Computer setup, CPU spiking, and how the hell do I know what is causing it...

Drew_TNBD

Jalapeno said:

Make sure the USB card is plugged into a dedicated controller on the Mobo, not a shared one.

Perhaps this is part of the problem.
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3763#sp

http://aphnetworks.com/reviews/gigabyte_ga_z68xp_ud3p/3

Jalapeno

Yep sharing the USB with kb, mouse, external disk etc might have an effect, the heat issues would also be a root cause.  You can get loads of truly silent fans and coolers from quietPC

Cabicular

Drew_fx said:

Cabicular said:

it sounds like a DMA conflict

try taking out all but essential cards (i.e. the audio interface one and graphics)

if it still happens try moving them to different slots

We used to get this loads with firewire cards in the 01x i88x days at Yamaha

Did you used to work for Yamaha?

I will try and move some stuff around. From what I recall all I've got in there: Graphics card, Firewire card (which isn't in use tbh!)

My soundcard is a USB2 one.

I used to Beta test drivers for them for the 01x and i88x as well as some of the Motif stuff

This happened a lot... it is usually interrupts as two cards attempt to share a bus

Drew_TNBD

I'll check it out tonight and tomorrow.

Drew_TNBD

Well the only PCI slot in use is the PCIE x16 slot, for my graphics card. I have a PCIE x4 slot, but no point moving my GPU to that slot. It'll be way slower.

So... no dice on the DMA conflict side of things I don't think... honestly I think if that were it, then Reaper would exhibit the same erratic behaviour that Studio One does. But it's just not something I am seeing.

It's all a bit strange really... same project in Studio One that is 22% CPU usage with the erratic spiking up to 30% every now and then, is reading at 8% in Reaper 5 - same plugins, buffer size, sample-rate, everything matched as closely as possible.

My system runs okay. I can use it. But it isn't rock solid. I get these weird spikes like you see in my videos above, and I get the occasional audio glitching or buffer underruns that are ultimately just annoying, not showstoppers. Which is why I've tolerated it for 5 years I suppose!

Clarky

could it be RAM then?

if you could jump up to 16G or better it certainly wouldn't hurt..

Danny1969

I don't think it's ram or any hardware issue in terms of lack of power. My money would be the OS running a service in the background 

I mean my machines got 6Gb ram and does 90 odd tracks with Slate trigger and god knows how many Xpand VI's running

Drew_TNBD

So I upgraded my machine. Spiking is still there, so I think it's a Studio One issue. Reaper doesn't do it, so I might move hosts.

spark240

Weird dude, I don't get any spikes with S1...have you tried these guys ?

http://www.studio-one.expert