Need help: Audio Cracking when playing midi and other audio

[greglmao]

Hello, to preface this, I have been using ableton live on an old gaming PC for a while now and recently I've decided to make a new PC dedicated to music production. I've spec'd out the PC to be suited towards music production with top of the line hardware. The issue that I'm having is that whenever I play a midi instrument, a guitar through some amp effects, or a mic with effects, I get audio cracking. I know the default answer is to set your buffer size higher but the highest I could get it to sound decent was 512 and that is un acceptable due to the fact that the latency is awful to play with the guitar AND that my old PC could run it fine at 128. Down below I will provide spec's, a list of troubleshooting things I have done, youtube video demonstrations, and my observations.

https://youtube.com/shorts/i0S6DvXvJNc?feature=share

OLD PC:
- Windows 10
- I7 6700k Base Clock
- 32GB Kingston 2133MHz DDR4 RAM
- 1 TB Samsung 970
- GTX 1080 FE Base Clock
- H110M-A/M.2 Motherboard
- Focusrite Solo

New PC:
- Windows 11
- I9 13900k Base Clock*
- 64GB Gskill Ripjaws 3600MHz DDR4 Ram
- 2TB Samsung 980
- 1TB Samsung 970
- Intel UHD 770 Integrated Graphics
- MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4
- Focusrite 18i8

What I have done to no avail:
- Reinstalled Windows 11
- Reinstalled Focusrite Drivers to latest version
- Reinstalled all drivers provided by motherboard manufacturer (Including both Intel Chipset and other miscellaneous drivers)
- Reinstalled Ableton Live
- Formatted both SSDs and Reinstalled Windows 11 on them
- Set power management settings to High Performance
- Set CPU minimum and maximum utilization to 100%
- *Over clocked CPU with both same, and higher voltage
- Over volted CPU on base clock
- Under volted CPU on base clock
- Reinstalled Intel integrated graphics drivers
- Installed Intel Extreme Tuning Utility and over clocked using "Speed Optimizer 2.0"
- Installed Intel Driver Support Assistant and scanned and then subsequently downloaded any out of date drivers
- Installed Intel Arc Control
- Enabling XMP in BIOS
- Resetting BIOS settings to default
- Tried using my Focusrite solo on the new PC
- Checked that pin connectors inside of PC were fully connected
- Unslotted, and then reslotted RAM
- Used my focusrite solo

My observations:
I've tested the issue with only having ableton live open with the grand piano instrument and playing with my midi controller, I will then play with the midi controller until I start to hear some crackling and then I'll open youtube up to see if it gets worse. I repeat the same steps with my guitar and microphone. This should allow for the most minimal load on my computer.
I've noticed that it takes a while for the crackling to "spool" up where it only happens maybe every 40 seconds without a youtube video going on. The moment I start spamming the keyboard, or playing a lot of notes at once, it starts to brick and the cracking becomes more obvious. In the video showed above, you can hear the height of the cracking occur with a youtube video. I also show a graph from Intel XTU (Extreme Tuning Utility) which shows weird dips in the Max Core Frequency and the Processor Graphics Frequency. Those two seem to randomly spike downwards all the way to zero and then jump back up again. I've also noticed that in the Intel Arc Control statistics, that the Graphics Frequency goes down and the voltage for the CPU also goes down. I have a feeling that it is some how graphics related but again this doesn't make a lot of sense due to the relatively low load that I'm putting on the computer--I'm not even playing a game and the cracking occurs. My CPU utilization within ableton also only stays around 2% and sometimes spikes at 6%.

What I have done to some... avail"
- Installed Windows 10

Why I don't just want to use windows 10:
There's a couple of reasons why I don't want to use windows 10. The main reason is that the audio "fidelity" coming out of my monitors sounds better on windows 11 for some reason. I feel like the stereo image is wider and the bass and sub response (what little there is I have no sub lol) is better, resulting in a more fuller, pleasing sound to me. I also feel like on windows 10, it sounds like there is some digital compression that contributes to those two qualities sounding worse. I have no idea why the sound profile would change because the settings in focusrite control is exactly the same as to how I set it on windows 10 and the settings within windows is the same. Here's two videos showing the differences (Windows 10: https://youtu.be/UYpJkQIXXmw) (Windows 11: https://youtu.be/sNa-3qGurwg). I know phone audio doesn't really do it justice but if you listen to the high frequencies of the cymbals, you can tell there is a difference. My second reason is that I built this thing for future proofing and I would like to use windows 11 to get used to it and benefit from the future updates past windows 10 life span. I know it's a long time coming until windows 10 stops receiving security updates but I would like to start now. My last reason is that for some reason, the notes played on my midi controller is transposed down 3 half steps to A Ableton. This is the most bizarre thing I have seen and I really couldn't find a fix online so if you know of something, you could let me know more about that.

