Help with underperformance - and curiosity about others'

[moukoko]

Hi all.

So about 6 months ago I custom built what I hoped would be an Ableton dream machine.

Intel® i9 10 Core Processor i9-10900X (3.7GHz) 19.25MB Cache
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 16GB)
All running off SSD drives etc
Decent graphics card etc

..but the performance I am getting is anything but.

Plugins frequently take 5 seconds + to load, Kontakt will leave me c. 15-20 seconds sometimes, even lite VSTs or ableton native stuff runs with a disappointing lag.

What am I missing here? How long are you guys used to waiting for things to load? I had hoped to build a seamless, rapid-fire system, and it's just simplyy not happening.

[properLofi]

On paper that should be total overkill for Live. Couple of questions. Are you running Live 10 or 11? What sound card/interface are you using? What audio buffer and sample rate are you running at? Have you done any system tests with packages like latencymon? https://resplendence.com/latencymon

[moukoko]

hi - just upgraded to 11 today. Using Focusrite Scarleet 6i6. Buffer size 256, 441000 sample rate. No - I will have a go at the thing you mention?

Does it sound odd that I am getting these lags?

[[jur]]

Do you use a high resolution screen?

[moukoko]

Yes I do actually. 4K MSI screen.

[moukoko]

But upgraded the GPU recently to try to eliminate this as an issue? (Clearly hasn’t worked!)

[moukoko]

Jur - why Do you mention the screen?

[[jur]]

Because there seems to be issues with some 4K monitors... I don't know much about it on the technical side, though.
Try changing the screen's refresh rate to a lower one like e.g 60hz if possible and let us know if it improves.

[moukoko]

okay so i ran your diagnostic.

wow - look what i got back! can you advise?

Conclusion: Your system appears to be having trouble handling real-time audio and other tasks. You are likely to experience buffer underruns appearing as drop outs, clicks or pops. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.

[properLofi]

Windows by default is built for office computers and is set up to use as little power as possible and so will reduce power to your CPU when it thinks it can. This means your CPU can be running at a lower clock speed than it’s capable of and underperforming. It can also happen if your CPU is overheating. Given your machine appears relatively new I’d hope it’s just the system settings rather than a fault. Check out the link for more details https://www.thewindowsclub.com/power-th ... windows-10
There also seems to be some driver issues. That can be harder to track down but I would look for updates to all your hardware and devices. Time consuming but worth it.

You’ll also need to refer to your BIOS manual to make sure there’s no power management restriction set at BIOS level.