Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Pianoteq: speakers popping (only in Pianoteq!)

Doesn't matter that much if you only play piano.
Orchestras or Organ VST are an entirely different ballgame.

What matters is how optimized your system is, how much is running in the background.

For Pianoteq, avoid any standby/energy saving settings. Typically my system runs on the "balanced" setting but Pianoteq doesn't like the auto downclock of the processor at all. Pop city, oftentimes but not always.

So I use the "ultimate" power plan instead when problems arise:
https://www.howtogeek.com/368781/how-to-enable-ultimate-performance-power-plan-in-windows-10/

It varies a bit from boot to boot though, depending on what Windows is choosing to do at the moment and how many programs I had already running. If all else fails, doing a clean reboot always helps.

I typically use 192 samples @ 48000Hz. Set pianoteq to the same sample rate as your system setting. Avoid on the fly resampling at all costs.

For Dell computers, disable all Dell services, especially the support assist one. I do not remember from the top of my head the name of the particular one that increases latency brutally. On this computer, warranty already expired, I simply uninstalled all Dell services but on the other one I set all services to manual and latency tests indicated it worked (within reason).

I don't have the "ultimate" plan there, but I guess "Ryzen 5 High performance plan" will do...


Interesting, how do I know what my "system setting" is? I thought that this was entirely pianoteq thing...


It's a custom desktop build, so I have the benefit of not having annoying services installed

One thing that is very annoying about these asio drivers is that once I launch pianoteq, all other sounds from any applications sent to the speakers are suppressed, which makes things like "play along" and such impossible. I used to have pianoteq open at all times, and just turned on VPC to play a little, now I have to close pianoteq to be able to use the computer with sounds normally...

That's why it's best to use a separate audio interface for the piano.
Leave the Windows sounds run on the cheap internal audio interface. Use the external interface for quality sound.

BTW, which ASIO are you using?

+1
RME babyface pro is expensive but it's the Apple Mac of the audio-interface world---no fettling required usually.
Stay away from Presonas products if you don't like faff.

I have a Presonus box. Works great.

BTW ... what is "fettling"?

Is there several ASIO? I have no clue, pianoteq now has the option "ASIO4ALL v2" since I installed the first thing google found when I typed "asio drivers install"

The cheap audio interface is REALLY crappy (screen built-in speakers)


Maybe...fiddling, weirdly misspelled? it kiiinda sounds like fiddling, if you squint a little (with your ears, you know...)

Fettling is a bit like deburring, I suppose.

(It's a real word. There's a definition for it. And then there's the colloquial use in UK English.)

Most (all?) external audio interfaces come with an ASIO driver ... along with whatever other drivers are required for the interface.

Built in audio interfaces generally don't have an ASIO driver ... although I've heard that some few do.

So that's why I was wondering what you're using.

Except RME BabyFace seems to have no bugs what-so-ever. And RME seems to provide firmware update support for over a decade.

My Dell laptop has RealTek built in audio card. Realtek ASIO driver is terrible; it crashes from time to time and only allows very large buffer sizes. If you want latest RealTek drivers this gets you started (but I wouldn't bother unless you or your system have problems).

https://www.tenforums.com/sound-audio/135259-latest-realtek-hd-audio-driver-version-2-a.html

Finally, the old ASIO4ALL is quite old and not "the best" these days. I read complaints that it does not run optimally on Windows 10. Some suggested that if you have a modern ASIO driver, ASIO4ALL might interfere with computer performance so I uninstalled ASIO4ALL and just use the RME drivers that came with my external interface.

Yep you really don't want to use ASIO4All now. Plus the windows 10 WASPI driver is not bad. Not as good as ASIO but it now delivers under 10msec roundtrip audio latency.

Some software like Cakewalk by Bandlab have worked with Microsoft on the driver. I have used it and for simple projects and playback it has been fine.

I will add a basic USB audio interface from Focusrite, Presonus, MOTU would be money well spent for a ASIO driver. I would only suggest getting one with a MIDI I/O onboard the Audio Interface. Reason being sometimes it comes in handy and the units with it on board are not much more money.

Even better performance if using a desktop box would result from getting a FireWire or thunderbolt card and external DAC or recording interface for it. By using DMA for the I/O work is offloaded from the CPU so that you have more processing power for pianoteq, and no latency issues.

FireWire was great but it is older so difficult support.

TB provides much better performance than USB2 but for virtual pianos they are expensive and there may be no significant benefit. For intense video work-gaming, professional audio engineering with lots of tracks, etc. TB can be awesome.

Some TB caveats to think about if you like that path:

- Few TB consumer audio interfaces sold. Some of them have software issues that are not getting resolved. I think there is a price premium.

- No TB3 interfaces. Since all recent computers are only TB3, you likely will need to buy another adapter (e.g. TB2 - TB3 dongle - cheap ones are unreliable)

- Good USB2 interfaces perform about as well as good TB interfaces for latency for consumers (see GS low latency database for apples-to-apples testing by an audio engineer).

- Vin who runs that GS database interviewed the founder of RME in a 2019 podcast. The founder said engineering TB firmware was very time consuming (and expensive). RME has TB interfaces but the founder said their USB2 performs just as well for consumers so they are not moving those interfaces from USB2.

- Intel sold some "low power" thunderbolt controllers. If your laptop has one, then it might run with half the lanes and might not support some TB accessories. Check your laptop to make sure you have a higher-performing thunderbolt controller. Years ago Intel stated this would largely migrate to the CPU but since the new 10th gen CPUs for 2020 are essentially 6th gen Skylake CPUs, that has not happened.

- Very few AMD TB options. They are rolling out now.

There are plenty of lousy USB interfaces so do your research before buying.

I don't understand the drivers thingy really, when I set up my desktop it already had this "realtek HD audio" thing, I suppose that is somehow in the motherboard...? So what's the benefit of having asio instead of that? ASIO > Realtek?

Sorry. You can try the RealTek ASIO, the ASIO4All, WASABI, to see what allows you to play Pianoteq with lowest buffers and no popping.

I still don't know how to check the "system setting" for this...Googling didn't show anything useful so far...

I have the same problem after reinstalling windows recently, Pianoteq ran pretty well before, now there is popping all the time. I have same hardware I had before(except CPU):
i7 9700K
16 GB RAM
SSD
Presonus AUDIOBOX USB 96
My settings:

And BTW it worked pretty well on 64 samples(before reinstalling windows)

Sometimes it takes several hours and restarts for the operating system and drivers to settle down after a clean install, so maybe that is your issue.

Make sure windows power options is "high performance" or similar.

Make sure you have the latest AudioBox drivers and firmware.

1) hence the link on how to activate it. High performance should be enough, it should lock the CPU into turbo mode as well. Pianoteq does not like the variations of the clock speed.

2) In case that this is a real question: system settings -> system -> sound -> sound control panel (text link on the right side of the window)-> double click on your playback device -> advanced. There you see the system sample rate. That has to be the same as in pianoteq.


Most people here have a hard-on for ASIO. It does have it's adavantages, esp when you start working with VSThosts. If you use the standalone players, esp in pianoteq, Windows sound is also an option. You can set it to 192 samples and play with a 4ms buffer latency just fine.

Definitely. AV program and Windows indexing service will run amok for quite a while.
Just leave the computer running for a night, so windows can do it's thing.