HS7XL Performance Problems (audio distortion and CPU meter into the red)

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AndyB01
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2011/05/23 07:21:22 (permalink)

HS7XL Performance Problems (audio distortion and CPU meter into the red)

I am getting performance problems when recording midi tracks evidenced by the CPU meter peaking into the red and the resultant distortion of the mix and breakdown of the audio signal.  I have stripped down Windows 7 as much as I can and turned off Aero and all the other bells and whistles, tweaked video for performance and stopped all non-essential services and programs including AV and networking.
 
A quad core machine with 8Gb of RAM should cope fairly easily I would have thought and indeed it used to.  Its original setup was configured as twin RAID 0 arrays but I had to change this setup following some fairly serious RAID and other disk errors resulting in a full re-install of the OS and apps.  As RAID 0 gives great performance but no resilience I abandoned RAID and now the disks are now all single volumes (two 70Gb disks for system and programs and two 700Gb disks for data - all have ample spare capacity).  The soundcard (Saffire LE) is using the latest driver for Windows 7 from Focusrite and I have it set for the ASIO driver (although the problem occurs on WDM and WASAPI.
 
I appreciate this is one of those threads that could have any number of resolutions but I am at my wits end here so any advice or suggestions appreciated.
 
Thanks
 
Andy
 
post edited by AndyB01 - 2011/05/23 07:23:31

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    daveny5
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    Re:HS7XL Performance Problems (audio distortion and CPU meter into the red) 2011/05/23 08:38:18 (permalink)
    What is the speed of the 2 70GB disks? I hope they're 720 RPM. Did you install Sonar on the c: drive? 
    How many watts is the power supply? Driving 4 disk drives requires a fairly powerful disk drive or that can cause strange problems that may cause you to lose data. 
    What else is running that may be stealing CPU cycles? Check the Windows Task Manager. 


    Dave
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    AndyB01
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    Re:HS7XL Performance Problems (audio distortion and CPU meter into the red) 2011/05/23 08:57:59 (permalink)
    They are all 7200 RPMs Serial ATA Western Digital drives and yes Sonar is in C:

    The PSU is an Enermax 850w unit so plenty of beef (and cooling) - I have checked all the core temps and all is in range and I don't overclock.  I have been through Windows Task Manager and stripped out or shut down everything that is not required for the PC to actually function.

    Interestingly I have tried enabling read and write caching in Sonar on the ASIO advanced panel and this seems to have helped??  Although those settings are usually recommended for older systems - this PC is just over 4 years old.

    Sonar Platinum, Win10 Pro 64-bit, 16Gb RAM, Six-core AMD, Twin SSD. Instruments: Roland A88 and Taylor 314CE all through a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4. More ambition than talent.

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    mxz583
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    Re:HS7XL Performance Problems (audio distortion and CPU meter into the red) 2011/05/23 20:33:45 (permalink)
    You should be using ASIO it is much more stable than the other driver modes.
    is there any place in the settings on the saffire to adjust firewire driver latency? if so set it as low as you can.
    Try adjusting the buffer size up
    a 2.4 quad core should be able to run sonar two times over, open task manager and look at the CPU usage make sure all cores are active
    one question about what you are hearing, is it definitely dropping out or is it just distorting?

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    Beagle
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    Re:HS7XL Performance Problems (audio distortion and CPU meter into the red) 2011/05/26 11:14:49 (permalink)
    They are all 7200 RPMs Serial ATA Western Digital drives and yes Sonar is in C:

    WD makes "GREEN DRIVES" which are lower power.  they advertise them as 7200rpm "green drives" but their spindle speeds vary according to the smart drive's determination of the "need".  green drives are HORRIBLE for audio recording and should never be used for that purpose.

    I don't know that the ones you have are green drives, but I'm just throwing that out there that if they are then you would likely see this problem you're seeing.

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