Serious problems with my UAD setup

[artur]

Hey,

First post here, nice to meet you all! I've been a happy REAPER user for about six month now: I wanted to reach out to here, as the FB user groups haven't been able to solve my current problem with the DAW.

Since the beginning I've been experiencing issues with my setup: they started as barely noticeable (probably didn't notice them as I was just starting), and currently have made my setup pretty much unusable (very unfortunately so!).

I'm using REAPER together with a 2015 iMac 27 (El Capitan 10.11.6), equipped with a UAD2 system running a Thunderbolt Apollo Twin and a Satellite Quad in series. Plugin wise I'm mostly using a mixture of UAD, Eventide, Metric Halo and Mcdsp.

All that being said - I have two things happening to me in my current projects:

1) Almost constantly distorting sound: what happens is that the audio starts to break up during playback, and gets worse until sound disappears completely (yet meters keep on reacting to the waveform). It sounds like a sample rate thing, yet (I think!) I have matched everything between REAPER and UAD Console. My DAW, plugins and drivers are all updated to the latest version. My current solution to this is to either restart DAW/computer or try to change audio output to Built-in, and back to UAD (which often doesn't help). Also, the project CPU usage seems to be around 40%, and RAM ~2GB.

2) I'm experiencing lots of problems with my VST GUIs. Lots of times the graphics don't react/respond when I'm turning a knob/slider, yet the sound is affected. Also, opening preset lists (most notably with Eventide and McDsp plugins) clicking a preset doesn't do anything, and often the preset window stays floating - not being able to close it anymore.

Whew, my apologies for the lengthy post! I wanted to be as specific as I could, as I'm really hoping that there would be a way to overcome this. Also, I reached out to UAD, they they weren't able to help me either.

Thank you so much for the help, I really appreciate it!

[vanhaze]

Hi !

Regarding your issue 1), first thing that comes to mind:

Have you tried disabling Anticipative processing on the Track(s) on which you have UAD plugins inserted on ?

You can do that by rightmouse clicking on a Track's header, than choose:
Track performance options > prevent anticipative FX

Me 2 experience more chance on "audio tearing" (what you hear when CPU can't keep up), when using UAD2 plugins in a Reaper Project.
Setting "Track performance options > prevent anticipative FX" for the Tracks which keep UAD plugins seems to make a positive difference for me.

OSX 10.13.4
UAD Software v 9.5.1 (latest atm)
Used audiodevice in Reaper : UAD Apollo Twin - thunderbolt version.
44.1 khz, buffer 512

[serr]

It's possible it could be a single heavy weight plugin hitting max on one CPU core. I mention it to be thorough. You can check with Activity Monitor and rule that out.

My first guess is issues communicating with the audio interface.
Based on the issue not being the result of CPU overload and that you can get it back 'online' by disconnecting and reconnecting the audio interface on the device page.

The root cause of that could be anything from a bad thunderbolt cable to an incorrect version driver to a bug in the driver that might show itself with certain hardware.

Q: Did it used to work?
Q2: If yes, did you change any software/drivers?
If no, then check hardware. Cables first.
Otherwise go after software.

The root cause could also be incompatibility between UA plugins and Reaper's anticipative fx processing as mentioned. I've read this one the riot act before. There's something else at play (another variable) I think but I've had UA plugins cause problems before and had disabling AfxP on the offending plugin's track cure it completely. It's always in a project with a decent amount of stuff going on. Can be not near heavy CPU use though. And it's not the case of maxing out a single core.

The root cause could be operator error with interface settings.
First choice is to control sample rate and block size from the Reaper Preferences/Audio/Device page.
There are at least 3 different ways to connect an interface and run the controls. Sometimes all work. Sometimes one is more stable than the rest.

[artur]

Hey,

Thank you so much for the insight - can't tell you how much I appreciate it! I've been enjoying REAPER so much during the past 6 months that I'm having a hard time trying to imagine going back to another software again...!

As for disabling Anticipative processing on tracks with UAD, I tried this and unfortunately it only made things - audio distortion/audio tearing, lag etc. - even worse. So did turning off Anticipative processing globally from preferences.

I had a close look at the performance meter, and didn't see anything odd there either: The heavier FX plugins were using a max of ~3%, while my UAD meters showed 83% for DSP, and 49% for PGM.

As the meters were reacting normally the whole time, I started to think whether there was something in the UAD output/playback side. I tried setting audio output to my iMac's built in speakers, but this either didn't help at all. If I'm hearing sound at all, I'm usually good for a couple/few minutes before the trouble starts. What I noticed today was that sometimes even the playback speed (AND pitch) can go down quite a bit.

A couple of other things I forgot to mention:

- I am also seeing the occasional red blinking light on transport
- Before REAPER I was using Studio One, which somehow doesn't experience problems like this.


...Weird, huh?!

[DDDan]

Hi
I have been using Reaper extensively with UAD(TB Octo) plugins and never experienced a problem. My suggestion would be to upgrade from El Capitan to a newer OS. (I am on High Sierra myself) El Capitan, commonly referred to as 'El Craptan' caused a lot of problems in the audio world, Pro Tools (which I also use) had many issues with El Craptan as well.

Hope this helps, Reaper is a great program, and extremely stable....

Daniel

EDIT: I wrote the above part late at night, this morning I saw that you also have graphical issues and that you're on an iMac 27". If my memory serves me right this was the exact model that was not supported by Avid/Pro Tools with Craptan, both because of crashes and graphical issues. If I were you I'd make a full backup of your current drive (clone to another disk using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner, so that you can go back in case stuff got worse ;-) and then update to High Sierra, which is considered a good and stable OS. Good luck!