I haven’t got the machine to hand, but I have tried it at most buffer sizes and it makes little difference.
My concern is CPU load is <50%, so I can’t see this being a CPU issue.
The latest Focusrite drivers.
The problem is not purely the CPU power, but the fact that we are trying to get a real time behavior out of a non real time OS. Here good results are only obtained thanks to the responsiveness of the CPU. I never had success under 3GHz… I only shared my own experience…
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I am under the impression from the specs here that this is a 3.6Ghz processor.
Or have I got that wrong?
Thanks. Well I have discovered this particular CPU is rated at 1Ghz, but has a Turbo boost of up to 3.6Ghz. I need to check a) whether it is enabled in the BIOS and b) whether it makes any difference.
Also, can I ask, if you use a laptop, what is it? I’m not very up on hardware and if I need to buy another I don’t want to get another lemon.
Yes, see the point [4] here: FREE e-book by Deskew - Optimize your Windows PC for the stage!
A little bit of A/B testing and experimenting is necessary.
Only the lower frequency mainly matters, unfortunately. 1GHz is really too low in my opinion…
You might try QuickCPU.
You can set up a custom profile that allows you to raise the base frequency, and control the range it operates in. What you don’t want is Turbo kicking in and out—that in itself will cause audible pops. You can however use the range that Turbo operates in and keep it there, You want to find the balance where your CPU is operating at an elevated Ghz range without overheating. It takes a little experimentation, but you will find improve performance.
Will it be enough for what you’re wanting to achieve? I don’t know. It’s worth a shot, before you go scrap that laptop and buy something else.
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The irony is that on my Mac, I’m using TurboBoost to prevent my Mac from going too fast and get too hot. So far it has had no impact on Gig Performer (three weeks with 12 shows with no issues a few weeks ago)
@dhj Clearly your machine has some room to spare in the processing dept. and isn’t prone to spike when the turbo comes on. In lesser machines, what can happen is a sudden demand for processing(a CPU hog plugin, for example) comes in coupled with a turbo increase in processing power and a subsequent increase in fan usage and causes some pops and cracks. You want a machine that operates at a static frequency, with a static fan speed—and then to push the limits as defined by those two rules. No jolts or bumps.
My problem here is I can’t seem to find any way of managing the Turbo function, or even disabling it in the BIOS. And this laptop has no fans or vents, it’s a very minimalist thing.
I though that Intel has the hand on what exactly the turbo boost do… 
No, through QuickCPU I can control my CPU frequency.
My 2 gig laptops have a i7-7700HQ which runs a base of 2.8GHz. Through a section called SpeedShift, I can modulate (among other things) max, min, and desired frequency.
I save that to a profile that loads every time, and the result is I get the same boosted frequency every time, and it never changes. In essence, I am using the Turbo Boost, but keeping it steady.
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Very interesting!
Many thanks,
I’ll give that a crack
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Wow, this seems like some very important information that (I think) most people would know nothing about!
I thought SpeedShift is frequently mentioned as one of the CPU throttling components to disable in order to optimize a computer for audio production.
I wonder if this Quick CPU app (or similar) is something basically everyone who has a Windows laptop dedicated to Gig Performer should use.
Maybe too late, but just in case it helps someone. (I think it is in the performance guide also): Create a new power profile (use control panel, not the new and sexy settings app). This power profile must be a ‘high performance’ profile.
Tweaking an existing ‘balanced’ or low performance profile is NOT the same.
For me this made a big difference
I downloaded and setup quickCPU yesterday on my i5 8225U windows laptop.
When I set it to maximum performance, I saw my clock frequencies peg at 3 ghz. This laptop has always struggled to maintain a long term boost (I think there’s some rather aggressive cooling settings going on I’ve never been able to bypass), and usually settles around 2 ghz… makes it VERY unstable for live use.
I played a Pianoteq NY Steinway patch that tends to cause cpu overs for 30 minutes with no glitching! And, my thermals hovered around 60 C. Hotter than it normally gets, but still no where near 100 max.
I’m just blown away at the life this breathed into my struggling little ultrabook laptop.
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