REAPER suddenly experiencing lengthy audio dropouts

[mazegeek999]

Hi there,

I've been using REAPER for years with no issues. Suddenly in the past week, I've been experiencing massive audio dropouts; i.e., I'm live-monitoring inputs and/or I'm listening to REAPER's playback, and all the audio stops being sent to all headphone outputs. All the meters display properly in REAPER, but no audio is heard. It usually takes me going to REAPER's audio device preferences, going inside the configuration window, and closing the preferences to "reset" the audio. Though sometimes I'll hear the audio come back to life for a bit before retreating once again.

I work with fairly large projects and I also write scripts, though none of my projects nor scripts had fundamentally changed in the past week. The only thing I can think of is that I downloaded a large pack of samples (various instruments off EW's Composer Cloud) to a separate SSD that had already had other samples on it. But I'd be shocked if that's the culprit considering projects without any of those plugins experience the same issues. I also unplugged that SSD and have the same issues... I only mention this because that's the only change I can think of that I made recently!

I am also not running any scripts as these problems occur.

My specs:

Windows 10
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz, 64GB RAM
Behringer X32R Interface
REAPER v.6.68
256 samples (buffer size)

[7enz]

have you had any recent windows updates?
as updates tend to change the Windows Audio setting sample rates... thats where i would check first

[mazegeek999]

Originally Posted by 7enz

have you had any recent windows updates?
as updates tend to change the Windows Audio setting sample rates... thats where i would check first

Seems I'm unable to revert back to an older version of Windows 10 since I apparently last updated Windows over 10 days ago... are there any settings I should check that would reflect potential changes in the most recent update?

[King Stupid]

Id run latencymon or procmon while running the project and see if theres something causing a crazy latency spike or hard faults when it happens.

[serr]

The connection to the audio interface seems to cut out but you see the meters keep moving?

When the software "connection" to the current audio interface gets broken it usually makes the transport freeze. Maybe I've seen an "in between" thing like this before though?

You describing resetting the connection in Reaper preferences/audio/device page and that works at least sometimes? That really suggests this is the interface connection getting broken.

Does your interface connect with USB? I've seen USB cables in a partial failure state that results in weirdness like only some channels on the audio interface dropping out. (eg. only seeing half the inputs suddenly). That's counter intuitive in digital devices... as in it should just crash completely. Maybe this scenario was a noise issue with a damaged cable.

[JonLinnarson]

Originally Posted by serr

Does your interface connect with USB? I've seen USB cables in a partial failure state that results in weirdness like only some channels on the audio interface dropping out. (eg. only seeing half the inputs suddenly). That's counter intuitive in digital devices... as in it should just crash completely. Maybe this scenario was a noise issue with a damaged cable.

This was my first thought. I had problems with a USB-cable for my RME Babyface Pro and as soon as I touched the cable or moved the interface etc the audio would drop out, but the meters would freeze. I usually had to restart the interface by pulling out the cable and inserting it again for the audio to come back. Buying a new cable fixed this.

[mazegeek999]

Originally Posted by King Stupid

Id run latencymon or procmon while running the project and see if theres something causing a crazy latency spike or hard faults when it happens.

LatencyMon does tell me "Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks..."

I get hard page faults but they don't seem to spike when the issue occurs.

I've now found that often when I vertical scroll in REAPER, the problem happens temporarily and often resets itself soon after I stop scrolling. I can also see the transport text (the timecode etc.) freeze whenever I vertical scroll, which maybe was a thing before but I don't remember that being the case? These issues never happen when I horizontal scroll.

My interface (Behringer X32R) is connected via ethernet.

[King Stupid]

Originally Posted by mazegeek999

LatencyMon does tell me "Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks..."

I get hard page faults but they don't seem to spike when the issue occurs.

I've now found that often when I vertical scroll in REAPER, the problem happens temporarily and often resets itself soon after I stop scrolling. I can also see the transport text (the timecode etc.) freeze whenever I vertical scroll, which maybe was a thing before but I don't remember that being the case? These issues never happen when I horizontal scroll.

My interface (Behringer X32R) is connected via ethernet.

What files/pocesses are causing the DPC latency spikes and hard faults?

