Hi Guys,
 
I've posted on here a fair bit about my issues with my Cakewalk setup with latency and pops/crackles and also random dying of the Cakewalk program. I've switched out my Soundcard and Installed every version of every driver possible and still I am suffering. Some days I'll get a good working system that seems happy and others it's unusable with what's seems like no difference in the computers setup and programs/plugins being used.
 
These pops and crackles even occur when Cakewalk shows very little in the processor use and when I have the Focusrite set to 1024 buffer size.
 
My current spec is here just in case anyone knows of any major problems with the exact manufacturer specific parts I have as that's all I can put it down to now.
 
Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3HP
AMD A10-7870K Radeon R7, 12 computer cores 4C + 8G, 3900 Mhz, 2 cores
AMD Radeon HD 6800
16 GB RAM
Kingston SV300S37A SSD
Toshiba 1TB Audio drive
Line 6 Toneport UX2 aand Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (2nd gen) Only used independently
Windows 10 Home (all updates installed, problems were noticeable on Windows 7 also)
 
If anyone has any advise on things I can try before I start replacing more bits please let me know. I'm sure it's a PC issue but I can't find where. Also if anyone can suggest the cheapest way to move on if that's all I can do that would be great.
 
Thanks folks!

A few things to try;
turn off wifi,
uninstall ASIO4All (if it is installed),
make sure you're using ASIO driver mode,
unplug all other USB devices,
turn off any power saving features such as processor cycling or core parking,
install the most recent ATI video driver but try to avoid the entire Catalyst control thingy,
turn off the ATI video "HD Audio device" in device manager,
test another (free? demo?) DAW and see if you get the same issues.
 

One word of advice and that is to do some major research on that specific motherboard to try and find out if anyone have reported issues with latency when streaming audio and any other issues using it in a DAW environment.
 
 
Also your motherboard / graphics card combo...are there known issues with these 2 parts not working well together.

Your CPU has integrated graphics already, Radeon R7 built in, so I am not understanding why you would also have AMD Radeon HD 6800 card installed at the same time.  The built-in Radeon R7 graphics works quite well with Cakewalk. 
 
I know this because I have the AMD A10-7850K CPU, and it too has the Radeon R7 graphics built in, which is what I use. running 2 displays.
 
Just for grins, perhaps you might consider taking out that installed graphics card and disabling its drivers, to use the built-in Radeon R7 graphics instead, to see if it makes any difference in what you are experiencing.
 
And one more thought - do you have Windows set to NOT use the ASIO drivers while you are running Cakewalk, so Windows and other apps aren't also trying to access the ASIO drivers while you run Cakewalk?  
 
Bob Bone
 
 
 
 
 
 

That seems like a pretty decent system, better than what mine was before and I wasn't getting issues like that....until I deserved them given the scope of the projects.  In other words, what kind of projects are you working on that are giving you issues?  Track count, plugins, vst instruments, etc?
 
Also, if you haven't done so already, do a google search for optimizing windows for audio production and go through all of those instructions.
 
Dave

poetnprophet
 
Also, if you haven't done so already, do a google search for optimizing windows for audio production and go through all of those instructions.
 
Dave

+1 for optimizing. You want to make sure everything is running at top performance and lean & mean. Turn your power setting to high performance - for some reason the default is power saving mode. Disable unneeded startup programs. Make sure your audio devices are not in contention with each other. Stop services that you don't need, using care not to stop vital Windows services. Go as far as you feel comfortable with (some folks mess with the registry, but I never went that far.)

It's easy to blame hardware, but the problems are often caused by how you use it or have it set up. To help you we need more information;
Are you using ASIO? What ASIO buffer size are you using? What does your project consist of - track count, VST & VSTi count etc? Have you disabled all Windows power saving features? Have you made sure there are no programs running in the background that are hogging processes? Do you get the problems in other DAWs?

Hey guys and thanks for all your great responses, if nothing else it's helped me establish a little more faith in everything I've already tried as I've been down most of these routes but have done some again this morning to try further.
 
So to start with I have now as Robert_E_Bone suggested removed the additional graphics card and back on the integrated graphics form the APU.

