Seemingly random ASIO spikes in Cubase, leading to audio drop-outs

[soapmak3r]

I have been having an issue with my current PC build since the outset. Basically, the ASIO meter in Cubase is sitting at 5-10% and it will all of a sudden spike into the red, causing the audio to briefly drop-out/crackle. I also seem to get random audio drop-outs when watching videos, either online or offline.

I have tried an exhaustive list of things to try to solve the problem, but so far, nothing has worked.

My hardware is as follows:

- i7 4790K
- 16GB DDR3 1600 RAM
- Steinberg/Yamaha UR824 USB 2.0 audio interface
- GTX970 4GB

So far, I have tried:

- Disabling Network Adapter ('Killer' brand. Also tried various driver versions and driver only installs)

- Disabling on-board audio and Nvidia HD Audio (in device manager, BIOS, and Nvidia control panel)

- Disabling variable CPU clock speeds and CPU throttling/power saving features in the BIOS.

- High performance power profile (USB selective suspend 'off', System cooling policy 'active', HD sleep 'never', display off 'never', sleep 'never'.

- Turned 'Indexing' off on all drives

- Updated Intel chipset drivers

- Tried various Intel USB driver versions

- Updated BIOS

- Updated firmware on UR824 audio interface

- Tried different Yamaha/Steinberg USB drivers for UR824

- Tried removing all plugins from Cubase and re-adding them 1 at a time

- Disabled ASIO Guard within Cubase (and tried it on various settings)

- Tried different ASIO buffer settings

- Analysed system with DPClat and LatencyMon for an hour with no DPC spikes (though depending on the network driver used, dxgkrnl.sys is spiking/throwing up 'black' and even 'red' DPC latency warnings)

- Tried various Nvidia driver versions

- Upgraded videocard (same issue with GTX760 and GTX970)

- Mains powered USB hub for everything but the audio interface and mouse

- Turned off hyperthreading in the BIOS

At this point I have exhausted everything that I can think of, and could really use some help figuring out the cause.

Cheers!

 

[zcomputerwiz]

Do you have the same problem when using the Intel Integrated Graphics Processor?

 

[soapmak3r]

Do you have the same problem when using the Intel Integrated Graphics Processor?

After doing the following, these issues have (finally!) been resolved:

I manually removed the Nvidia drivers, rebooted, and then did a 'custom', 'clean' install (tick the 'clean' button), and only installed the latest Nvidia graphics drivers (unticking the 3D stuff and Geforce Experience).

I uninstalled the UR824 audio interface and it's applications, unplugged all USB devices apart from the mouse, rebooted. Installed latest driver version, plugged in audio interface to USB, and turned on the device to finish the installation. Reconnected other USB devices.

Uninstalled 'Killer Suite' (downloaded latest driver only version first!), rebooted, installed driver only version of e2200 network adapter driver, rebooted.

Tested in gaming and in Cubase, no ASIO spikes and no audio drop-outs over a few hours of gaming and a couple of hours of fairly intensive audio work.
My gut feeling tells me that it was something corrupt with the Nvidia drivers, or possibly a conflict between the Nvidia Geforce Experience software and the Killer Suite.

One other thing that I changed was a PCIe setting in the BIOS that allowed you to set the affinity in the BIOS for different PCI generations. Mine was set to 'Gen3' as my card is a 'Gen3' PCIe videocard, but setting it to 'auto' (the other setting was 'Gen2') seemed to lessen the DPC latency spikes.

Hopefully this helps someone else.