Can you pelase post yourresults? The text part, not the graphic part. It sounds like the interrupts are happening to the audio, but not the visual part. Maybe.

[mazegeek999]

Originally Posted by King Stupid

What files/pocesses are causing the DPC latency spikes and hard faults?

Can you pelase post yourresults? The text part, not the graphic part. It sounds like the interrupts are happening to the audio, but not the visual part. Maybe.

Results

Not sure how to interpret these results but, at approx. 0:00:30 I experienced a dropout via vertical scrolling, and at 0:03:50 via random dropout. In the first case, the vertical scrolling dropout did not reset by itself (I had to reset it manually); though as I mentioned in my previous post, that type of dropout often resets itself. But clearly, it's not consistent.

Thanks for the help so far.

[King Stupid]

Originally Posted by mazegeek999

Results

Not sure how to interpret these results but, at approx. 0:00:30 I experienced a dropout via vertical scrolling, and at 0:03:50 via random dropout. In the first case, the vertical scrolling dropout did not reset by itself (I had to reset it manually); though as I mentioned in my previous post, that type of dropout often resets itself. But clearly, it's not consistent.

Thanks for the help so far.

What video card? Do you have, like, a desktop that changes pictures or colors or something?

Update windows.
Update video card drivers (what are they on your machine?)
Turn of any visual enhancements, slideshows, whatever, you ahve running on desktop. Right click empty space on dektop, personalize>background to "solid color". Pick a color.

[mazegeek999]

Originally Posted by King Stupid

What video card? Do you have, like, a desktop that changes pictures or colors or something?

Update windows.
Update video card drivers (what are they on your machine?)
Turn of any visual enhancements, slideshows, whatever, you ahve running on desktop. Right click empty space on dektop, personalize>background to "solid color". Pick a color.

My graphics card is NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti. I don't believe my desktop changes pictures/colors; not sure what you mean by that but I don't have any fancy graphics enabled to my knowledge.

My Windows is currently up to date. My video card drivers are up to date. Changed background to black.

Left everything unchecked in the visual effects performance options except "smooth edges of screen fonts" (because there's quite a visual difference there that I'd like to keep if possible). Originally, almost every box was checked. This seems to have so far fixed the issue, though I won't trust it until I use REAPER thoroughly.

One thing I notice is that the transport timecode does not freeze for as long when I continuously vertically scroll. So seems like this ultimately was some graphics issue? And is REAPER supposed to even freeze its timecode when vertically scrolling in the first place? This doesn't happen when I horizontally scroll.

Would you recommend a graphics card update? I wouldn't mind spending the money if it ensures reliability. Never thought my GPU needed to be super high-end considering I'm using this computer for audio production, not gaming/video editing.

UPDATE: Nope, drop out during playback.

[King Stupid]

Originally Posted by mazegeek999

My graphics card is NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti. I don't believe my desktop changes pictures/colors; not sure what you mean by that but I don't have any fancy graphics enabled to my knowledge.

My Windows is currently up to date. My video card drivers are up to date. Changed background to black.

Left everything unchecked in the visual effects performance options except "smooth edges of screen fonts" (because there's quite a visual difference there that I'd like to keep if possible). Originally, almost every box was checked. This seems to have so far fixed the issue, though I won't trust it until I use REAPER thoroughly.

One thing I notice is that the transport timecode does not freeze for as long when I continuously vertically scroll. So seems like this ultimately was some graphics issue? And is REAPER supposed to even freeze its timecode when vertically scrolling in the first place? This doesn't happen when I horizontally scroll.

Would you recommend a graphics card update? I wouldn't mind spending the money if it ensures reliability. Never thought my GPU needed to be super high-end considering I'm using this computer for audio production, not gaming/video editing.

UPDATE: Nope, drop out during playback.

I figure it might be some kind of GPU issue. Also figured it would be an nVidia card. nVidia doesn't like sharing resources. Quite a few people stick to ATi with minimal driver installs because they seem to work better with machines for music, fewer interrupts and such. And often enough, onboard intel graphics.
Did you recently update the nVidias drivers? Perhaps a rollback may help?

