2021-04 update: this article was published in early 2013. Fun fact, I still use the same PC I wrote about here (including the NI Komplete 6 audio interface) for my music productions. I’ve added more RAM and lots of additional VSTs and sample libraries. 🙂

I removed some links to software that unfortunately is not available anymore. Even though the article is somewhat older, the trouble-shooting methodology is still valid today.

No articles for a long time – what happened?

Almost 3 months ago I finally bought a new PC system. I also got a bunch of new software like Komplete 8 and Omnisphere. So, there was lots of installing and configuring going on. Templates to build. New sounds to check out.

And I did write a 2000+ word article on how to choose your music PC components. So why isn’t at least that article online yet?

Good question.

I simply couldn’t justify an article about how to choose the best components for your DAW, when my own new system wasn’t working the way it should.

Audio Drop-Outs and System Crashes

See, after the first round of toying with the new system and building various Cubase templates I experienced audio drop-outs and system crashes. Not fun after putting down a large sum of cash with high expectations for a well-performing system.

A single Omnisphere instance sometimes caused crackling and drop-outs. Now Omnisphere is a comparatively resource-hungry beast – that’s part of the reason I didn’t already buy it years ago. It simply would NOT have run on my old, measly single core Athlon PC with 2GB of RAM. But on a quad-core i7 with 16 GB of RAM and some SSD drives there shouldn’t be any issues at all.

At least not with a single instance.

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