Audio Dropouts or Buffer issues

Expressio-Music · 2022-07-01T11:06:55+00:00

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Hi there

I have some serius issues with audio dropouts when I play stem tracks in my Traktor Pro 3. It's the latest version and my system has all newest updates installed.

The problems are showing up at the first feew seconds. It starts with crackeling and later after 10 to 15 minutes it it completly starts glitching. I contacted the support varius times but the solutions only worked a few times. Mostly after I updated the software It failed again.

I really have no idea left what I could do. I have a list what I already tried right here:

- change USB Ports

- reinstalled USB drivers

- increased usb power management

- activated and deactivated USB UEFI Support in BIOS

- Prozessor power settings on 100%

- harddrive power settings on 100%

- harddrive compression deactivated

- Zulassen, dass für Dateien auf diesem Laufwerk Inhalte zusätzlich zu Dateieigenschaften indiziert werden. deaktiviert

- Wlan deactivated, activated

- reinstalled all drivers from traktor and hardware

- reinstalled Traktor Pro 3

- deactivated Windows Sound

- In Soundsettings windows: set all in- and outputs to 44.100 hz and 16bit

- tried all samplerates for all in- and outputs

- changed USB cable

- tried Beatsync and Temposync

- shut down all unused programs

- changed USB buffer in traktor pro 3

- changed Samplerate and so on in Traktor

The solution once was to uninstall some remaining data from mc affee but somehow this worked just for two weeks.

An other solution was to unplug and plugin again the s4 mk3 in a running session in traktor. But that is no solution in a live or recording session. Also this works not every time.

Third solution i found out was to use asio for all driver but then I'm unable to use the monitor out on the mk3.

Sytem specs:

Windows 10

Asus Vivo Book Flip 14

Intelcore i5 quadcore 3,2 ghz

24gb ram (i increased it from 8gb but no difference)

My sytem is running fine and can handle cubase 10 with no problems. I also can handle realtime audio without any problems in cubase 10.

If anyone has some suggestions then please let me know

I'm very frustrated and I'm running out of ideas.

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Traktor Pro 3

S4 MK3

Accepted answers

Expressio-Music

Okay after some reinstallations now it seems to work. But the last time there were the same things after some weeks. Hopefully it will work now.

For all who have the same issues:

I uninstalled all drivers and traktor pro 3. Also uninstalled the controller editor. Then I checked the registry if there are some entries left. Also I deleted all devices in the device manager. Also disabled the touchpad device in device manager.

Restartet the notebook

Then I made a complete clean installation of traktor pro 3 (3.2.0.60). This is the only version that works with no issues (I thought)

Restartet the notebook, disconected s4mk3

After restarting my notebook I plugged the s4mk3 in again and switched power on. Then started traktor pro 3. No asio driver.

I loaded four stem tracks into the four decks to check if the sytem can handle that. It doesn't.

Glitches over glitches.

I switched power off from the s4mk3 and back on while traktor was running. No result.

Then I started everything new. Restored controller settings and whoops! Traktor was no longer able to recognise my s4mk3.

Now comes the weird part.

I installed the asio driver which is included in the old version (programs/Native Instruments/Traktor Pro3/Drivers)

Restarted the system

Finally traktor was able to recognise the s4mk3 again and it poped up a message to set sync faders to default. I don't know why It did not work with the new versions of traktor.

Now it runs smooth and without any problems. I will test it again tomorrow. Holy anything that is just frustrating.

All comments

Sûlherokhh

There could be internal devices that are connected to the laptop USB hub.

Possible solution 1: Try all of your USB sockets.

Possible solution 2: deactivate unused devices upgrade/downgrade drivers.

I use a Lenovo ThinkPad and had to install an older version of the touchpad driver to repair the USB Buffer problems causing the Drop-Outs. First i deactivated the device and it helped immediately. That's when i tried a whole slew of different drivers for it. It's a wonder that computers work at all! 😆

Toxicaudio

To check USB devices, I can recommend "USBDeview" from Nirsoft for Win10. It's free and a great tool.

Expressio-Music

@Sûlherokhh thanks for the fast respond.

I allready tried different usb ports. I tried it without usb hub. I have 2 usb 2.0 and one usb 3.0 slots. Same problem at all ports.

I reinstalled the usb drivers but i will try downgrade them.

Okay so the touch pad caused the problem on your system?

I will try that out and deactivate this device.

@Toxicaudio

Thank you. I will try that later when I'm back at home

I forgot something. When I only use my generic low latency asio driver from realtek it works fine. But of corse I'm no longer able to use my mk3. So there should be no problem with the software but more with the usb or driver from the device

Sûlherokhh

I didn't downgrade the USB drivers, but the touchpad drivers. Make sure you have a mouse attached before deactivating the touchpad. Working only with the keyboard requires some experience not to panic.

Expressio-Music

@Sûlherokhh

I think this is not working for me. I deactivated the driver of the touchpad but without success. Still having glitches after 2 to 4 minutes.

Has someone an other idea?

lord-carlos

Did you try to run LatencyMon like they describe here? https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/articles/209571729-Windows-Tuning-Tips-for-Audio-Processing

And after you choose your ASIO device, there is a "settings" button.

Click that, what settings do you have there?

And did you try the diagnostic?

