Superior Drummer 3 stutters on blazing fast AlderLake hardware

[Kim Mossige]

Problem description: Stutters when using SD3 with my new machine when I play with a Roland TD17KVX midi controller.. For reference it works 100% fine on my old computer, a coffee lake 8700K with 32gb DDR4 ra.. I have completely reinstalled Windows 11 on this machine, but the stutters are still there even on “high performance” mode.. My computer has been reinstalled three times without it helping.

How it feels: I can play normally, and then stutter comes often when I play hard and fast on the cymbals or kick.. It’s as if the samples won’t get registered fast enough, even though the latency is very low and good. I’ve tested with various latency settings, aswell as having the samples on another harddrive.

Theory: My theory is that this Alder Lake architecture that uses bigLITTLE has trouble assigning SD3 exe to the correct cores.. Maybe it pushes SD3 over to the efficiency cores? Is this a problem with Superior Drummer 3 in relation to Alder Lake and Windows 11’s CPU govenor, perhaps?

What can be the reason for this? Is this a confirmed issue with Alder Lake and Windows 11? I can’t find anything regarding this on google, and I feel alone with this issue.

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My current specs:
Fractal Design Meshify 2 White TG Clear Tint
Fans: 2x 140mm front, 1x 140mm bak, ATX, mATX, ITX, Varenr: 1168651 / Prodnr: FD-C-MES2A-05
Intel Core i9-12900K @5.2ghz
ROG STRIX RTX 3090
Corsair RM1000x 1000W PSU
Arctic Freezer II AIO 360
Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 5200Mhz 32GB (2x16GB)
x2 WD Black SN850 1TB M.2 SSD
Samsung QVO 8TB SSD (Current sample holder)
ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-F GAMING WIFI, LGA1700 Hovedkort

Focusrite Clarett 4PRE USB
Roland TD17-KVX drumset
SD3 + MetalFoundry and Decades

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.8
Operating system: Windows 11

Topic

[Snowdog2324]

Noticing something similar/same after older laptop sits idle for a while and TD-30 remains on.  Only happens when playing faster and usually when VH-12 hi hats are played.  Doing a reconnect in SD3 audio settings to the TD-30 doesn’t fix issue.  Only restarting SD3 application does the stuttering go away until it sits idle for some time.  Maybe unrelated but wanted to share in case.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.8
Operating system: Windows 10

[Mark King]

The laptop is because it is throttling back. This may also be the case with the desktop. Make sure you are using the right power scheme. It needs to be one that keeps the cpu at 100%. I use the ultimate power plan which is a hidden one. Google it and it tells you how to make it visible.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[Kim Mossige]

No, the thing is that it is at high performance mode with 100% cpu on at all times, like I wrote in the original post.

[Mark King]

That’s why I said maybe the case as I was answering the laptop question. Have you ran latencyMon to see what the cause is? If not then this show you what is causing real-time problems. It could be the graphics which seems the common one although I see you haven’t mentioned this so probably on inbuilt graphics. I am also on a z390 m/b and a i9 9900 using inbuilt graphics so maybe not this. What have you set SD3 for cores in its settings? Try different ones. I have mine set at 1.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[pumpkinking]

I cannot speak for the Alder Lake processor or Win11, but SD3 running on my 8-core Mac M1 processor (arm64 arch, 4 big, 4 LITTLE) seems to run almost exclusively on the efficiency LITTLE cores, even when I try to play as aggressively as I can, with no stuttering.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.8
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

[Kim Mossige]

Hmm I tried to give it more than 1 core, I set it to 4 cores. It’s a tad bit better, but still stuttering.. I’m running an alder lake 12900K, and I’ve overclocked it to 5.4ghz since my first post here. The absolute fastest CPU out there right now.. I’ve tried with Hyperthreading both on and off, efficiency cores off, but still stuttery.

[Mark King]

Have you tried latencyMon to identify the problem. Have you done all windows mods. An example below
https://zoomcorp.com/media/documents/OptimizeWindows10_E.pdf

I think the answer mentioning a Mac M1 is totally irrelevant to this thread as the user doesn’t have one? My i9 9900 works perfectly but he doesn’t have that either!

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[pumpkinking]

The OP’s theory postulates that the issue is related to SD3 running on a bigLITTLE processor architecture (realizing that there are many aspects of this processor configuration that might be a potential reason).  I was merely pointing to a bigLITTLE processor architecture (Mac M1) that functions well with SD3.  So I was hoping to help eliminate possible sources of the problem.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.8
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

[Mark King]

Totally different machine altogether with a different os and different way of doing audio so irrelevant. The first question support would ask is PC or Mac as they are totally different and any answers would depend on which one it was. I’m only saying this so you know that you can’t compare the two. Not to have a go.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

• This post was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Mark King.

[pumpkinking]

In the future, maybe refrain from deriding people trying to help, even if you perceive that help to be “totally irrelevant”.  This is, after all, a community help forum: when people respond, take it or leave it, but don’t discourage it.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.2.8
Operating system: macOS Monterey (12)

[Ash Jones]

Yup, you are the first, congrats.

This is very interesting as it’s windows 11 & Alder Lake. The things I would try is:

1. Disable USB power management on all usb devices via device manager (good practice).
2. Disable all e-cores. There were reports of gamers losing FPS due to this.
3. Go back to windows 10.

I’m running a 2020 i5 mac at the mo and my next pc might be windows as the m1 mac for me not enough ports and the mac studio is just silly prices when you factor in memory and ssd prices.

[Mark King]

I wasn’t trying to discourage but to avoid confusion for anyone else reading who may think it was relevant. Accuracy is important for anyone else reading the thread. I am on the RME forum and if I put something wrong as I have done it gets pointed out. I am fine with that. I wasn’t attacking you personally but correcting it for the benefit of others. Sorry if I have offended.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[Kim Mossige]

Okay I feel like I’ve tried literally everything at this point, but the stutter appears still.. It happens when I play hard on my TD17KVX cymbals.. It’s very strange.. It’s as if it has loaded everything but the hard-hit-samples, and when I play hard it needs to “load” these ones.. But this isn’t the case, because it’s fine again for five minutes, and it starts all over again with the stutter. Stutter happens when I start playing with high intensity, fast and hard..

It’s so strange that I cannot find anything on this topic anywhere.. I’ve tried literally all of the CPU settings in Superior Drummer 3, giving it all cores all the way down to one core.. I’ve set performance mode, and I even made a script to allocate all CPU powers to Superior Drummer 3, but none of that helps.. ASIO buffer has been set from low to high, but it’s still the same.

I’m starting to think that Superior Drummer 3 might not support Windows 11 with Alder Lake CPUs?

Operating system: Windows 11

[John]

Hi keem85,

have you been in direct contact with Toontrack Support?

If not, perhaps you should? The Contact Support button is found at every FAQ page.

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

[Kim Mossige]

I have tried that, but I cannot find any contact form. It only leads back to knowledge/FAQ, actively hiding their email adress. I think it’s to make it difficult to contact support directly, to make people search for solutions instead?

In any case, perhaps you can tell me their email adress so I can get in touch with them 🙂 Thanks!

[Author]

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