Audio buffer and crackling

[cinhcet]

Hi,

After my old interface has died (15+ years old with firewire), I decided to not only buy a new interface, but also a new system.
Motu Ultralight AVB (plugged in via USB)
i7-10700K
32gb RAM
NVME SSD
Win 10

Now, with the standard buffer size of 128 in the Motu configuration, I get crackling all over the place. This is especially visible in Europa with its 'Friendly Keys' preset if I play many notes at the same time. The CPU is hardly doing anything, but then there are these spikes where the crackling occurs.
The very strange thing is that if I increase the buffer size, this phenomenon does not go away, until a buffer of 1024.
Even more strange, if I DECREASE the buffer to only 64 samples, then there is much much less crackling (although still there occasionally). Does this make any sense?

LatencyMon shows that my system is suitable for realtime audio processing.

Any ideas?

[MrFigg]

Have you been in and selected the correct driver in preferences?

[cinhcet]

sure

[MannequinRaces]

The same sample size in your Moto software needs to be the same setting in Reason. If they’re mismatched it can cause what you’re experiencing. Maybe check that. Not sure if they automatically match each other.

[miyaru]

Do You run the latest version of Sonarworks Reference 4?

[cinhcet]

Thanks for all your answers. Sometimes it helps telling other people to find the issue.
My mainboard comes with a software called MSI Dragon Center where you can tweak CPU profiles, fan speeds etc. For some reason, this must have interfered with the energy options of windows, or, honestly, I don't know what it was doing. Under more careful investigation, I saw that the CPU was running only slightly above 2 GHz (although being in "gaming mode" in this dragon center).
After uninstalling this software, I don't have any cracklings anymore and can play a rather large song with a buffer of only 64 samples (no mastering VSTs).

This also explains why there were less cracklings with lower buffer settings, since in this case the CPU was running at a slightly higher clock speed. The same hold true for increasing the sampling rate, for 192kHz I had less cracklings than on 48kHz....