Background - I've been using BIAB for a couple years now, started with BIAB 2018 and upgraded, now on BIAB 2020 Build 722. It's been quite a smooth ride, with crashes and hangs here and there when I do certain things, and other odd idiosyncrasies, but I just ignore them unless they are egregious or block my work. I've just recently started encountering a consistent stuttering happening while using external MIDI input to play along with a song, or while recording from MIDI, but even sometimes just playing back a song which has some VST-based instruments.

I'm well aware of the many factors which can cause such a problem from the sound drivers all the way up to the VST instrument that I'm using which is outside of BIAB control, and I've done a lot of reading on this forum, so I know a few places to look and things to try, but before I start on a massive campaign to get to the bottom of this, I just wanted to toss it out there and see if anyone had any quick tips on what are the most likely candidates. I'm posting a list below, but I'd be very interested to see if anyone would use a different order, or there's something major that I've left out.

General outline of issue:

> Stuttering after playing for a few minutes, or a few repeats, very intermittent.
> Only occurs on certain songs, but may be due to choice of VST instrument plugins.
> Occurs more often when I play a lot of very fast, polyphonic notes in the MIDI thru
> Occurs more often when using resource intensive VST's like Native Instruments, or especially IK Multimedia Plugins, although I'm only using mostly free stuff so far.

Strategy:

> Try playing back the same song with different VST instruments (like the ones included in BIAB) on the Melody track.
> Try playing back the same song with the MIDI keyboard disconnected
> Try a restart of the PC and close out everythig except BIAB
> Try changing the tempo to a lower value - does it still stutter?

Items to check/reconfigure:

> Change buffer/latency on ASIO drivers (currently using ASIO4All)
> Possibly change audio drivers - I had the best success with ASIO so far
> Change sound card (currently using a USB attached sound card - some generic one)


Background:

> PC is an older Lenovo laptop - AMD A6-5200 2 GHZ - Quad Core, 8 GB RAM, Windows 10
> Upgraded internal HDD to SSD
> BIAB Runs from external SSD drive over USB 3.0
> PC does not show significant strain when stuttering occurs - CPU, disk, memory look within normal limits

Any tips/advice specific to this scenario would be appreciated. No need to repeat whats already been posted on this sort of thing, but if you have a recommended link, please throw it in.

I'm well versed in PC technology, so no limits there, but on MIDI/Audio tech, I'm mediocre, but learning. I do plan to post my results after I finish my investigation, whether successful or not.


Ed Z

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BIAB user since 2019
iPad Mini, Garageband for iOS, BIAB for Windows 2020 UltraPAK, Xtra Styles packs 6-9, Windows 10 Lenovo PC, Kontakt Player, SpitFire LABS, SampleTank 4 CS, some Soundfonts