Thanks you all for the information you provide, as well as for your patience.
It is a really strange issue, and hard to track down on just one system.

Ben,

I am getting pops and clicks since turning it on.  These are true pops and clicks as if you were overloading the system or had a really low buffer type pops and clicks.  I was not seeing the red streaming warning indicator like I do with our current issue.  It was just pops and clicks, even if I just did a simple 2 note trill with the flute.  I turned it off and they all went away.  I wonder if that's because I have 32 cores in my machine.  For now I have the setting off again as I can't even play the song or use any instrument without pops and clicks with it on.

During the pops and clicks I went into my Solo Flute Synchron Player and the power button for the velocity xfade slider was blinking red.  When I hit it, it turned off and then I turned it on again and it went blue.  First time I ever seen that.

**I have added more of my system configuration in my signature incase we have hardware similarities as well.**

Thanks

Hi cgernaey,

I tried Ben's suggestion about enabling MMCSS but still had the same problem. I almost gave up for the night but then decided to uninstall (control panel, uninstall a program ) the RME drivers and software. I rebooted then reinstalled the RME driver then rebooted again.

It seems to be working much better now. It is to early to tell if the issue is gone but I playback looped a large template in VEP 7 for an hour and a half and came back and there was no hard drive flashing symbol.

Would be interested to see if you tried the same thing if your problem would improve. Just make sure to sort the uninstall list by Publisher to get everything by RME.

I am going to try Cubase 10.5 tomorrow and will let you know the results. Still to early to tell but maybe windows update messed with the driver somehow.

Dave

Hi cgernaey,

Too many cores could lead to issues in previous Windows and Cubase version, which should mostly be fixed by now.
You could try to disable SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading, can be disabled in the BIOS; on Intel CPUs it's called Hyperthreading) which lowers performance a little bit, but often solves many audio issues.

It's really strange too hear that enabling MMCSS leads to pops and clicks, because this feature should improve exactly these issues. So I would also test the combination of disabled SMT and enabled MMCS.

I would also give Dave's advice with uninstalling, rebooting and re-installing all RME drivers a try.

Best, Ben

Good morning Dave and Ben,

Here's the things I have done since my last post:

1.  Updated my BIOS - had no affect.  Same results.

2.  Enabled Windows 10 updates and let it install every update it had except update version 2004.  I did this because I read a post where a user was having horrible audio issues on a brand new machine because he had done all the "kill all possible ways for Windows 10 to do updates".  He claimed as soon as he allowed Windows to do the updates and just said to hell with it and let it do them all and he left all the settings back to default "allow" mode his issues all went away.  I had done exactly as he and disabled all the Windows updates and services.  At the moment I have them all available again and fully patched.

3.  Uninstalled the RME Audio driver, saved my Totalmix settings backup and then reinstalled the most up to date driver (same one I already was using) version 4.30.  What I noticed was that in Control Panel since you mentioned it, I found the drivers for not only my latest one, but the previous version were showing there.  I went ahead and removed all 3.  The software, the driver version 4.30 and the driver version 4.29.  Rebooted and then reinstalled only version 4.30.  I can confirm that now I only see version 4.30 in control panel.

4.  Restored my Totalmix settings - success.

5.  Tested my Windows audio - success.

6.  Tested Studio One (this is where I live) - Interestingly at this point, Studio One has finally stopped crashing upon opening.  It would crash guaranteed 100% of the time upon opening for the last month (exactly when I installed VSL Updates).  After that initial crash, it would open and carry on its day.  Interestingly, Nuendo and Cubase would do the same many/most times.  This morning, didn't happen.  Very possible the system was confused by seeing multiple versions of the audio driver.  Dave, did you by chance see more than 1 version in yours as well?

Ben,

I forgot to mention I never change my buffer settings or sample rates during a project.  In fact, I never do ever.  I know my system can handle running at 64 or 128 because I tested it but I am ok working at 256.  Also, I found the setting for SMT but haven't done anything to it yet.  I know in the past hyperthreading was a real issue especially for DAWs.  For the moment I feel like I have made enough changes and am going to test my system today knowing all of the things I have done this morning.

