White noise static

I guess, it may be weak CPU, or some problem on audio interface. It affects even audio renders, which I do not understabd why, as it does not have to be done in real time, so render could be OK even if CPU is rather weak...

For example, patches from Light Trilogy are CPU hungry.

If your computer is strong, then maybe you do not have set the right powerplan and thermal throttling might occure....

Beside, optimizing powerplan, you may increase audiobuffer. At least for audio rendering, if big latency would not be aaceptable otherwise.

OK, CPU is strong and audiobuffer huge. What about RAM? How much do you have? Some Kontakt libraries may take a lot of memory....

Intels are very prone to thermal throtling..... Do you have adequate cooling? It has TDP 125W, but may take easily double, triple..... Up to 300 W I guess.

I am not sure what powerplan is right for Intels, but it would be good to avoid brutal clock boosts, unless you have extremely good cooling.

Concerning souncard... What do you use? And do you use ASIO driver?

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You'd better use AMD CPU, but it is too late. Maybe in next PC. Intels are not to be competetive to AMDs for few more years. If things go well for Intel....

Just to be sure and sort out CPU is not issue, check CPU temperature graph and also graph of CPU clock. There is many freware HW monitoring utilities....

But, as you write in another thread, that your problems have started with Kontakt 7.... Does that mean that Kontakt 6 was OK?

Your understanding is backwards.

Games, videos and general audio playback in Windows all sounds and works fine using the on-board audio interface, usually there is little need for anything more since all that is happening is a single streaming audio signal that has to be decoded to hear back.

However, when dealing with "Real Time Audio" using a DAW (That is using sample players with large sample banks and synths/effects that generate and manipulate sounds in real-time over multiple tracks) this requires quite a demand to generate a lot of audio channels in a very small time on demand.

The issue you have when you don't have an audio interface and try use the on-board audio is it is not designed for this in mind at all and you also have the windows mixer in the way which is not designed for real-time processing so it will constantly be interrupted by all the other processes, which will cause skips and pops.

The Buffer setting increases the "thinking" time which allows more time to process things if there are interruptions but has the downside of causing a delay which is noticeable when you try and play instruments (8000+ buffer is a HUGE delay)

I assume you are using ASIO4ALL which is a "duct tape" ASIO solution that attempts to take your cheap on-board audio device, bypass the windows mixer and improve the stability of the audio processing allowing you to try and use a lower buffer and possibly have less skips. However, unlike a pro interface that has a dedicated ASIO driver written specifically for the features of the hardware, it has to try and make something work with what it can determine from your system and it is also does not link directly into your hardware, rather needs an interpreter layer so it will never be as good as a pro interface and sometimes it can just not work reliably at all with some audio devices.

So a pro interface offers far more stable real-time performance and offloads processing to the interface instead of your CPU which will run WAY better with far less buffer needed (often 128 can be achieved stable, less on some interfaces). Best if you want to be more productive to look into some brand named ASIO compatible USB interfaces. You will also get far more usable I/O for balanced connections to monitors, XLR/TRS connections for mics and inputs etc.

@Kubrak

It's not really useful to suggest everyone "should" use/switch to AMD, like suggesting people all use Windows over Mac, people place trust in what they know.

I built a new PC just recently, AMD Ryzen 9 7900X, watercooled and while I love it (after the last 10 builds have been Intel) and it's quite a capable chip it runs DAMN HOT hitting it's 95c throttle limit within just 15 seconds of a full stress test (sits at about 40c just idle!). This appears to be the norm for these things, they have a thick heat spreader in the CPU package to make up the size difference for the change to a ZIF and are designed to run hot. My other Intel i7 9 series is overclocked by 1.5Ghz (3.5>5Ghz), water cooled, runs at 29c idle and takes a few minutes to top out at 75c under load, tho it is much older and only 4 core.

These chips run hot by design which can cause unavoidable throttling faster which is fine since they run overclocked anyway but will also increase noise from cooling pretty quick which IMO is always something to consider when you have a tower under/on your desk. When I play a game and all 6 fans kick in along with the GPU it's pretty loud.

Intel chips are just as capable for production, no issue, and i've found some other quirks using AMD chips such as XMP for proper RAM overclocking to get the actual Mhz on the tin is flakey and I have had to underclock it a bit, at least on the MSI MOBO I have, compatibility with DDR5 ram seems pretty unforgiving too and with the latest Intels you have compatibility with both DDR4 and DDR5 where AMD is DDR5 only and there just isn't a huge selection of DDR5, and it's pricey!

More than happy with AMD so far but feel especially in overclocking and heat, Intel K model chips have always been pretty solid. Not sure I could overclock this thing any faster without it melting, tho really don't need to anyway. Intel/AMD is really just a decision based on core performance Vs cost and what one trusts to use. Still know many that will not consider AMD no matter what... Like how many people choose an AMD GPU over Nvidia for high end gaming.... Tho who will be game enough to choose an Intel ARC GPU either :)

Still confused.

As I understand it, our friend Mikey is getting this noise on his recordings. To make a recording doesn't require any soundcard at all. The sampler, or DAW or whatever, crunches the data it is given according to its programming, and spits out a sequence of numbers - the audio tracks - which can be recorded and then played back later through a nice soundcard as music. Passing the output through any kind of hardware conversion before recording, however high the quality, would only degrade the sound.

A soundcard can of course be used in parallel to the recording process so you can hear what you're doing. If our friend is happy with an audio buffer of 8K samples - which will give a realtime latency of a few hundred msec - there are unlikely to be any artifacts with his powerful computer specs. ASIO is necessary for low latency realtime playing, live, so I can't see it has the slightest relevance in this case. And in fact if you bounce offline, the processor can take all the time it needs to produce a perfect recording, never going near any soundcard.

I know nothing about Fruityloops but even I can see in the clip Mikey has provided, that since the waveform of the noise is displayed in the GUI, it clearly must be generated by the software, and all this discussion about sound cards, computer performance etc would seem completely irrelevant. If it's coming from Kontakt, you might be able to see it in the Kontakt GUI in the individual instrument audio meters or the output audio meters at the bottom.