Dear All,

I have read this thread recently when I had clicks and pops in Studio One 5 Artist. I believe I could solve it extremely simply.
Background:
- I have an iCore 5 PC dedicated to DAW only. Sometimes surfing on the net but quite rare occasions.
- I use a Steinberg sound module with very low latency values (64 samples, about 3-6 millisends effective latency)
- I mostly record guitar / bass tracks recorded and played with guitar amp sim plugins (IK Multimedia, Scuffham etc...)
and have Steven Slate 5.5 drums plugin for the drums
- I have about 80 other FX plugins from IK MUltimedia and such companies
- my typical song is about 1 drum track (SSD5.5) and 5-10 guitar tracks (all heavily effected, so CPU demanding)
- I use(d) Cakewalk by Bandlab and had about 2-3 times when clicks and pops happened
- all cases were related to a huge Windows Update in the background

So it is a pretty stabilized DAW configuration, I think.

Now I recently purchased Studio One 5 Artist and had clicks and pops quite often. All settings are similar to the CbB setup with one exception. More about this later...

I was using Studion One 5 and was in a mixing workflow of a song (SSD5.5 drum tracks and 5 real audio recorded guitar tracks). I was setting the track volumes, balances, and FX settings during the mixing process both for the individual drum tracks and the guitar tracks. Interestingly in some cases had no C&P, other playbacks cases I had a lot. Typically when the drum patterns changed from verse to chorus or fills.
When I was totally fed up with the amount of C&P heard, I increased the number of samples in the audio settings up to 256 samples (of course, the latency increased a lot) but could not eliminate the C&P issue. Finally reading this thread (and some others), I checked the plugins in the performance monitor and saw that the SSD5.5 caused the problem with CPU load varying between 14% up to 85% or higher. As I checked the settings and performance, did some playbacks again and again, with some tweaking on the mix of the song. C&P happened and not happened randomly.
Finally got the revelation: I have found that the C&P only happened when I selected the SSD5.5 drum track. The reason was that my Studio One 5 was set so that when I click on a track, it becomes active monitored for input and selected for recording automatically. I loved this function and found very helpful for my audio tracks. But as the mixing work required to click on the SSD5.5 tracks (snare, hihat etc...) quite often to set up FX and balance etc... the drum tracks were automatically set to active monitoring, too. I had an idea and disabled this function. and since that time all C&P eliminated with the lowest possible latency value (like used to be). I believe that the SSD5.5 demanded too much CPU to be able to record and to be active monitored for the input signal. Since I manually select an (audio) track monitored and set to recording, I never have the C&P.

So the problem is with the SSD5.5 being set to input monitored. Probably other software instruments could cause same issue (not yet tried). I do not blame the SSD5.5 - it is simply a fact that when this software instrument is actively input monitored, it does require high CPU performance on my system. Much higher than necessary.

Solution is to avoid setting active input monitoring on a software instrument track. At least for the SSD5.5.

Justification: the CbB has no such feature (auto select of a track) and also I NEVER set my drum track for input monitoring as it is only required for the audio tracks. And there is no C&P in the CbB.

Best Regards,

Tamas