Audio Dropout During Playback and Export

Hello,

I am having a problem with multiple dropouts during playback and exporting. The dropouts are never in the same place.

I do not have any VSTi’s installed (all WAV files). I, of course, am using mixing VST’s, but that is it. When looking at my VST Performance, I can see that my average load and real-time peak never get over 25% up the meter. The disk meter gets up to around 25% and that is only on occasion.

Each dropout only lasts for about 1/2 a second. During playback of a 3:30 track it happens on average about 4 times. I am only exporting to MP3. I have tried changing my buffer size and real-time export and neither has helped. This actually has happened for quit a while, even when I was running Cubase Artist 7.0 and 7.5. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Matt

Cubase Artist 8.01
Windows 8.1
Intel i5 3.00GHz
8GB RAM
1 TB Hard Drive

Cut and paste of an earlier post of mine:

If you get spikes with just a few tracks playing it might be a bad driver - try running DPC checker: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml while Cubase is spiking. If DPC checker is complaining (by displaying red bars) try to find the culprit with http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon (also while running cubase).

Krisp,

I appreciate your help. However, as stated in my post I do not get any spiking. I did try both of the recommended software. I ran a 3:30 track and got 5 dropouts. At no time did either piece of software indicate there was a problem (no red bars).

Since my first post, I have tried installing ASIO4ALL due to advice given in previous threads. Unfortunately, this this did not help either.

This is so frustrating. I have songs I want to share, but I cannot, given that every exported file has 4 to 5 intermittent audio dropouts. Makes making music way less fun because there is never a satisfying end product. Ok, I will stop crying now, but if anyone else can help I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
Matt

What sound card ?

I am using a Steinberg UR22.

What VSTs are you using? Do you get dropouts without VSTs?

Btw: Another forum member had problems with intermittent bursts of white noise - the culprit was an expired demo VST inserted in the Control Room mixer.

Regarding my last post: Dropouts can be a side effect of spiking so I assumed that was the problem.

Because of your post, I figured it out. I thought I had removed all of my VST’s and was still having problems, but I forgot about one. I have a mixing template with plugins loaded on the master buss and forgot that my version Voxengo SPAN was still a trial. Turns out it mutes itself periodically unless you purchase it. Duh!

Thanks for the replies!

-Matt

Go sit in the corner for an hour, Matt!