I also disconnected all USB devices apart from my keyboard and mouse, disconnected the USB 3.0 ports from the motherboard and the front panel audio as suggested by sanderxpander. Never had the ASIO4ALL on this setup so that's fine and all drivers up to date with all power limitations turned off.
 
Shambler, I shall have to read up on this but in the year and a half I've had this setup I've not been able to find anything concrete on this mobo and DAW issues. The search goes on.
 
PoetnProphet, the current project I'm loading whilst testing this is 6 tracks and only around 1 minute in length. 4 audio tracks, 2 instances of mini grade by AIR music VST. On these I have the 4 audio tracks going to a drum bus with one instance of Breverb and then the instances of piano go to a bus running Valhalla Shimmer. I have looked over optimization guides many times and seem to have followed to the letter but can't hurt to run through some again.
 
Rbecker, again I  shall look over the optimization guides but I've taken this pretty far already, the actual PC boots in seconds and runs lovely, just seems to struggle with the audio mainly.
 
35mm, I am using the ASIO driver and for testing purposes with the small project (see above) I'm currently working on I have the buffer size at 256, 44.1kHz. Background processes are pretty much non existent, even Windows own CPU monitor within task manager (which always seems high) shows my CPU at 1% occasionally 2% even whilst running this Google Chrome window. I can certainly try another DAW, I shall re-install the Pro Tools free version and test this again as I can't remember how it behaved with the Line 6 and never tested on the Focusrite.
 
Thanks gswitz, I shall take a look over your video.
 
Once again guys, I'm so thankful for your assistance. This whole process and this rig has tested my patience and ruined my creativity these last few months so all the help is really appreciated. I shall keep trying and report back.
 
Thanks

Reading through the suggestions, which seemed good, my first thought was that the motherboard with integrated sound wires in it could be picking up interference from some source.  And/or, you may not have disabled the built-in sound in the Device Manager since you apparently are using the Focusrite Scarlett for your sound device.
 
If you have both on in the Device Manager (built-in & Focusrite), it can cause issues sometimes.

I would recommend going through your system, step by step, to eliminate and identify where any issues could be happening that would cause the dropouts.
 
These are only suggestions based on my experience of using Sonar ( from Version 5 through 8.5, X3 Producer and now Cakewalk by Bandlab) and the ways I have eliminated issues over the years. So these are the things I would try.
 
Firstly I would ensure that I was only ever working with one audio device enabled on my system. So if you have the ability to do this ..... go into your PC BIOS settings and disable the onboard audio device and also disable any HDMI audio device that may be part of your GPU board. Once that is done ensure that windows is aware that your PC is now using ..... in this example your we will say your Focusrite Scarlett 2i2. Make that the Scarlett is set as your windows default audio device. I would then make a couple of changes to the windows audio settings. By selecting your "Playback Devices" in windows audio you can then configure the default device. Select the device and the click properties and then advanced. Make sure that "Allow Applications to take Exclusive control" is unchecked. Once these seteps are done you should be able to play audio through the Scarlett from Windows media player or similar to test this behaves as expected. if all is okay there you can then move onto checking that the audio is configured correctly in Cakewalk.
 
Start Cakewalk and before you open any projects go into the the preferences options from the edit menu. In there you should see options for setting up the audio device. Under "playback and recording" ensure that your driver mode is set to ASIO. Then in the "driver settings" option make sure that your Scarlett ASIO device is set as your playback and recording timing master. Once those options are done you can then use the ASIO panel to set your latency and buffer settings. Once these have been configured you should have the basis of a usable system on just about any windows based PC that is running any OS version from XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 and up to windows 10.
 
 
I would then test this for playback by creating a blank project, then import an mp3 or similar onto an audio track and then hit the play button and see if audio comes out through the Scarlett as expected.
 
I know this may seem like "baby steps" but you have to go back to basics to get your system working in the simplest form before you can then add in other capabilities. if it doesn't work doing this then I would say you must have a more fundamental issue with something. Maybe hardware related or another application or process accesiing the audio device and causes it to stutter and dropout.
 
Let me know how you get on with those suggestions and based on your findings it may help troubleshoot your issues further if this doesn't resolve them.
 
Best of luck.
 
Neal