newbie: system check

[sotfs]

Hi folks!
I am very new to music production and was just trying out ableton live trail version for the first time late november 2021 jsut as a hobby... i have nor professional interest in music production.
I got hooked pretty quickly and bought a push 2, a few of VST's that sounded fun or useful (serum, lethal and an izotope holiday bundle) and just bought the full version of ableton suite (yes...i am quite obsessive by nature and an impulsive buyer, so i went all in :p).

I have a very decent PC i think, but when i bought it i assembled it with gaming in mind, not music production. so i would like to check if any of the following is problematic or bottlenecking other components.

Also ive been trying to see when the CPU starts to 'overload', and when i had a 3-4 minute long song of about 6-7 tracks in which i used 2 different synth VST's which i mixed with neutron 3 (on all tracks) and mastered with ozone 9 it started to crackle quite severely and latency was very high (like a second of waiting till the push 2 would register a keystroke).
Do note that when i say mix & master i was just fiddling around with stuff that i dont understand anything about XD, i am really early in the learning phase (i always enjoy learning new stuff, and am very motivated to find out all i can about ableton, and related music production stuff!)

froma technical POV I just want to make sure everything is working correctly, since i really have no clue if this is expected to happen or that my my system is underperforming. so here we go:

Soundcard: I happened to have a pretty good but old internal soundcard installed (Asus Xonar essence STX) and i am using the ASIO drivers that came with it. is this fine? or are there major improvements to be made since the card is pretty old?

CPU: The processor was pretty much topnotch at the time i bought the PC (i9-9900k) and should be fine, but maybe there are setting i need to check and/or optimize?

HD: It has 2 samsung 970 M2 discs (3TB total with about 2 TB still available), not an issue i would guess?

RAM: might be a bit low (16 GB DDR4 2666Mhz), what can you reccomend

GPU: i take it the GPU is less relevent for music production? in any case, it is a RTX 2080 OC edition.

Mobo: not sure how relevant this is or what one could reccomend with music production in mind, but its an Aorus Z390 master.

TL;DR

1) If you read this, does anything sound wrong?
2) any general reccomendation system wise?

Thanks folks!

[miyaru]

Your system seems to be OK. What I am missing is an audio interface of some sort, capable of using dedicated ASIO drivers.

Using your onboard soundchip with WDM drivers won't do you no good, neither your system.

Take a look at Focusrite, Presonusus, RME etc. for a dedicated outboard audio interface!

[sotfs]

cool thanks!
the asus xonar essence i mentioned is the audio interface.
its not the standard onboard chip and it has its own set of Asio drivers as well. its just not an external one, but oldschool build in.
(https://www.asus.com/nl/Motherboards-Co ... ce_STX_II/)
Its just a bit old

[miyaru]

Are you a fellow Dutchman? The link you sended me was a Dutch website.......

Maybe optimize your system for music like this:

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/ ... Windows-10

It is an article of Focusrite, but goes for most systems.

[miyaru]

And yes, a new soundcard can improve things, but first optimize and check your Windows OS!

[sotfs]

Yes, fellow dutchy . Didnt even notice sending a dutch link lol.

Thanks for the info, ill go have a look at the stuff you shared.

[sotfs]

a little update:

Ive checked my system and i think i am optimized allright now.
and ive done some reading and watched some videos on the Focusrite stuff. Ive decided to go ahead and buy me the 4i4 (for the extra line in, since i wanna test a little idea with that)

My idea ist that i leave the old sound card (the asus xonar essence 2) in the pc as well and use it for driving my gaming headset while gaming or listning to youtube, and use the focus rite as the dedicated card for when i am producing in ableton (hooked up to speakers and/or my headphones).

I was hoping that when i use tyhe RCA line out on the Asus Xonar essence and put it in the extra line in at the back of the 4i4 (with a RCA to TRS cable) of the Focusrite 4i4, that i would be able to feed sound from youtube (for example) into the focusrite and be able to hear both at the same time.
Ableton using Focusrite Asio drivers, and non-ableton audio being handled by the asus and fed into the focus rite by a RCA to TRS line.

think that would work?
in any case i already ordered the stuff... so ill be able to try it anyway :p

i'll be posting back here when i find out if it all worked out the way i imagined it.