Topic: RME 9632 - Developed some Glitchy playback when "Live"

Hi all,

Rock solid card for many happy years.  I haven't change anything significant in system but recently noticing some "glitchy" (digital, almost bit crusher type noise) when in playback.  Rendering audio in place, exporting or even recording live playback and the audio is actually clean (when played outside of DAW (ABE 10).   Its literally only when playing softsynths live.

CPU looks pretty good.  Less the 40% usage.  Tried in blank project with just 1 instance of a VSTi.
Installed latest drivers and Video also to be sure.

Intel i7 Quad 4.4ghz / 32mb Ram / SSD's

Wondering has anyone any suggestions?

Many thanks,
Steven

2 (edited by waedi 2021-08-14 17:00:22)

Re: RME 9632 - Developed some Glitchy playback when "Live"

Have a look at the buffer size in the RME Settings page.
Try a bigger buffer.

Also check buffer size in the DAW.
I'm not sure if there is one in Windows computers.
In macs the buffer size is only available in the DAW, on windows it's in the interface settings.
All should be big enough.

M1-Sonoma, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue

Re: RME 9632 - Developed some Glitchy playback when "Live"

256 on RME.  Always been rock solid here.

Re: RME 9632 - Developed some Glitchy playback when "Live"

If you change it to 1024, is it better then ?
And what are the "not significant improvements to the system " ?
May be you have replaced the old USB mouse with a modern Bluetooth thing ?
Computer game running in the background ?

M1-Sonoma, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue

Re: RME 9632 - Developed some Glitchy playback when "Live"

miar wrote:

CPU looks pretty good.  Less the 40% usage.  Tried in blank project with just 1 instance of a VSTi.

Percentage load is not an important factor in glitch free live vst playing.
It's the load of the timeslice that your buffer is set to.
Various system overheads, DPC calls being a main culprit, eat away at the time available to get the audio processing done before it's due out the door to the audio interface.
There's a great live vst host application called Cantabile https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/.
There is a free version and it has cpu metering in both system load and more importantly percentage of used timeslice.
Brad, the developer has also written a free book, Glitch Free, to help tune windows systems for live vst playback.

Typically my system load can be 50% but my timeslice load is 80%+
When my timeslice load goes above 100% i get glitches but my system load is no where near 100%