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Old 11-16-2018, 03:13 PM   #1
fripholm
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Default Record armed VSTi tracks crackling in Reaper

Hi, I have searched the forum up and down and there have been quite a few threads about this (or something similar) over the years but I haven't been able to find a solution that works for me. And I've tried all I could find...

I'm running Reaper x64 5.961 on Win10 Pro, i7 7700K, ASUS Z170-A, 16 GB RAM, Fireface UFX+, Nvidia 1050TI GPU, all the latest drivers, only SSDs for OS and audio. This system is heavily optimized for audio and apart from this issue is perfectly capable of running the most demanding mixing sessions at low latency with tons of plugins and lots of outboard gear (using ReaInsert). I'm running everything at 88.2kHz, no re-sampling.

This only happens with record-armed instrument tracks - for me so far with Kontakt 5.81 and Superior Drummer 2 and 3. Average CPU usage in these cases can be very low or very high - doesn't matter, the crackling is always the same. RT CPU is low when record-arm is off and much higher (up to 60%) when it's on. Plugins are 64-bit only, no bridging at all.

As soon as I disable "Record-arm", the crackling goes away. It also stops crackling, when I select another track and "Automatic record-arm when track selected" is enabled on the previously selected track. Obviously, in these cases I'm not able to preview sounds using the MIDI keyboard. That's why it's not an option to turn it off completely.

Here's what I've tried so far:

- Disabled Speedstep (EIST and others) both in BIOS and in Windows power options - no change
- Enabled/disabled anticipative FX both globally and on a per track basis - no change
- Enabled "Allow live FX multiprocessing" - crackling gets much worse, regardless of the number of cores
- Increased latency up to 2048 samples (I'm usually running at 256) - less crackling but still noticeable
- tried the UFX+ both with USB3 and Thunderbolt (usually TB) - no change
- tried a small test project that crackles on the aforementioned PC (only NI Kontakt and 2 instances of Massive used) on my Lenovo laptop using the same UFX+ over USB3 - crackles are exactly the same
- the very same test project does not crackle at all when I'm using a crummy Focusrite 6i6 as audio interface.
- with that in mind I've tried to lower the number of inputs and outputs from usually 54 channels each to just a stereo pair - no change
- tried the same test project at 44.1 - no change
- enabled "MMCSS for ASIO" in the USB settings of the Fireface (this option doesn't exist in the TB version) - no change
- installed "portable" Reaper into new folder and tried again with default settings - no change
- uninstalled the latest graphics driver and tried one from a year ago - no change

The test project shows an average CPU usage of 2~3%, RT CPU is about 1.5% with input monitoring off and about 25% when enabled.

It seems the only common denominators are Reaper's "record-arm" and the UFX+. As drivers from RME are usually top-notch, I suspect there's something inside of Reaper that's not playing nicely with the Fireface. Are there any settings in the Preferences (or wherever) that I can try to solve this?

Last edited by fripholm; 11-16-2018 at 03:21 PM.
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Old 11-17-2018, 12:32 PM   #2
Dstruct
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Tried with disabled Hyperthreading in BIOS?
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Old 11-17-2018, 03:52 PM   #3
tonybeepbeep
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Posting here as I have a very similar problem that didn't really appear until I installed BFD3.

Am also looking at:

Mouse cable interference
Earth connections on room sockets
Random VSTs that may cause 'interference'

Driving me f***ing insane at the moment
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Old 11-17-2018, 04:13 PM   #4
Dstruct
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USB mouse polling rate is another thing to look at (1000 Hz vs 125 Hz) ...
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Old 11-18-2018, 01:44 AM   #5
fripholm
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Thanks guys.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dstruct View Post
Tried with disabled Hyperthreading in BIOS?
- just tried with HT off - no change, just higher CPU usage

Quote:
USB mouse polling rate is another thing to look at
- I've also tried a different, much older mouse that doesn't have any drivers - no change

There's another fact I didn't mention before: according to LatencyMon there are no DPC spikes at all. DPC latency hovers around 150~180us, sometimes going up to about 300 when moving plugin windows around. But the crackles are not affected by graphics card (or mouse) activity at all.

On a funny side note regarding the little test project I was talking about earlier: I have added one more tiny audio file (6kb) to the Kontakt instrument and the crackling stopped completely for this particular project. The CPU usages (with record-arm ON and OFF) before and after the additional sample stayed exactly the same. Using this project, I'm not able to reproduce this problem anymore

However, I have other projects that are not using NI Kontakt, which show this behaviour - which appears completely random to me at the moment...
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Old 11-18-2018, 12:54 PM   #6
Dstruct
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Wasn't there an option to disable multithreading/processing in Kontakt's preferences too (known to cause troubles)?

Last edited by Dstruct; 11-18-2018 at 04:42 PM.
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Old 11-19-2018, 04:46 AM   #7
fripholm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dstruct View Post
Wasn't there an option to disable multithreading/processing in Kontakt's preferences too (known to cause troubles)?
Yes, I've already tried this as well - made no difference. And as I said before; this problem is not just limited to Kontakt.
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Old 11-19-2018, 05:24 AM   #8
tonybeepbeep
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I spent the weekend investigating this and decided to turn off Record Arm on a VSTi track as it was routed to other tracks anyway. As soon as the red light was on, it sounded like I was in China for New Year.

All this was on BFD3 and Kontakt 6 projects with plenty of other third party plugins, but sub 10% CPU load and maybe 3 to 4GB of RAM from an available 32.
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Old 11-19-2018, 07:08 AM   #9
Dstruct
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Do you have plugins on the Master?
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Old 11-20-2018, 02:19 AM   #10
fripholm
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In my case, I do. But it doesn't matter as it crackles regardless of them being there or not...
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Old 11-20-2018, 08:17 AM   #11
Dstruct
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Does it happen at 44.1, 48, 96 kHz Project sample rate too? (maybe it's caused by Kontakt's realtime resampling)
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Old 11-20-2018, 10:43 AM   #12
tonybeepbeep
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dstruct View Post
Does it happen at 44.1, 48, 96 kHz Project sample rate too? (maybe it's caused by Kontakt's realtime resampling)
If you give me some directions I can set up a project to test this out as I am also a Kontakt user, who suffers with the occasional crackle or twenty
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Old 11-20-2018, 11:53 AM   #13
Dstruct
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You need to change the device sample rate.
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Old 11-20-2018, 01:27 PM   #14
fripholm
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Apart from my usual sample rate at 88.2 kHz, I've also tried at 44.1 so far - same problem...
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Old 11-20-2018, 01:30 PM   #15
Dstruct
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Digital clocking issue (incorrect master/slave setup)?
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Old 07-29-2022, 01:43 AM   #16
Oren Sela
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Hey all

Did anyone ever manage to solve this problem?
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Old 07-31-2022, 05:53 AM   #17
talustalus
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This is very common and it's simply due to heavy CPU consumption while recording with usual cpu-intensive VSTi plugins.

Play around with the anticipative FX / live threads options towards the bottom of the Audio>Buffering section in the preferences.
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Old 07-12-2023, 07:38 AM   #18
alkiviadis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fripholm View Post
Hi, I have searched the forum up and down and there have been quite a few threads about this (or something similar) over the years but I haven't been able to find a solution that works for me. And I've tried all I could find...
....Are there any settings in the Preferences (or wherever) that I can try to solve this?
Now, this was a long time ago, but did you by any chance find a solution to this problem? I 'm having the EXACT same problem.
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Old 12-29-2023, 09:13 AM   #19
Thomas Schwab
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Same here. Its unusable.
Cubase and Studio One work fine with it.
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