Conclusion:
Some how I think there's just a glitch between focusrite, ableton, and windows 11, with my specific set of hardware that makes this glitch happen and there might not be even a fix.
I'm not really sure to go from here as I feel defeated trouble shooting. I haven't touched regedit or any other deeper windows settings just because I don't even know where to start or what to do but that's why I'm reaching out to this community to see if there's other steps I can take to find a solution. Any help is appreciated.

[chris harbin]

Your specs are ace, your explanation of what's been done shows you've really troubleshot this.

That soundcard shouldn't be the issue, but you might be right. If you don't want to break the bank, maybe consider an Audient iD series? I have the iD4 here and it's been terrific. It's USB C so I'm guessing your MOBO would have that, but wanted to point that out.

One thing that has been somewhat of an issue since jumping back into the Live game has been graphics. On my desktop, I currently have an older 710 fanless card and there are zero dropouts. However, when I tried to get a "better" GC, I had dropouts all over. I tried everything. It is possible that there is an issue with the built in graphics, but I'm currently running a little new lappy with integrated graphics and it's not a real problem.

I also have a Push 2, and that compounds the issue. With this little lappy, it works but it's not totally flawless. That's fine as it's not my main computer, but that really just adds to the issue you are having, if it's mostly working here, you should be getting good results.

One other thing, what sample rate are you using? I ALWAYS use 44.1k because of a ton of reasons, not the least of which is stuff seems to run more smoothly. Also, just for the sake of mentioning, what does Live report when looking under preferences for audio? I run at 64 buffer 99% of the time (though I am having an issues where the Audient will sometimes revert to an output latency of 17.5, so I have to change the buffer to another setting, and then back again. Happens on all my machines, regardless of driver version, Audient doesn't have a clue)

Ah, big fun. And Mac people don't always have a picnic either

[greglmao]

Your specs are ace, your explanation of what's been done shows you've really troubleshot this.

That soundcard shouldn't be the issue, but you might be right. If you don't want to break the bank, maybe consider an Audient iD series? I have the iD4 here and it's been terrific. It's USB C so I'm guessing your MOBO would have that, but wanted to point that out.

One thing that has been somewhat of an issue since jumping back into the Live game has been graphics. On my desktop, I currently have an older 710 fanless card and there are zero dropouts. However, when I tried to get a "better" GC, I had dropouts all over. I tried everything. It is possible that there is an issue with the built in graphics, but I'm currently running a little new lappy with integrated graphics and it's not a real problem.

I also have a Push 2, and that compounds the issue. With this little lappy, it works but it's not totally flawless. That's fine as it's not my main computer, but that really just adds to the issue you are having, if it's mostly working here, you should be getting good results.

One other thing, what sample rate are you using? I ALWAYS use 44.1k because of a ton of reasons, not the least of which is stuff seems to run more smoothly. Also, just for the sake of mentioning, what does Live report when looking under preferences for audio? I run at 64 buffer 99% of the time (though I am having an issues where the Audient will sometimes revert to an output latency of 17.5, so I have to change the buffer to another setting, and then back again. Happens on all my machines, regardless of driver version, Audient doesn't have a clue)

Ah, big fun. And Mac people don't always have a picnic either

I'm using 44.1k for my sample rate. I've tried changing it to even higher but that doesn't really seem to change anything. My live reports the buffer at 128 with an over all latency of 15.1ms. I also might try and install the graphics card from my old PC to the new one to see if that's the problem but like you mentioned above, you use integrated graphics and it works fine for you.

