Izotope Iris Spitting and Crackling

Kaivey

Estimable
Jan 5, 2016
2
0
4,510
This is a weird one. I have Cubase on one hard drive and my CPU intensive synths like Iris crackle and spit. So I put W 10 on another hard drive and Iris plays okay on it. I don't get it, it's the same computer. I can go backwards and forwards between the drives and the fault is still there on my first hard drive.

I'm don't understand these results, but here's some tests I ran with Samsung Magician. Both hard drives Samsung SDD 840 Series. Samsung Magician says both drives are good. AHCI activated in both systems.

First hard drive (where Iris and U-he Zebra don't play well): 1TB

Sequential MB/s Read 553, Write 551. Random IOPS Read 92,345, Write 84,237

2nd Hard Drive: 500GB

Sequential Read 553, Write 320. Random IOPS Read 91,826, Write 61,888
 
Solution
You can use Task Manager, Performance Monitor, and Resource Monitor to observed what app, processes, and services are using system resources.

(Which you may already know based on your comment "Iris 2 is very CPU intensive".)

Look for some combination of things that may be causing the problem; a "perfect storm" where any one given factor is not a problem but a combination of factors is a problem.

Kaivey

Estimable
Jan 5, 2016
2
0
4,510
580GB on the 1TB drive and 112GB left on the 500GB drive. I changed the SATA cable over with another hard drive (not the 500GB drive. I haven't got them labelled in my drive bay and I stuck them in with double sided tape which I wish I hadn't, blue tac will do). The power cable wiggles everywhere and goes to several hard drives. Anyway, it's exactly the same, Iris 2 is very CPU intensive and with a buffer set at 512 samples it spits and cackles, but on my 500GB SSD drive I can go down to 64 samples and only once hitting all my keys over and over again did it cut out for a second.

It looks like I was just unlucky with the first drive. Does the CPU constantly read data from the C drive when you are playing a synth? Iris uses samples so I guess it does. Samsung Magician says everything is okay. It has a three year warranty which it has just fallen outside of.
 
You can use Task Manager, Performance Monitor, and Resource Monitor to observed what app, processes, and services are using system resources.

(Which you may already know based on your comment "Iris 2 is very CPU intensive".)

Look for some combination of things that may be causing the problem; a "perfect storm" where any one given factor is not a problem but a combination of factors is a problem.
 
Solution

nivekvb

Prominent
Aug 14, 2017
2
0
510
Guess what? I cloned my good 500GB SSD drive over to my 1TB SSD just now and everything is okay. Isn't that weird?

I put Cubase and Iris on my 1TB SSD about two years ago and it was spitting and crackling as if my CPU couldn't keep up, but I installed the software onto another SSD and it was okay. So now, the other day, I reformatted my 1TB drive and put on a brand new install of Cubase and Iris and it had the same problem.I went back between the drives a number of times and I tried it the next day too. I also tried different buffer sizes.. So today I cloned my good drive over to my bad drive and everything was okay. I guess only a scientist might understand it?

Thanks for your help.