure I adjusted the balanced power plan to @brad 's suggestions in Glitch Free, but I’ll double check.
A big piece of the puzzle I forgot to mention is that when the sound would stop with the 4i4, when I cycled the Cantabile engine sometimes what I was playing would play by itself, like it was caught in a buffer somewhere and couldn’t get out until I cycled the engine. That’s probably a big clue. Sorry I forget to mention it. Thanks for everyone’s help.
Synchrony:
A big piece of the puzzle I forgot to mention is that when the sound would stop with the 4i4, when I cycled the Cantabile engine sometimes what I was playing would play by itself, like it was caught in a buffer somewhere and couldn’t get out until I cycled the engine.
That sounds pretty funky - I’d suggest re-installing all your audio hardware and ASIO drivers with the most current version. Feels like something’s messed up with your audio drivers.
Last resort would be a complete clean re-install of Windows and your software…
I ran latency monitor and DPC latency checker. They aren’t happy with my system. I’m trying to track down problem drivers. I’m running Microsoft Security Scanner and it’s found 5 infected files so far (I use Webroot, but I guess it missed these). I’m going to keep trying to fix it without a clean install.
One other thing that started a couple of weeks ago is that it’s taking a long time to boot down. The screen goes blank, but the power stays on for almost 2 minutes.
Man, I’d love to buy an i9 with 64GB of RAM. Go fund me page? J/K
ugh, that doesn’t sound good. If you are sure you know what you are doing, repairing is worth a try, but a virus-corrupted system is a challenge.
The long time to boot down can have multiple reasons - malware, conflicting drivers, some background software not terminating correctly, etc… Overall, it can be an indicator for a system that is somewhat clogged up by all the installs that accumulate over the years. You wrote that you had been running the system for some years before upgrading to Win 11 - I guess that also wasn’t a clean re-install, but a “dirty” upgrade - correct?
So if you can free up a couple of days to do a clean install from the ground up, that could be a good investment…
BTW: I’ve completely gone off third-party antivirus solutions - I’ve found that Microsoft Defender is good enough for the “plain vanilla” antivirus tasks (I don’t need all the fancy safe-browsing, tune-up, parental control etc bells & whistles), plus it is less of a drain on system resources than other solutions. Also, other AV solution are often pretty intrusive in some operating system processes, which may create its own issues, while Defender, being built by Microsoft, tends to do things somewhat more smoothly…
Cheers,
Torsten
2 Likes
Torsten:
BTW: I’ve completely gone off third-party antivirus solutions - I’ve found that Microsoft Defender is good enough for the “plain vanilla” antivirus tasks (I don’t need all the fancy safe-browsing, tune-up, parental control etc bells & whistles), plus it is less of a drain on system resources than other solutions.
Agree that Microsoft Defender does good job. Would be interested if you exclude certain folders from it’s scanning.
1 Like
Not currently - I just pretty much leave it as is.
So I finished a totally clean install of my system and programs. I did all the tweaks. I initially had the exact same problem as before – Sound stops. If I cycle the engine, what I was playing would then play by itself (this is with my Focusrite 4i4 at home). So I upped the buffer size and things seemed to be going okay. Then Cantabile just crashed. Here’s the end of the log file:
01858895 247831 [13956:2]: Song loading ‘D:\Defaults\Documents\Cantabile\Worship Set.cantabileSong’#11 ) - Stopping…#11 ) - Stopped#50 ) - Loading plugin C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\Omnisphere.vst3 - 84e8de5f-9255-2222-96fa-e4133c935a18#50 ) - Audio bus counts: 0 in 9 out#98 Plugin [Omnisphere 2] attaching#50 ) - Starting…#50 ) - Started
Any ideas? I’m pretty much out of time for tomorrow. Since I use basically 2 or 3 of everything except my laptop, I’m starting to think it’s laptop hardware. It’s almost 4 years old but I only use it about 15-20/hours a week. Could be the FireCuda drive… I just don’t know.
I just tried playing from where I left off and crashed right away again. It’s a part of a song where I’m playing faster (if that’s any indication). This is beginning and end of the log. Maybe it will help to see the startup:
00000086 86 [08872:2]: ===============================================================#1 InputPortProvider [InputPort] attaching#2 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] attaching#2 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] detaching#1 InputPortProvider [InputPort] detaching#3 InputPortProvider [InputPort] attaching#4 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] attaching#0 ‘Left’ mapped to driver channel #0 ‘Input 1’#1 ‘Right’ mapped to driver channel #1 ‘Input 2’#0 ‘Left’ mapped to driver channel #0 ‘Output 1’#1 ‘Right’ mapped to driver channel #1 ‘Output 2’#0 ‘Signal’ mapped to driver channel #0 ‘Output 1’#0 ‘Left’ enabled channel index = 0#1 ‘Right’ enabled channel index = 1#0 ‘Left’ enabled channel index = 0#1 ‘Right’ enabled channel index = 1#0 ‘Signal’ enabled channel index = 0#0 - Input 1 - Enabled#1 - Input 2 - Enabled#2 - Input 3 - Disabled#3 - Input 4 - Disabled#4 - Loop 1 - Disabled#5 - Loop 2 - Disabled#0 - Output 1 - Enabled#1 - Output 2 - Enabled#2 - Output 3 - Disabled#3 - Output 4 - Disabled#5 InputPortProvider [InputPort] attaching#6 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] attaching#6 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] detaching#5 InputPortProvider [InputPort] detaching#7 InputPortProvider [InputPort] attaching#8 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] attaching#9 RackHost [Glorious Day] attaching#10 RackHost [This Is My Song] attaching#11 InputPortProvider [InputPort] attaching#12 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] attaching#12 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] detaching#11 InputPortProvider [InputPort] detaching#13 InputPortProvider [InputPort] attaching#14 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] attaching#15 RackHost [Fill This Place] attaching#16 RackHost [Hallelujah For The Cross] attaching#17 RackHost [Ever Be] attaching#18 InputPortProvider [InputPort] attaching#19 OutputPortProvider [OutputPort] attaching
01015099 5489 [08872:2]: State loading ‘Hallelujah For The Cross’ for ‘Worship Set’
Apologies for multiple posts. Feeling desperate. I’ve nailed down the crash to Triton needing to be reinstalled. I’ll have to reinstall all of my Korg VSTs. Onward…
Solution:
ASUS ROG 2022 Model:
$3000
