You may need to increase the buffer. That would be my first guess.

hueseph wrote: You may need to increase the buffer. That would be my first guess.

How can I do that?!?

Cubase has a VST performance meter you can display - if it's constantly hitting 100%, then you're pushing your system too hard and either need to reduce the number of VSTs running, increase/upgrade your system resources, or tweak your system to get it running as efficiently as possible (always a good idea anyway).

drumsab wrote: How can I do that?!?

Check your manual. This is something you should have done with your basic setup of Cubase. We're not going there are we?

As far as freeing up resources, you can also "Freeze" tracks or render them to a new track. Again, refer to your manual.

hueseph wrote: [quote=drumsab]How can I do that?!?

Check your manual. This is something you should have done with your basic setup of Cubase. We're not going there are we?

As far as freeing up resources, you can also "Freeze" tracks or render them to a new track. Again, refer to your manual.

Thanks Hueseph, I am no pro, taught myself all the stuff, so in most areas, I am still very much a newbie!!

Even a "pro" reads the manual.

hueseph wrote: Even a "pro" reads the manual.

lol, yes, thanks again!

Keywords: "Buffer settings"

Now where do you suppose those keywords would be entered? Ah, the manual. Of course!

There should be an electronic version on their site.

I have managed to pinpoint more where the problem lies. It seems to be Guitar Rig 3 who is giving me the huge CPU loads. Strange, because I have previously not experienced problems, I could load it up to 4 or 5 tracks at the same time without difficulty.
Now that I have a more clear view, I still don't know how to get rid of the problem though....even by looking in the manual. Or the Steinberg forum.
:cry:
It looks like I will have to turn to my Boss pedal once again....

The problem seems to be progressive.
I have my metronome set to audi click , this one is now also crackled. When I switch it to midi click, no prob;emos.
All the problems are in the audio.... :evil:

Adjust the buffer settings. this should help. You should be able to increase it to 256 samples without too much latency. Also you can use a lesser vst effect like [[url=http://[/URL]="http://frettedsynth…"]Freeamp3[/]="http://frettedsynth…"]Freeamp3[/] to record with, then apply Guitar Rig 3 after the fact. Then you can boost the buffers up to 1024 and it won't affect your latency as badly.

I went and de-installed the whole bunch, because I even had problems without the VST instruments and effects. Just plainly recording my clean guitar gave this problem in playback, it's not only crackling noise, it's just plain distorted!

So, without plugins and CPU meter down to almost zero, it still gave this problem...

When playing midi, problem not there. Problem seems to be only in the audio part. Playing music from my system (mp3) is alright.

De-installed everything and just re-installed Cubase, nothing else. And you know what? Problem is still there.

When I look at my ASIO set up, it says the Lambda has a buffer of 2048.
I do not see how I can change it in that particular window though....
also the ASIO MME test was ok.

Pleez help me out :cry:

Do you happen to have any cracked software? Cracks will do that. Sometimes it's just a matter of one plug in that effects the whole lot. Are you recording to your system drive? That is a big no no. Get a separate drive for your audio. Defragment your drives regularly. Maximize your ram and follow the optimization instructions on[[url=http://[/URL]="http://home.comcast…"] this[/]="http://home.comcast…"] this[/] page. It's a long list of changes. Read everything and apply everything that is relevant to your system.

Some of the more important ones are:

Disable indexing services.
Check the list of autorun programs and disable the unnecessary ones.

And these:

Windows XP Services Guide
Run XP-AntiSpy, Shoot The Messenger and Unplug n' Pray first since those utilities will disable some of these services for you. If you are not 100% sure about a service leave it on its default state. The goal is not to turn off as many services as possible but rather to disable only unneeded services.

Instruction - Go to Start, Run, type "services.msc" and press enter. Left-click on the status bar twice to filter all the started service to the top. Double left-click on the Service Name you wish to change. Change the "Startup Type" to either Automatic, Manual or Disabled then select "Apply" and "OK", repeat for all of the following:

Disabled - The following is a list of Services that you can disable on most systems:

Disable Alerter
Disable Distributed Link Tracking Client
Disable Help and Support - (If you use Windows Help and Support leave this enabled)
Disable Indexing Service
Disable IPSEC Services
Disable Messenger - (Shoot the Messenger and installing SP2 or higher will disable this)
Disable Portable Media Serial Number - (Leave enabled for use with security dongles)
Disable Remote Registry Service
Disable Secondary Logon
Disable SSDP Discovery Service - (Unplug n' Pray will disable this)
Disable Telnet
Disable Upload Manager
Disable Wireless Zero Configuration - (If you are on a wireless network leave this enabled)

Wow, that is quite a list!
I have some freeware plugins, but I've had them for a while, so I don't think that's the root of all this evil.
Not recording to my system drive, I have a separate drive for all my audio and Libraries.

It remains a mystery to me, because I haven't changed anything to my setup, and all of a sudden there's this crappy sound. And the mystifying part to me is that it only affects my audio within de Cubase, not my music mp3's.

I'll have a go on your list,
thanks very much for your efforts on helping me, it means a lot. 8-)

I'll let you know if anything changes for the better.

Is it possible that your interface is experiencing hardware problems? I am not certain how midi is played back through an interface but I was thinking that if mp3 plays back ok, and clean guitar recording is distorted that potentially a problem might be occuring in the A/D/A conversion. Any way to borrow a different interface or try yours on another system? That might also explain why the problem just suddenly started.

jg49 wrote: Is it possible that your interface is experiencing hardware problems? I am not certain how midi is played back through an interface but I was thinking that if mp3 plays back ok, and clean guitar recording is distorted that potentially a problem might be occuring in the A/D/A conversion. Any way to borrow a different interface or try yours on another system? That might also explain why the problem just suddenly started.

I have. I have installed the Cubase on the laptop of my friend, which has also Windows XP Pro. I even used my Lexicon Lambda.
It worked fine. Used my guitar to record a bit, without plugins of course. It worked liked a charm.
My goal was to rule out the Lambda, and it did.

Midi playback is fine. I guess it is some software problem, I am addressing it now, cc cleaner, disk defragmenting, the works, de-installing and re-installing.
I'm guessing I picked up something somewhere, though the software is ligit. I do have some FTP issues to address.
working on it....

Cool. Post your results if you don't mind. It's always good to have reference material for troubleshooting.

I had a similar problem after an automatic windows update once. It was something that affected firewire ports, like the one my audio interface uses. You can check for recent installations in control panel -> add remove software, tick the appropriate box there somewhere. After uninstalling the udpate all was well.