Why does Audition randomly stop recording

Report · Aug 24, 2020

Hi guys,

Quick note: I copied and pasted this post and made a few tweaks for my own set-up as the OP hit every single point I was going to write.

I run a Dell XPS 15 (2018) 1TB SSD 32 GB RAM 64-bit Windows 10 operating system and a Nvidia GTX 1050i that offloads 8g of RAM if need be, and I'm having trouble recording my podcast. I usually have my laptop connected to a Kensington sd5300dt dock via USB-C and the dock also has a 4K monitor connected to it via HDMI.

In terms of audition, I record in multitrack mode, and I'm usually recording myself and 2 other hosts on my Presonus Audiobox 1818 VSL. What I usually do is I open the audio hardware, change the drive to ASIO and then find the Presonus for the output and input. Then I arm each track onto a Mono track Line 1, 2 and 3.

I put my computer in airplane mode last time to see if it would make any difference, and it didn't... it still stopped recording a few times during a one hour conversation.

It has been so incredibly frustrating as it really interupts the flow of the conversation and it's embarrassing with my guests. I was wondering if you could recommend some things to try to resolve this issue?

I have a feeling it has to do with Windows Sounds... but I don't know how to fix this issue... I saw a member had said to use an interface with its own driver... and I thought the Presonus had its own driver so I wasn't sure.

In terms of where I'm recording to... I've tried all sorts of methods... I've had the Disk Cache on various external drives and on the local drive while recording to either the local drive or to an external hard drive... I've tried every arrangement and various combinations and it still randomly stops.

I've followed every optimization guide I can find and I don't quite know what to do. I really don't want to give up Audition despite finding that may be the only option.

Any suggestions would be great as I know my machine and the interface are very capable to do basic multitrack recording... I just need to understand why it keeps stopping!

I really appreciate the help!

Thanks everyone!

Report · Aug 25, 2020

To add to this, I cannot use my ASIO interface as an audio output to listen to recorded audio with effects or it gets super laggy and broken up. For over a year, I have plugged in a Soundblaster G6 external soundcard to do my editing. It has recently started to do the same thing where sporadically, the audio will become slowed, laggy and broken.

Audition is just breaking down left and right. I ran a test and recorded a 2 hour unbroken stream of 3 inputs on Reaper and had absolutely no issues.

Please help Adobe! I don't want to lose you!

Report · Aug 25, 2020

It sounds like your problems here are not Audition, but your computer. If you have a machine that starts lagging behind and becoming non-responsive (especially with an ASIO driver) then something within it is attempting to take it over and steal processing cycles. We can't tell what that is, but a few starting points would be Wifi polling, agressive anti-virus software, and almost anything else running in the background that doesn't need to be. With the antivirus software for instance, having it scan everything that's being written to a drive is inevitably going to screw your performance significantly - you really can't allow it to do that; you need to wire-fence some of it so it's not scanned. It's this sort of thing (and not having the OS optimised for audio in general) that causes these sorts of problems.

Manipulating audio on a computer is not like 'mormal' computing - it has completely different timing requirements, and not setting them up correctly will inevitably lead to major problems. If you do a google search using a term like 'optimise Windows 10 for audio use' you will find a lot of information about what you should do.

There is one other thing. Since you've said that it works okay with Reaper, you might like to try resetting all of Audition's preferences back to their vanilla settings and see if that restores any sort of normality. This is very easy to do; just restart Audition with the Shift key held down.

Report · Sep 19, 2020

Hey Steve!

Very much appreciate the response.

Regarding the computer - I agree, though I don't think it's open processes. I regularly practice shutting everything down I possibly can prior to using Audition and the problem persists. I'm only using the Windows Defender anti-virus software. The computer itself is optimized to every setting I can find in every forum imaginable and the problem still persists.

My best guess on this one is that the XPS 15 9570 has had some reported issues with the cooling system in that it sucks real bad. I'm assuming that the CPU is getting too hot and causing it to overload far faster than it would if it were properly cared for by Dell's manufacturing team. I've ordered a huge Dell XPS tower that has a far better cooling system, an updated 10th gen i9 processer, double the RAM and a bigger better GPU to offload from the RAM. If this doesn't solve the problem then I believe it is indeed an Adobe issue.

Report · Oct 01, 2020

Hey there Steve,

Lo and behold, $2800 and a computer that's 10x more powerful and every single optimization tip later, the problem persists. Looks like I'll have to ditch Audition as I can't afford to lose business because of faulty software.

I really hope the developers look into this as this is an incredibly critical issue for podcasters who record for clients in studio.

Report · Oct 01, 2020

I looked back and saw that you'd mentioned Windows sounds. You do realise that they have to be turned firmly off for Audition to function correctly, don't you? Just a thought...

I should also add that I wouldn't dream of using Audition - or any other software app, come to that - for any sort of recording that I cared about and couldn't easily redo. So all my location recording is done onto firmware-driven devices, and that includes the backup recordings, too.

Report · Oct 04, 2020

Hey Steve,

I'll be sure that windows sounds are firmly disabled.

I'm very troubled by your last answer. This insinuates that any and all recordings through USB audio interfaces to computers is a fool's errand and also completely rejects the idea that others who are recording via USB interfaces to their laptops/PCs using programs outside of Adobe successfully for years now are doing it wrong because they're not recording to secondary devices. It also suggests that those who are taking this approach simply do not care about their audio recordings which is, to be honest, pretty condescending.

I guess I'll just have to switch to another software that allows me to record successfully because it's becoming clear that I'm not going to get help or attention from Adobe as using their program as intended but having such a critical issue is a moot point because it's not to a firmware-driven device.

Report · Oct 05, 2020

There's nothing condescending about that at all. I'm glad you can afford the costs of major session retakes, almost invariably caused by Microsoft, because I can't. I've had this happen once, and I'm never allowing it again. This has nothing at all to do with 'not caring' - in fact the exact opposite. You've overstated and misinterpreted this completely.

Is your Presonus connected directly to the PC or via the dock?

Report · Oct 05, 2020

If you read my update, you'd see that I picked up a new tower so it's no longer hooked into a dock but right into the PC.

I don't have that luxury Steve, not at all, hence why I'm here. To assume that Adobe is infallible when this forum exists specifically to point out the flaws that exist within it, is nuts to me. In addition, this post, as originally noted, was copied from another user because we were both experiencing an identical issue while being completely independent from one other.

Also, when you're being perceived as condescending, you may want to consider that it's your tone that's setting that off and adjust accordingly. You've roundly rejected any possibility of this issue being Adobe related at any and all cost despite Audition's reputation for being incredibly buggy and unreliable.

Report · Oct 05, 2020

Just ran a recording with Windows Sounds completely off. The issue is still happening.

If this helps - this happens over the course of about 3 seconds:

-The monitors go completely quiet

-The recording freezes completely

-A strange sound comes through the monitor (almost like the feedback from a guitar who's amp is too loud) for a split second.

-The playhead and timer continue on but the recording stops entirely with the monitors active again.

Report · Oct 05, 2020

It's happened 3 times in one session. Once at about 5 minutes, 35 minutes and an hour and 5 minutes. This isn't consistent as I can sometimes get one 90 minute recording with no interruptions. No other programs running at the same time. CPU usage is about 5%, memory at 10%.

Report · Oct 05, 2020

The only thing I can think of now is that the interface is USB 2.0 and can run a sample rate of up to 96k but I run it on 48k.

Report · Dec 22, 2023

After switching to the USB 3.1 Gen 2 port on my pc, the issue was resolved. I was using a USB 2.0 interface and having the issue where it would stop recording after 1-1.5 minutes consistently.