Voicemeeter Banana, iTrack Solo, Cantabile 3 inserts

Cantabile
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Hi everyone, I’m a new user (non-musician) but a YouTube creator, I’ll try to be as brief as I can so I don’t rant and rant.

My Setup
Self-assembled Desktop PC Core i5 16GB, RAM 128 SSD System drive, iTrack Solo with ASIO Driver - old model - setup @ 44.1kHz, 256 Latency, cheap dynamic Mic connected to XLR on the iTrack, some iZotope RX 7 and Waves plugins (RX 7 Voice Denoise, Scheps Omni as Noise Gate and RX7 DeReverb) I have Voicemeeter Potato and i use teh ASIO Voicemeeter Potatio Input on Cantabile 3 64bit. this are the only three plugins I load before audio gets clipping and chopping.

My issue is, if I start adding plugins to cantabile just one, latency is acceptable, but after I add three, I can’t monitor myself and after that crackles, clicks and all sorts of horrible noises start to appear.

I’ve optimized my PC as per Brad’s book, but after all that i get random artifacts and all of the aforementioned noises.

I mainly do Camtasia Recordings, i try to close Dropbox (total hog) and Firefox #2 hog, I can’t hear how my sound is being recorded so if noises appear I can’t notice.

I love Cantabile, I’m using the Lite version, because that’s what I see fits my needs, also Brad tried to work me through some debugging but he says it’s probably Voicemeeter’s fault, (tried posting to their community with no luck).

Finally, I’ve also tried Jack Audio Router with Synchronous Audio Router but that stuff really gets messy so I’m now on a fresh Windows 10 x64 install with no muc trash installed.

any ideas, suggestions you can give me.

Thanks

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With Voicemeeter, you really need to tie it into a professional ASIO USB interface to get the best performance from it. It will take on the ASIO buffer settings established by the hardware’s ASIO driver. Even a Focusrite 2i2 will be a vast improvement over trying to get good performance from the WDM/KS interface through the Voicemeeter “virtual ASIO” interface. Time to pony up the bucks and get a hardware piece.

I did similar live performances for a year using Voicemeeter, Cantabile and OBS on YouTube daily, so it can be done glitch-free, but you’ll definitely need that hardware piece.

Terry

2 Likes
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Oh wait - I missed a point in your post where you mentioned using the iTrack Solo with ASIO Driver. Are you setting Voicemeeter’s A1 output to point specifically to the ASIO iTrack Solo output? Usually it is the one at the very bottom. That action should improve things massively.

Terry

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Hey there Tony,

I knew that if someone was to answer. it was going t be you, you seem to be quite an expert here and yeah, I saw your video on the live performance thing done with Cantabile and VM, you even answered some question over there. I came here because Brad’s advice to ask the community.

I started with my core i5, 8Gig RAM Asus laptop but glitches and head aches were intolerable, so I grabbed a collecting-dust PC I had laying around and put this unto the task, although I’m getting a bit better results with the desktop, still lag is a fact Ï do remember your advise on latency, but I’m trying to take it down to a minimum".

So, for the 2i2, should I replace my iTrack.

Thanks again Terry.

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sure thing, as per your advice on youtube, I do have the Focusrite ASIO Driver as A1, also I’m @ 256 Latency rate and also using Double buffer with Cantabile.

Thanks again Terry

1 Like
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Just a friendly hint: his name is Terry, not Tony :wink:

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This is the why me and forums don’t get along – how does this help solving my issue Torsten?.

That’s autocorrect messing with my mind.

Thanks for your reminder.

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Hmm, if you keep mis-naming the most helpful person in this forum, this isn’t really nice either. We are usually a really friendly bunch here - and you get a lot of help from people who do all this in their free time, so I personally think it’s only polite to call people by their real names. But it seems that’s old-school now…

2 Likes
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For you guys, to keep the peace, I will temporarily change my name to Tony for the next five minutes! :wink:

If you are getting glitches at 256 buffer, it is possible that is too low for your system. The lower the number, the more of a strain it puts on your CPU, because it is having to process the audio so much faster. 512 is generally a very comfortable compromise, and really releases a lot of CPU. An over-taxed CPU will definitely cause crackles.

Ok, back to being…
Terry

3 Likes
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Oh, and I am not familiar with the iTrack’s specs and whether the Focusrite 2i2 would outperform it. If you can buy a 2i2 from a store that permits returns up to a week or so, then you can compare the two risk-free.

Terry

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The "Tony@ story comes from a Britt friend I had, Tony Brown - car racer over there, so the name always pops up, and you Terry, you don’t have any issue and that’s what’s disturbing someone else fighting others’ battles, anyways, I just do as I was raised to do.

Regarding CPU, well, cantabile does a nice job with one even two loaded plugins, specially iZotope ones are quite taxing on my core i5 aging CPU - as you say.
Here are some snips from my setup:

Ouch just one image, ok… let’s make it worth!.

image
image3480×1552 412 KB

Voicemeeter

And on Cantabile’s part, as you can see I’m using a 512 buffer but it’s doubled.

For ASIO Driver

Will try to grab at least the 2i2, probably used as videos and audio is not my business core it’d be to stretch the bucks, but will definitely give it a shot.

Thank you so very much To… Terry, LoL, Terry, you’re the man, you know your stuff so respect

Cheers mate!.

1 Like
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Try unchecking the double-buffered audio check mark. It actually may be too much, and will contribute to some latency delay.
See: https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/guides/audioEngineOptions

Double Buffered Audio

When the double buffered audio option is enabled, the audio engine introduces an additional audio buffer between the audio driver and the audio engine.

This can work particularly well with some poorly designed audio drivers that consume a significant portion of the audio cycle before passing control to Cantabile. It also provides an extra cushion to deal with small unexpected stalls in the audio processing.

Note that the extra layer of buffering also causes additional latency - effectively doubling the buffer size.

Some considerations:

  • If you find you’re getting audio drop outs when processing load is still below 100% (eg: some drivers can cause dropouts even with load as low as 85%) then using double buffering might be a good option.
  • You can experiment with this option by enabling it and then halving (or at least significantly reducing) the buffer size. If you get acceptable performance in this configuration then using this option might be a good choice as it provides that extra cushion for unexpected stalls.