# My vep crackling but only using 48% CPU?



## merlinhimself (Aug 21, 2019)

I've been testing out my vep slave in my new setup, it's been stuttering and popping but the CPU load is only peaking at 48%. On my sequencer side everything seems ok testing these same instruments. My buffer size is 256, running a 6core i76850k on the Vienna, and using a focusrite clarett as the interface and 64gb ram.

Any help would be immensely appreciated!!


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## NoamL (Aug 21, 2019)

could be a connection issue. Ethernet cable? Directly between your machine and VEP machine, or to a hub?


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## merlinhimself (Aug 21, 2019)

NoamL said:


> could be a connection issue. Ethernet cable? Directly between your machine and VEP machine, or to a hub?


Yeah its direct via a cat6


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## OleJoergensen (Aug 21, 2019)

Maybe firewall, anti virus, automatic file/ system backup...?


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## AndyP (Aug 22, 2019)

I had this when I had the buffer size in Cubase set to 64. With 128 no more problems.


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## Scrianinoff (Aug 22, 2019)

Try switching hyper-threading off in BIOS and test again. Windows then has 6 cores running only 6 threads instead of 6 cores running 12 threads. Windows counts the 6 hyper-threaded cores simply as normal cores, totalling 12 normal cores. If certain threads of a program (VI, plugin, whatever) cannot be hyper-threaded by the CPU, then the core load will never pass the 50% mark in the task manager. This has puzzled many people before, google it. By switching off hyper-threading you can thus check for hyper-threading issues. If the displayed cpu load with hyper-threading off is close to 100%, and the CPU does the same amount of work (same number of samples played, same plugin load), then it is certain that hyper-threading is the culprit for the cpu getting stuck at around 50% load. Personally, I don't ever bother checking anymore, if it's stuck around 50%, with nothing else consuming (significant) cpu, then this is it.


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## Scrianinoff (Aug 22, 2019)

Don't take just my word for it: https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-math-kernel-library/topic/737504


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## artomatic (Aug 22, 2019)

Have you tried increasing your buffer size?


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## Ben (Aug 24, 2019)

If your CPU is not saturated (< 100% load) but the sound is stuttering and popping, your system is not optimized for audio workload.
Here some information:







Windows 10 settings / stuff you can turn off for music?


Adjustments to Windows 10 PC Slave [edit: updated BIOS changes Feb 11, 2016] Hello all, Thanks to everyone who chimed in on two threads. Here's what I did to 3 different PC slaves, all running Windows 10, VE Pro standalone, and each having Kontakt 5 and PLAY on them. In aggregate, these...




vi-control.net





additional problem sources:
- 3rd party AV sometimes hurt performance
- Backup-Tools like Acronis
- Old driver > update them
- damaged or very slow storage
- low quality mainboard


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## merlinhimself (Aug 24, 2019)

Ben said:


> If your CPU is not saturated (< 100% load) but the sound is stuttering and popping, your system is not optimized for audio workload.
> Here some information:
> 
> 
> ...




Was definitely all the power saving features! Once I turned off the c states and speedstep it took a ton to even start to stutter at 256, i pasted a 10 note chord doing constant 16ths across my template to achieve this, very unlikely I'll ever realistically push it that far!

Thanks for the link


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