Expressio-Music

Hi there again. Now my s4 mk3 didn't get connected to traktor pro 3. It allways switched to my generic low latency driver.

I reinstalled the drivers and the software with no effort. Then I installed an older version of traktor (3.2.0.60) and the device got connected again.

I'm totaly confused.

It semes that every new version of traktor is not compatible with my device or with my system

@lord-carlos

Thanks for your respond,

I allready tried different settings within the asio driver. The best settings I used to run the setup was sample rate 48.000 hz on 256 buffer processing and 3ms usb buffer.

I tried every combination with these settings in both windows and traktor.

This are my current settings and that is the result of latency mon. Right at this time I experience almost permanently glitches

I also tried varios times the diagnostics and it said there are problems with the buffering.

I really don't know why. my system is running much more intensive programs with audio like cubase 10 pro without any problems.

Expressio-Music

These are the diagnostics of traktor.

The program runs for about 2 minutes. And the sound glitches are just massive. Latency mon is not recognising any problems

Sûlherokhh

The buffer underruns says it all, but no details. USB is the problem. Go to device manager. Open all the device trees. Anything USB related you have to right-click with the mouse and click on the last row which opens a small window. About a third of the entry windows has a tab to manage energy. Deactivate all 'switch-off when not in use'-options.

-->This Page explains it all.

Apart from updating your drivers, that's about all my experience has to offer.

Expressio-Music

Okay after some reinstallations now it seems to work. But the last time there were the same things after some weeks. Hopefully it will work now.

For all who have the same issues:

Restartet the notebook

Then I made a complete clean installation of traktor pro 3 (3.2.0.60). This is the only version that works with no issues (I thought)

Restartet the notebook, disconected s4mk3

After restarting my notebook I plugged the s4mk3 in again and switched power on. Then started traktor pro 3. No asio driver.

I loaded four stem tracks into the four decks to check if the sytem can handle that. It doesn't.

Glitches over glitches.

I switched power off from the s4mk3 and back on while traktor was running. No result.

Then I started everything new. Restored controller settings and whoops! Traktor was no longer able to recognise my s4mk3.

Now comes the weird part.

I installed the asio driver which is included in the old version (programs/Native Instruments/Traktor Pro3/Drivers)

Restarted the system

Finally traktor was able to recognise the s4mk3 again and it poped up a message to set sync faders to default. I don't know why It did not work with the new versions of traktor.

Now it runs smooth and without any problems. I will test it again tomorrow. Holy anything that is just frustrating.

Expressio-Music

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to give a feedback from my current situation.

I have now installed windows 10 and Traktor Pro 3 with the newest version on a USB SSD Drive as a second bootable system. I noticed that key matching of stems is causing a massive usage of the processor capacity.

I have a completly fresh installed system and all unneccesary drivers are disabled. The system runs now smooth and there are no more problems with dropouts (only when I load 4 stem decks with keymaching but these are just short crackles)

If anyone has some ideas to reduce that let me know

Expressio-Music

New small update to the same issue after several updates and switching to a second OS paralell installed on a external ssd.

The second system was set up with old drivers and an older version of traktor. This was not my favorite solution. I needed to disable all network services and windows defender + firewall to get traktor work almost properly. I still had some issues with crackeling and dropouts but just small ones after 1 hour playing with stems in key synch mode.

I found a new solution for me and would like to share it.

The main problem I found out was some kind of a update service. I disabled a few ones so I don't know exactly wich one it was causing those issues. Just type in Windows search: services

and a window will open with all installed services on your system.

Then I disabled all following ones:

-Adobe Acrobat Update service

-Asus App Service

-Asus link Near

-Asus link remote

-Asus Optimization

-Asus Software Managment

-Asus Switch

-Asus System analysis

-Asus System Diagnosis

-devolo Network Service

-Freemake Improver

If you have some more services that you don't need to run for example some network services or some kind of optimization tools just disable them step by step and try running traktor after a reboot.

Currently I'm running traktor on my main system where I have also installed cubase 12 pro and plenty of vst instruments etc. and everything works fine and smooth. For the moment...

I will ceep it updated if I'm getting problems again

I hope I finally found "THE" solution for this anoying and frustrating problem.

Stevan

That sucks man, reminds me why I had to switch to apple laptop. Windows update is usually resetting all settings and I got tired of messing with OS. NI should create a support article with all windows laptops that passed the internal tests. Bying windows laptop without testing is is like buying a cat in a bag.

Expressio-Music

Update:

I noticed one more problem wich is causing those issues. I owned a Line6 Pod Go multieffect pedal for my guitar and synths. As soon as I installed the software and the driver for the MFX pedal I noticed the same issues in traktor.

That is seriously not aceptable. When the MFX is not connected and the drivers are disabled, why do I have still those audio dropouts? It looks like Traktor or my S4 do have some serious problems to handle other audio drivers wich are installed on the system.

I never ever had such massive problems with any other audio interface. I used an Soundblaster, Tascam Model 24, Focusrite Scarlet 18i20 3rd gen and even my onboard souncard could handle traktor whitout dropouts.

Please Native Instruments, look for the firmware of your devices if there is something to improve. I'm not the only one who has this problems and it's probably a hardware issue because no other interface of mine has those problems to handle realtime audio such as my kontrol s4 mk3.

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