Crackling from audio

[Bonker]

I've a brand new Dell 8930 16gb i7. Just installed Mixcraft and listening to the 2 songs that come with it as demos.

The first demo (Me) plays fine, but the second (as skies grow dark) crackles and judders as though the PC cannot handle the amount of tracks etc. When I solo a track, its fine, but when I add more and more solo tracks back in, it struggles after adding the majority.

As the song plays, the CPU Mixcraft shows 12% at most, and the system generally around 8% and at most 14%.


Any advice? I'm pretty upset that my new PC is struggling. I thought it would cope OK.

This is the settings I'm using for the focusrite scarlett.

IMG_13052020_161935_(480_x_640_pixel).jpg (140.7 KiB) Viewed 1804 times

[RollingStone]

do you have several audio devices activated?
i had the same problem not only in mixcraft but also with media player etc. when i had the onboard sound card, a pci sound card and my usb audio interface as well activated. since i deactivated all in the windows sound preferences but not the audio interface, it works.

apart from this, from my experience mixcraft always tends to struggle sometimes, even if you have the best computer machine, a fresh set up windows with newest asio drivers and best results with latencymon...

[jlouvar]

Also Optimize your PC for Mixcraft: https://forums.acoustica.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14668

[JonInc]

Also Optimize your PC for Mixcraft: https://forums.acoustica.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14668

This is especially important when buying pre-configured PCs from one of the big PC makers. They always load it up with a bunch of junk software, so you likely have a ton of useless utilities running in the background taking up resources.

Also, under Preferences-ASIO options, what is your buffer size? Too low a setting can strain your system unnecessarily. There are a lot of factors at play, but in general, on a fast system with good interface drivers you should get decent latency somewhere between 64 and 256. (For example, if it's currently at 64, bump it to 128 and see if that helps). If you don't need low latency, like during mixing, you can set it to much higher buffer. With a newer system though you really shouldn't have to adjust it - usually you can just find the "sweet spot" and leave it there.

[Bonker]

Thanks for the replies so far.

All my programs/processes were already closed, so I pretty much only had MC running anyway.

I have just done the following and it seems to have helped a bit.

The buffer was 256. I increased to 512.
I turned off the router.
I disabled all the audio devices (except for the focusrite).

Not very computer savvy, so kind of stumbling about. I figured a new PC that has absolutely nothing else installed, wouldn't have any issues. But I was wrong.

Just watched the video as referenced previously, and believe I have all those bases covered. I think.

[Acoustica Greg]

Hi,

You can also go into your Windows power settings and make sure that you're set for high performance mode and not power saving mode.

I know you have a desktop, but this is especially important for those with laptops. Sometimes just plugging a laptop in can make a world of difference.

Greg

[Rolling Estonian]

Try unchecking use devices preferred settings. Also, go into your Windows sound settings control panel, advanced, and make sure that the audio there matches with what you have in your Focusrite. ie 16bit, 44.100, 512 is a good place to start and is adequate for most.

A good idea is to make sure that you have all the junk that was installed with the pc gone. Decrapifier is a good one. Last, go to task manager and go to start up and shut down pretty much everything there.

M