Thanks again and I will report back throughout the day what I find.

Christopher

Thanks for your update, let me know how it works. I have looked it up and I have 5 versions of the RME drivers in my apps menu. Looks strange to me, I will clean up this as well (thanks for the hint, Dave!)

Yes, I had multiple versions of the same driver. I had never seen this before. They were a different color and slightly greyed out. I could only uninstall the latest one. When I tried to uninstall the others (there were at least 5) windows would not let me do it so I had to use that free tool CCLEANER to get rid of the others. 

I will be testing cubase soon!

Dave

Unfortunately, after about 45 minutes into Cubase I started to get the dropouts and the red hard drive again(with and without MMCSS). I am using the VST3 version fo the Synchron player. I am going to try the VST2 version for the loaded intruments to see if that makes a difference. My processor is the intel 9900k I may try to disable hyperthreading to see if that makes a difference.

Thanks again,

Dave

Same thing for me Dave.  I still have the issue and it's not resolved.

This time I loaded up the project and ran absolutely nothing but Studio One.  No VE Pro, no internet browser, nothing.  Just opened the project and left it looping and it started doing it shortly after.

While the project was now misbehaving, I added a brand new VST3 instance and added a simple woodwinds flute 1 and it does the same thing.  I then added a VST2 instance and added the same flute and setup and it doesn't do it.

I then loaded up VE Pro and all of my VE Pro instances are VST3 and they do it as well.  I added a VST2 64bit instance with a Synchron player inside of it and it didn't do it.

Perhaps it's a VST3 thing?  I am going to copy all the parts to these new VST2 instruments and let them loop for a few hours and see what happens.

Christopher

I was not able to make the VST2 Synchron Player do this tonight in my testing.  I ran it for several hours and all the VST3 instances were doing it, but the VST2 instances were running just fine.

Christopher

Hi Christopher,

I was able to run a couple of Cubase projects for a few hours with no issues after changing the VST3 plugin for the VST2 plugin. Luckily the Synchron presets are compatible between VST2 and VST3 so it is not that big of a deal. interestingly enough both of these projects use the Synchron Piano player that only comes in VST2 and I have never had an issue with it. So It may be a VST3 issue with the Synchron player.

Dave

Hi,

We are investigating this issue, and would like to know if you are using NVMe SSDs to store the samples, and could you please post the drive speeds shown in the Synchron Player's settings?

Best, Ben

Hi Ben,

I have 10 NVMe drives with every section on it's own.  Synchron Player shows over 600MBs on the speed for all drives.

It automatically set it to 3072 for preload buffer for all drives.  That used to work perfectly up until this issue started on that update.  I have since tried every setting up to the maximum of 32768 which is where I am right now and it happens no matter what setting I use.

Thanks,

Christopher

Hi Ben,

Yes. NVMe SSD, read speed 625 MB/s. I set the preload to 8192.

Dave

Today I tested using VST2 instruments in several situations and every time they worked fine the entire day while the VST3 had issues all day.

At this point I guess I hope the VSL team will get this resolved.  I don't have the energy in me to replace all my instruments as my template is 1500 tracks of VST3 and my current song is 491 of those.

Christopher

Please create a process mini-dump of the host after the issue appears (host the Synchron Player in Cubase and create the dump from the Cubase.exe process), please see the following image on how to create a minidump with process explorer:
http://cloud.addictivetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/create-dump-1.png

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx

Send us the dump to support@vsl.co.at
Hopefully this will help in the investigation.

Many Thanks!

We use our own plugin-format inside VEP for our players.

@bbelius said:

We use our own plugin-format inside VEP for our players.

I noticed Ben posted hints about editing BIOS, dumping Cubase and other Windows-only related stuff.

For the rest of us that that are on Apple platform what should we do?
Thanks