Not sure if you’ve tried this...

Go into device manager and disable any and all wi-fi devices while running a DAW. Simply switching networking off isn’t enough, Windows needs to be told to completely ignore the adaptors and not load their drivers.

The reason for this is that many wi-fi device drivers keep grabbing Windows exclusive attention for long enough to prevent the audio buffer being re-filled before it empties and then you get crackles, drop-outs etc.

Do the same with any HDMI audio entries. Don’t uninstall them because if you do Windows will just spot the hardware and re-install the drivers, disable them.

Running latencymon might be a good idea as well.

 
This is a video i made that shows some basics.
[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOVuzOja-yE&feature=youtu.be[/tube]
 
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOVuzOja-yE&feature=youtu.be
 

You have to remove the 's' from 'https' to embed YouTube vids, and get the link address from the 'share' thingy
 

ah nice trick. Ty Matron

Hey guys and thanks again to everyone for the responses.
 
Tested everything suggested again and crackles still apparent with a new project, buffer at 256 and just one instance of Mini Grande opened, not impressed :( 
 
Tested with the WI-Fi disabled completely, setup the Scarlet as the only audio device, just downloaded latency monitor now so going to run some tests.
 
Thanks again guys.

So I just run latency monitor but I'm not sure I understand the results. I ran this for around 3 minutes whilst Cakewalk was running and I was using the one instance of baby grande, pops and all present.


 
The USB port total execution looks very high compared to everything else? Anyone any ideas on these numbers?
 
Thanks

I found this which may be related;
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2132548/excessive-cpu-usage-usbport-sys-stops-computer-wakes-sleep-mode.html
 
What does the "Main" screen show as highest DPC latency and what are your averages like?
 
EDIT:
If you know which are which you could conceivably disable USB ports in the BIOS, or if not that then in device manager.

One of the above earlier posts had mentioned something I forgot about, as it had been a while since Craig Anderton had posted about it - Craig had discovered that for some reason the hi-def audio drivers were causing similar issues, if memory serves, and his solution was to disable those when running Sonar sessions (the hi-def drivers are certainly not needed to be active anyways during Sonar/Cakewalk sessions, because it would be using the ASIO drivers of the audio interface.
 
So - you can locate those in Device Manager, and simply disable and then test the effects of doing so by launching Cakewalk and seeing if it helps.  When done, if no help with the issue, you can simply enable the driver(s) again - just takes a few seconds.
 
Also - make sure you don't have any high-latency inducing effects loaded into the project when trying to track/record (like convoluted reverb effects, for example).  You can simply hit the letter 'E' on your computer keyboard to toggle on/off the bypassing of all effects - if the issues go away with effects bypassed, you know then that one or more loaded effects is contributing to the audio issues, and you can either bypass effects until moving on to mixing, or temporarily swap out any hi-latency effects until you finish tracking, and then when ASIO Buffer Size is jacked up to 1024 or 2048 for mixing, those hi-latency effects can get swapped back in.
 
Disabling WiFi is quite often needed - literally disabling the driver OR if a function key to turn off transceiver, that works too.  This is a common issue with laptops, but can cause issues in desktops as well.
 
i have also had personal experience with many kinds of issues with certain audio interfaces not behaving well, when they were designed for USB 2 but plugged into a USB 3 port.  I ALWAYS make sure I test any newly acquired audio interface in USB 3 ports prior to making repeated use of that port - for that very reason, and if issues, then I make sure to always use a USB 2 port when a particular interface fails to work properly using USB 3. (Some interfaces work equally well in either USB 2 or 3 ports).
 
Bob Bone
 

There are some good suggestions here,but i think you need a plan. My usual troubleshooting approach is to cut things in half. In this case is it the audio interface or the computer? Have you tried a different interface? tried the Focusrite in another computer with the same drivers? If it works ok on another computer then it is probably ok and you need to see about the computer. At this point i would try to determine if it is hardware or skftware issues so i would use different usb ports. Still an issue, probably software at this point. Again, is it Cakewalk or a driver issue? Try Reaper and see if it is different. At this point you can have some confidence in what works. Anyway, my two cents.

Plug your focusrite into a usb2 port, NOT usb3.