[mazegeek999]

Originally Posted by King Stupid

I figure it might be some kind of GPU issue. Also figured it would be an nVidia card. nVidia doesn't like sharing resources. Quite a few people stick to ATi with minimal driver installs because they seem to work better with machines for music, fewer interrupts and such. And often enough, onboard intel graphics.
Did you recently update the nVidias drivers? Perhaps a rollback may help?

I don't believe I updated anything recently. :/ It's a good question because I don't understand why else this would be happening now. Frustrating!

How would I go about rolling back? What and how far do I even roll back to?

[mazegeek999]

Disabling some amount of FX on my projects seems to fix/make the issue less frequent.

As I said before, I work with large projects. But as I also said before, I hadn't modified my projects in any significant way recently for this to occur. Lower amount of FX processing results in lower CPU usage, so perhaps that also has something to do with it?

My CPU is Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz.

[King Stupid]

Originally Posted by mazegeek999

I don't believe I updated anything recently. :/ It's a good question because I don't understand why else this would be happening now. Frustrating!

How would I go about rolling back? What and how far do I even roll back to?

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/driver-rollback/

[mazegeek999]

Originally Posted by King Stupid

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/driver-rollback/

Did not solve anything unfortunately.

[Ears]

Are all your plugins updated/authorized to your PC? I had this problem, and one of my plugins had gone rogue and deactivated itself. It reverted to trial mode and caused random audio drop outs.

If the drop outs were fixed or became less frequent when you disabled a bunch of chains, could it be a plugin you frequently use that's causing the issue?

[mazegeek999]

Originally Posted by Ears

Are all your plugins updated/authorized to your PC? I had this problem, and one of my plugins had gone rogue and deactivated itself. It reverted to trial mode and caused random audio drop outs.

If the drop outs were fixed or became less frequent when you disabled a bunch of chains, could it be a plugin you frequently use that's causing the issue?

Well this is interesting. As I mentioned in my original post, I recently bought the EastWest Composer Cloud subscription. Well, one of the plugins in that subscription is a plugin I had bought standalone years prior - EW Spaces II. And apparently that needed an update.

So I updated it and, after hours of letting REAPER play, no dropouts. Though afterward, I left REAPER idle for another hour or so, and a dropout occurred at some point that required a manual reset. So the problem isn't totally fixed... but perhaps that somehow did something?

None of this makes any sense to me still because the plugin was definitely authorized to me (as are all my plugins, to my knowledge). The plugin worked for years its in current version, and then all of a sudden once I bought the large subscription, that plugin all of a sudden decided to cause dropouts? So confusing because at this point I'm looking at upgrading my PC but I don't want to spend money on anything if I don't know what the problem is in the first place. I never had a single dropout before any of this.

If this plugin update entirely fixed the issue, then I'd be satisfied (albeit still very confused as to why this would cause any issue). But I still get occasional dropouts leaving REAPER idle (and I still get dropouts by continuously vertically scrolling).

[ivansc]

Have you checked out the e-booklet "Glitch Free" which offers an excellent way of setting your machine up 100% for audio.MIDI multitrack recording. Well worth taking the time to do it, as it wont need doing twice & swill at least eliminate any OS-based issues as a minimum.
Your computer is way newer faster etc than my i7 4770 yet my machine performs effortlessly after the Glitch Free exercise.

Mind you, I no longer use any east-west plugins....

[mazegeek999]

Originally Posted by ivansc

Have you checked out the e-booklet "Glitch Free" which offers an excellent way of setting your machine up 100% for audio.MIDI multitrack recording. Well worth taking the time to do it, as it wont need doing twice & swill at least eliminate any OS-based issues as a minimum.
Your computer is way newer faster etc than my i7 4770 yet my machine performs effortlessly after the Glitch Free exercise.

Mind you, I no longer use any east-west plugins....

I did, I actually used that guide years ago to set up my PC! Thanks for suggesting it though, it did me wonders at the time.

[mazegeek999]

An update -

It appears that one of my plugins, EW Spaces II was the culprit. Only after I bought the full EastWest subscription which included this plugin did the problem start... and I honestly can't explain why this happened. But as unsatisfying of an answer, that seems to be the issue.

So I guess the moral of the story is check your plugins.

[bigtop]

Plugins are often revealed as the culprits in many cases of DAW misbehaviour. In fact more often than not.