Topic by GrantOsborne

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Topic: Lots of cracking/cutting out w/Pianoteq 9.12 on Surface Pro 6

I’ve never had any issues before.  Pianoteq 8 still runs fine with the same settings.  Tonight I uninstalled/reinstalled with no success.  I am having the same issue in stand alone mode as well as with Gig Performer.  I tried backing down the polyphony to as low as 32, and the buffering as low as 512.  I also backed down the output volume of both Pianoteq and Gig performer to make sure my levels weren’t spiking.  I also disabled everything but midi channel 1 to make sure I wasn’t sending duplicate midi data.

My computer is a few years old but it’s still an i7.  It can smoothly run multiple instances of Keyscape, Trillian, NI, etc…

I also have Pianoteq 9 on my iPhone and iPad and both work fine through the same keyboard.

Anyway, I cannot figure out what the issue is…any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Last edited by GrantOsborne (14-02-2026 04:09)

Reply by hebele

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Re: Lots of cracking/cutting out w/Pianoteq 9.12 on Surface Pro 6

GrantOsborne wrote:

I’ve never had any issues before.  Pianoteq 8 still runs fine with the same settings.  Tonight I uninstalled/reinstalled with no success.  I am having the same issue in stand alone mode as well as with Gig Performer.  I tried backing down the polyphony to as low as 32, and the buffering as low as 512.  I also backed down the output volume of both Pianoteq and Gig performer to make sure my levels weren’t spiking.  I also disabled everything but midi channel 1 to make sure I wasn’t sending duplicate midi data.

My computer is a few years old but it’s still an i7.  It can smoothly run multiple instances of Keyscape, Trillian, NI, etc…

I also have Pianoteq 9 on my iPhone and iPad and both work fine through the same keyboard.

Anyway, I cannot figure out what the issue is…any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I have a surfacebook with i7-8650U cpu. I believe that is same as your surface pro 6.
I used to get lots of crackling when I was using Pianoteq 8. Increasing the buffer size did not help at all. I've tried many things but controlling/disabling cpu C-states was the only thing mattered. It is a cpu feature that lets OS to disable cpu cores to save battery. And Windows is pretty aggressive with it. I think it still stops cores even when using best performance power settings.

I use ThrottleStop to disable cpu parking (C-states) now. However I do not recommend it unless you are into deep diving cpu internals. Instead you should try ParkControl. It is a free (donationware I think) utility with a simple UI. It changes the power plan and some registry settings. It should be reversible.

After disabling that, my surfacebook can run Pianoteq 8 / 9 with 64 buffer size in Reaper with a couple of additional plugins. I've recently increased that to 128 so I can also do a video call for online lessons. Very occasionally I still get a crackling or two but it is because of a rogue process hogging the cpu, like a windows update.

Good luck.

Reply by GrantOsborne

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Re: Lots of cracking/cutting out w/Pianoteq 9.12 on Surface Pro 6

Thank you very much for this information.  I’m sure this is the right path.  I still remember the hassle of finding the hidden power settings and disabling/deleting the Cortana assistant (which would immediately reinstall itself).  I never felt like I had solved everything so this core throttling is most likely the issue.

I did download Throttlestop and watched some tutorials but unfortunately some of the settings are locked, so I’m going to have to figure out how to unlock them. 

I have a gig tonight so I don’t want to mess around too much more with it today, but I will report back when I’m able to give it some more attention.

Thanks again.

Reply by hebele

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Re: Lots of cracking/cutting out w/Pianoteq 9.12 on Surface Pro 6

GrantOsborne wrote:

Thank you very much for this information.  I’m sure this is the right path.  I still remember the hassle of finding the hidden power settings and disabling/deleting the Cortana assistant (which would immediately reinstall itself).  I never felt like I had solved everything so this core throttling is most likely the issue.

I did download Throttlestop and watched some tutorials but unfortunately some of the settings are locked, so I’m going to have to figure out how to unlock them. 

I have a gig tonight so I don’t want to mess around too much more with it today, but I will report back when I’m able to give it some more attention.

Thanks again.

ThrottleStop has too many knobs, a bit of an overkill. You should try ParkControl instead: https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

It has much simpler UI.

Reply by Kengrayfield

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Re: Lots of cracking/cutting out w/Pianoteq 9.12 on Surface Pro 6

GrantOsborne wrote:

I’ve never had any issues before.  Pianoteq 8 still runs fine with the same settings.  Tonight I uninstalled/reinstalled with no success.  I am having the same issue in stand alone mode as well as with Gig Performer.  I tried backing down the polyphony to as low as 32, and the buffering as low as 512.  I also backed down the output volume of both Pianoteq and Gig performer to make sure my levels weren’t spiking.  I also disabled everything but midi channel 1 to make sure I wasn’t sending duplicate midi data.

My computer is a few years old but it’s still an i7.  It can smoothly run multiple instances of Keyscape, Trillian, NI, etc…

I also have Pianoteq 9 on my iPhone and iPad and both work fine through the same keyboard.

Anyway, I cannot figure out what the issue is…any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Are you running Windows? This post fixed my random pop issues finally: https://www.reddit.com/r/pianoteq/comme...r_windows/

My computer is more than 5 years old at this point. And it can play live with ASIO4ALL without any pop and cracking. Of course, you still need to dial in your ASIO buffer settings first.

Reply by GrantOsborne

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Re: Lots of cracking/cutting out w/Pianoteq 9.12 on Surface Pro 6

hebele wrote:

ThrottleStop has too many knobs, a bit of an overkill. You should try ParkControl instead: https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

It has much simpler UI.

Oh yes, sorry I did read your initial recommendation and then proceeded to completely do the opposite!

I will investigate Parkcontrol and also the Reddit post recommended by Kengrayfield.  My Gig Performer files have also been failing to load recently so I could have some other issues as well.

Reply by hebele

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Re: Lots of cracking/cutting out w/Pianoteq 9.12 on Surface Pro 6

GrantOsborne wrote:

Oh yes, sorry I did read your initial recommendation and then proceeded to completely do the opposite!

I will investigate Parkcontrol and also the Reddit post recommended by Kengrayfield.  My Gig Performer files have also been failing to load recently so I could have some other issues as well.

I think ParkControl does the similar things to that reddit post.

Also I agree with the post above about ASIO drivers. If you have an audio interface with ASIO drivers you should use the provided drivers. If not then you can try a generic ASIO driver like ASIO4ALL, FlexASIO or Steinberg's generic ASIO driver.

This stuff is the most frustrating part of using Windows.

Good luck.