Uh-oh, I think I've posted this to the wrong sub-forum. I meant for it to go into the Recording, Mixing, Performance, etc. subforum. Moderator, if you think this should be moved, have at it.

Original Post follows:
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Well, the title sort of sez it all. The subject machine is my DAW. Right now my system is too easily sent into a frenzy of pops, clicks and crackles in my audio playback, and it's making it very difficult for me to generate decent quality audio files. I've even gone so far as making sure that no other program besides BiaB or RB is resident and that even unnecessary processes have been terminated (I use the Task Manager for this). Doing so helps some but not as much as I would have liked. All it takes is one click to ruin a recording. And I seldom get through an entire piece of music on this machine without at least one click being heard. So I'm kinda dead in the water right now if I want to use RB or BiaB going forward.

You know how RB has that little CPU Usage screen up in the top right corner. While a song is playing, the RB amount typically fluctuates between 17 and 20 %, while the Total number is usually only a couple of points higher. A similar readout in Cakewalk's Sonar delivers even lower numbers than these. I dunno about you, but to me these are quite low numbers and they seem to be indicating that my system still has plenty of reserve horsepower for this sort of work. So why all the noise? And why am I having such a noise problem with BiaB and RB when I don't with other DAW software like Sonar and Studio One 3?

My audio interface is an M-Audio Delta 66 PCI card, 24/96 capable, comes with an OMNI I/O unit that amounts to a compact mixer. It is a very quiet card. I'm running the M-Audio ASIO drivers. I've tried the MME drivers and they fare no better but the latency is worse. For MIDI, I'm using various synths for now, including Coyote and Sforzando.

My system is about five or six years old now. I don't recall exactly when I bought the MoBo and processor, but I do know that the MoBo is a really good one. As old as it is, it still supports recent processor technology. It is an AsRock 890 GX Pro 3 and takes AMD AM3 and AM3+ socket processors. Currently in the machine is an AM3 socket quad core AMD Phenom II X4 840 that's running at 3.44 GHz. So I'm thinking about upgrading to an AM3+ processor. The AsRock MoBo supports eight core processors, so whatever processor I do buy for it, it'll be an eight core. Prices range widely, from almost $300 to less than $100. I've got some homework to do before I make a decision.

Memory-wise, it's running 8 gigs of DDR3 SDRAM, and it has open slots for two more memory sticks. When I first upgraded my system to 8 gigs I thought that it would be a loooong time before I'd need more memory than that. Well, now, I'm not so sure anymore. I'm curious about what you folks think is adequate RAM for a DAW these days.

I just ran Geek Bench on it. I know some of you like to see these numbers, but I have no idea which numbers it is you like (although I'd like to), so how about them all? Here ya go:

Single-Core Performance

Single-Core Score 1879
Crypto Score 116
Integer Score 2218
Floating Point Score 1633
Memory Score 1928

AES 116
89.6 MB/sec

LZMA 2331
3.64 MB/sec

JPEG 2853
23.0 Mpixels/sec

Canny 1977
27.4 Mpixels/sec

Lua 2221
2.28 MB/sec

Dijkstra 2356
1.59 MTE/sec

SQLite 2262
62.7 Krows/sec

HTML5 Parse 2488
11.3 MB/sec

HTML5 DOM 952
862.7 KElements/sec

Histogram Equalization 1947
60.8 Mpixels/sec

PDF Rendering 2066
54.9 Mpixels/sec

LLVM 3586
246.6 functions/sec

Camera 2674
7.42 images/sec

SGEMM 558
11.8 Gflops

SFFT 1503
3.75 Gflops

N-Body Physics 1643
1.23 Mpairs/sec

Ray Tracing 1760
257.1 Kpixels/sec

Rigid Body Physics 2141
6267.9 FPS

HDR 2933
10.6 Mpixels/sec

Gaussian Blur 2048
35.9 Mpixels/sec

Speech Recognition 1493
12.8 Words/sec

Face Detection 1777
519.1 Ksubwindows/sec

Memory Copy 1105
3.06 GB/sec

Memory Latency 5828
74.3 ns

Memory Bandwidth 1113
5.95 GB/sec

Multi-Core Performance

Multi-Core Score 3192
Crypto Score 240
Integer Score 3995
Floating Point Score 3057
Memory Score 2324

AES 240
185.3 MB/sec

LZMA 4848
7.57 MB/sec

JPEG 4364
35.1 Mpixels/sec

Canny 3646
50.6 Mpixels/sec

Lua 3601
3.70 MB/sec

Dijkstra 4345
2.94 MTE/sec

SQLite 4301
119.3 Krows/sec

HTML5 Parse 4847
22.0 MB/sec

HTML5 DOM 2001
1.81 MElements/sec

Histogram Equalization 3726
116.4 Mpixels/sec

PDF Rendering 3338
88.7 Mpixels/sec

LLVM 6284
432.1 functions/sec

Camera 4207
11.7 images/sec

SGEMM 872
18.4 Gflops

SFFT 2343
5.84 Gflops

N-Body Physics 3325
2.48 Mpairs/sec

Ray Tracing 3179
464.3 Kpixels/sec

Rigid Body Physics 4485
13129.9 FPS

HDR 4892
17.7 Mpixels/sec

Gaussian Blur 4251
74.5 Mpixels/sec

Speech Recognition 2774
23.7 Words/sec

Face Detection 4176
1.22 Msubwindows/sec

Memory Copy 1514
4.20 GB/sec

Memory Latency 5495
78.8 ns

Memory Bandwidth 1510
8.07 GB/sec

Last edited by cooltouch; 11/22/17 07:53 PM.
Best,
Michael

My Music:
https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/albums