Recently I’ve had some challenges with glitching, and I think I’ve identified a specific plug in as the culprit, but:
a. it’s taken a lot of time and guesswork
b. I’d like to confirm that the plug in is indeed the cause of the issue
I used to have issues like this when I pre-loaded a large set, but it’s happening more now - even when I’m not preloading.
I’d appreciate any guidance.
Pat
Use a ‘binary chop’ method for narrowing down a problem.
Begin by removing half of the plug-ins from your plug-in folder, and store them in a temporary location. If the problem persists, then remove half of the remaining plug-ins. Repeat this until the problem goes away; when it does you know that the culprit is in the last few plug-ins you removed, so remove all plug-ins that are still active and re-instate the last ones removed. Check that the problem is again active, then begin removing half by half again…
By doing the above you will reach the cause of trouble as efficiently as possible.
Thank you, that’s kind of how I figured out it’s the Arturia Jupiter plug in, but there are some other things you mentioned that should help pare it down more and confirm the problem.
In my case, I simply muted the other plug ins but didn’t delete them. After reading your post I thought about it more and it could be that the Jupiter is just the recipient of the starvation (e.g., another plug is starving it and the jupiter is showing the symptoms, but isn’t the root cause).
I’ll do some more work on this, then reinstantiate the plug in (or assemble the songs from scratch). Recently in another “job” I had an issue where some code stopped working, and I had to delete the parent configuration and create a new one to get it back to stable.
Ran the Profiler and have more detail now:
Details:
Running build 4220.
The song file only has two linked racks with one plug in each (Arturia Piano V3 and Suitase Rhodes plug in).
I thought it might be the Arturia Jupiter, but it’s happening on other plug ins.
Plug ins are up to date and authorized.
Here are some screen shots of the profiler output. I can upload the profiler files if that helps at all. Note that if You try to load them directly (without renaming) the forum blocks them (though they’ll take other .cantabile files.
Just an idea…try 512 buffers, just for the hell of it.
Tried both 512 and 1024, and still have the crackling issue. While the output shows that plug in processing it is pretty saturated, I’m starting to think it’s something else…
I’ve also:
Turned off wifi (a huge culprit) but am connected with a wired connection.
Closed other apps
The journey continues - Good thing tonights gig is “mostly” jazz so it’s piano, rhodes, etc. and I can use the MOXF for those sounds. Only 4 or 5 songs really require Cantabile.
Are the Arturia plugs new to your rig? They are obviously the hogs from your profiler pics. Both the Stage and the regular piano. It points to a disk streaming issue if other users don’t get big spikes with Arturia piano plugins.
Do you have them @Corky or @The_Elf so we had a baseline resource idea about the Arturia plugs Pat is using?
Just to be sure, have all the typical windows settings been optimized for Audio? Follow GlitchFree suggestions? You may have something hidden in Windows. Plus, if your audio PC is connected to internet, Windows will update and change settings unbeknownst to you.
My list:
Power Management
Switch to High Performance
“Never” turn off display
“Never” turn off Hard disk (enter 0)
Minimum Processor state is 100%
“Pause” Slide Show
“Disabled” USB selective Suspend
“Off” PCI Express Link State Power Management
“Never” turn off display (enter 0) - checking on above action
“Never” sleep or hibernate
Set power buttons and lid as desired
Device Manager
Set all USB Roots, Hubs, etc. to not allow computer to turn off
Hard Drive
Disable indexing
Disable compression
Screen Saver
Set to None
Visual
Disable Themes
Adjust appearance for “Best Performance”
Adjust performance for “Background Services”
Core Parking
Regedit
Find “dec35c318583”
Change “Attribute” to zero(0)
May be several instances in Registry
Now a new setting will appear in Power Options for Core Parking
Set to 100%
Scheduled Tasks
Task Scheduler
Disable or move to non-performance time block
Page File Settings
Custom Page File
Set to 1.5 x RAM
Windows Update
Turn off
Windows Audio
Turn off System Sounds
Disable non-professional Audio Drivers
Disable Start-up Apps
Open Settings, Apps, Startup
Sort by Startup Impact
Turn off what is not needed
Disable Relaunch apps on start-up
Open Settings, Sign-in Options
OFF slide: Automatically reopen apps after update or restart
Disable background Apps
Open Settings, Privacy, Background apps
Turn off what is not needed (or turn them all off!)
Disable Transparency Effects
Open Settings, Personalization, Colors
Turn off transparency effects
Check Hard Disk Storage
Open Settings, System, Storage
Delete Temporary Files as possible
I stopped using Arturia plugs a few years ago because of the resource hogs they were. I understood it was their graphics causing the hog problem. At the time, there were many lean alternatives available.
But, that was before larger RAM and SSDs. I still have an account with them, and will try a demo, if available, and see if they reduced the graphic load recently. I know a lot of customers were angry. I still use Analog Lab, but there are no huge graphics or problems.
I have the whole Arturia package and don’t experience any problems with them.
And I’ve never done any of the ‘glitch free’ stuff above, with any of my PCs - oh, apart from system sounds.
@dave_dore Thanks for looping in the folks.
@easteelreath Working through the settings again now. I found one thing that changed (the flag for the core parking =1 instead of 0. I changed it (and it probably was a windows update at some point that had reversed my earlier setting of 0 to1… who knows when). I’m usually pretty cautious about changing anything close to gig dates, and don’t even look unless there’s a problem. Maybe I should set a reminder to “Audit” the GlitchFree settings every month or so.
@Corky I don’t show any of the interfaces when I’m playing so I don’t imagine the UX issue would be a problem. I do use the UX extensively when programming, but honestly this issue has not come up while the UX is open (done programming these songs for now and just messing with the volumes, etc. in Cantabile).
@The_Elf I’ve had little problem with Arturia stuff so far as well - this kind of popped up recently. That’s not to say others have been problems (Omnisphere for one), but I’m moving away from that plugin as much as possible, and I did remove it from all of the songs that I was having the glitching issue with (but it didn’t really fix the problem).
I have a rehearsal a bit later today when I’ll have my full setup happening, and I’ll update the thread (all of it) at that point.
The rehearsal today went well with a a lighter set of songs today.
I’m thinking it was either the core parking or the page file size, but… I won’t know for sure why those changed and when…
I’ll put it through some deeper testing later in the week to confirm that it’s doing better.
I’ll update the thread when I can get a clearer picture of whether or not the changes today work longer term. .
There are some schools of thought on this forum to let Windows manage page file size as typically new Audio PCs have massive amounts of RAM.
Yes, it’s always been a conflict in the audio world and it’s even more contentious thanks to more RAM and faster drives (SSD’s).
Having worked on Windows performance for a few years, a lot of the page file usage is misunderstood and you have to experiement with it for a while to see what works best for your apps, your system, your equipment, your scenarios. There were some cases where - with enough RAM - a page file was a hinderence to the scenario, but those were few and far between… much of the time the page file is perfect for background processes and data that is rarely needed “real time.”