[chris harbin]

It's worth a shot, I mean, you have KILLER specs. BTW, 15.1 is pretty high latency for 128 (I'm at about 9)

Since my last blurb, I switched out my soundcard to a VOLT 2. The audient is a great card, but mine has gone haywire. It keeps reverting back to 17.5 (which is what it would be @ 512 buffer) for the output latency. I'm a little embarrassed I recommended it, but I think I'm in the extreme minority. Must be the hardware unit because for a long time it didn't do that and it's done it now on 3 different computers with different driver versions.

Too early to tell, but the VOLT seems great so far. And the drivers report even better latency (just a little but still)

[Sweet Smoke]

Hi,
please try to deactivate the E-Cores in BIOS and let me know if that helped.

[SparkyC]

I am going through a very similar journey on a comparable setup. Pretty demoralising tbh.
Has there been any progress on your issue?

[miyaru]

https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/ ... Windows-11

You do not have to have a Focusrite interface to be true, it goes for every ASIO interface.

I do not recommend ASIO4All, use the proper drivers of your Audio Interface.

Be sure throttling is disabled in the BIOS for your CPU, use a fanless NVidia GPU card, I think they do best without breaking the bank. You do not need a high spec GPU for DAW use.

Do not run antivirus software of a third party, no use for that!

[planet_b]

With Intel 13th gen processor and Windows 11, it seems any application that is currently on top (ie. web browser) will cause Live to start crackling like it's out of cpu or buffer. But launching Live "as administrator" does help with this. It's been reported by many people on Win11, any application that will "steal" focus from Live, will make Live's process priority so low that it will start crackling even if the Live set ifself would be very low cpu.

Also I've noticed that there is a big difference on how different audio interface ASIO drivers will behave when they are running out of buffer. M-Audio M-Track seemed to only stutter for a while, but this only affected the audio. But on MOTU M4, the whole operating system becomes unresponsive when that happens. It takes 10-15 seconds to even get to stop Live playback. That is a bit surprising, considering MOTU's general quality, but maybe the drivers are not exactly their forte..

[tobeyg]

I have similar problems running latest Windows 11 with latest Ableton Live 11 using the Presonus Studio 1824C. When using the official ASIO driver, I get random CPU spikes that causes crackles no matter what I do within the DAW. I could have one MIDI track without any devices or 100 tracks with multiple devices and the same problem happens. The "Current" CPU load goes up to a whopping 500-1000% at seemingly random and crackles and similar artefacts appear.

However, I tried installing and using ASIO4ALL and for some reason that runs way better than the official ASIO driver. I get a much more stable and predictable CPU load at 64 sample rate, hovering around 5% at all times with a few tracks running. The only issue I have with ASIO4ALL is that enabling additional outputs other than the "line 1/2 output" for some reason turns the line 1/2 output to mono, even though I've selected 1/2 as stereo in Live. But that's another story...

I've contacted Ableton about the issue with the ASIO driver with no response yet.

[tobeyg]

With Intel 13th gen processor and Windows 11, it seems any application that is currently on top (ie. web browser) will cause Live to start crackling like it's out of cpu or buffer. But launching Live "as administrator" does help with this. It's been reported by many people on Win11, any application that will "steal" focus from Live, will make Live's process priority so low that it will start crackling even if the Live set ifself would be very low cpu.

It didn't make any difference for me unfortunately to use Live as administrator. It introduced a new problem where I couldn't drag and drop files from Windows into Live, since it's only possible between applications that both runs as administrator. So ended up deactivating that since it didn't help me.

[Sweet Smoke]

I nailed it! Beside all other recommendations I did, I turned off WLan and Bluetooth. But the most important thing was, to set the priority to REALTIME. It didn't make sense to run Ableton Live as admin, I couldn't paste files per drag and drop too. There are no CPU cracks anymore, even I use such plugins like Diva (But please don't activate such things like multicore support in these plugins, then you may get the cracks again).

[Nick Waine]

I've had similar problems. I tried the Realtime option, which did not work for me. What did work for me was opening a command prompt as an Administrator and typing this...

powercfg /powerthrottling disable /path "C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 11 Suite\Program\Ableton Live 11 Suite.exe"

As I understand it, it stops windows pushing background apps off to efficient cores from the performance cores. I've had 6 months of hell trying everything to get Live to work when it's not the foreground app. I was honesty going to ditch my new PC and get a Mac as it was driving me crazy. I stumbled on this from someone who had problems with render times in a video editor when the app wasn't in the foreground.

It's been absolutely rock solid since.