Inspiring

Question

Why is Audition So Sluggish for Me?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
September 8, 2018
6 replies
14774 views

I'm running the latest version of Adobe Audition CC, on Windows 10, 32GB or RAM (which I never come close to using all of), on a machine with an Intel i7 7th generation 4.2Ghz processor. It runs smoothly for most operations I do. Even simple things in Audition are fine. But once I get a big session going with lots of life effects, things really grind to a halt. This is understandable, but I'm wondering if there's something I can to to alleviate the huge lag time I end up getting every time I hit play in a session. It becomes so laggy that it's incredibly frustrating to use. I mean, a 4 or 5 or 6 second delay, every time I want to hit play.

I keep all my files on the SSD C: drive. Is that better than a secondary standard HDD?

I avoid using effects like Full Reverb and Reverb and others like that coded red. I use almost no VST plugins.

What can I do to speed things up? Is my CPU just too slow?

Any advice welcome! And I'll answer any probing questions you may have.

Thanks, AA community!

This topic has been closed for replies.

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darren_pasemko

Inspiring

To rememdy the 3-4 second lag before playback. I pre-rendered my effects in the Effects Rack (little lightning bolt at the bottom), within the Multitrack view. I have up to 8 effects on a couple tracks. I have 15 tracks. The total duration of the project is just under 20 minutes. I broke it up into 4 different Audition projects. Approximately 5 minutes in duration per project. Everything plays fine now. I pre-render my tracks, and limit the duration of my project.

Here's my specs:
Adobe Audition 23.2.0.68
Windows 10

Motherboard: ASUS Z10PED8, Quad GPU & up to 512GB

Processor: 2x Intel Xeon E52620 v4 BroadwellEP 2.1GHz (3.0GHz Turbo) 85W 20MB L3 (16 Cores / 32 Threads)]

64 GB of RAM
NVIDIA Quadro K1200 4GB

Sound Card:Creative Sound Blaster AUDIGY FX 5.1 Channels, 24bit

Windows and my Program files are installed on a 250 GB drive with 43.6GB free left.

The project is on an 4 TB SSD drive with 3.63TB to spare.

I don't know for sure, but based on what SteveG_AudioMasters_has written in this whole thread, I think it's a graphics card problem? Or a Windows operating issue (my Windows is currently up to date for Windows 10). But at least things are operational now! No more lag. Probably time to get a new computer, or have less ambition with my audio needs. I was recording a 20 minute read through of a script, pretty heavily effected tracks, with three characters, temp music, and sound effects.

Just some more intel, in case any of this helps. Cheers!

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

One thing we never got to the bottom of is why the OP can't pre-render tracks. I've not heard of that happening to anybody before. Essentially it comes down to running a section of the mix engine in advance of doing either a mix or an export, but I can't imagine why it wouldn't work, if either a mix or an export happens correctly - if you see what I mean...

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ravenraspberrie

Participant

Hi! 2020 Running the latest software and having the same issues as the OP. Computer is 32g ram with an i7-9700k. Mega lag for playback and clips randomly stop playing during playback! Cant run even two tracks without stutter. Please let me know if you found a solution!

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fredk8028166

Participant

Any luck Ravenraspberry? Same thing. After effects and adobe audition audio is super laggy and stuttery all the sudden. I think this started maybe a month or two ago out of nowhere. I'm working on a beast of a system, btw, so resources shouldn't be an issue.

Craig_russo

Participant

I know this post is old but just Incase anyone reads it. I had a similar issue and what I found was that if I had any windows open with any kind of metering or Analysis like phase metering or loudness etc. it killed the performance hugely. Once I closed all that stuff everything worked fine.

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lawrencewu

Participant

Thank you! That fixed the sluggish performance in Audition (Mac) that I have been scratching my head about for months. After trying a number of Mac OS versions on different Macs with CC2019/2020 I was convinced that my Macs were simply too old for CC2019 forward and I was all set to pick up one of the new M1 Mac Minis to see if it would present a fix.

LaSalamanderAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for the suggestion, juniorc80735275 Would an internal or external SDD be better? What can I do to make that bottleneck be as wide as possible?

juniorc80735275

Participant

I would suggest internal SSD due to communication times being less between an internal to an external. But test out an external ssd as well. Your PC specs are awesome by the way. Cheers.

LaSalamanderAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks, juniorc80735275. I'll add a SSD to my system and see if that helps. But I'm guessing that, far and away, my failing pre-render is the real problem. This is a fairly new computer, and I tried to get something powerful enough to allow me to work on giant sessions like in Audition, but if the spec are indeed awesome, I guess it's not my system's fault.

But short of Adobe doing some kind of fix in the unforeseeable future for a pre-render problem that no one else seems to have but me, I'm wondering if I'm just screwed on this point.

SteveG_AudioMasters_

Community Expert

LaSalamander wrote
I keep all my files on the SSD C: drive. Is that better than a secondary standard HDD?

Just spotted this - BIG mistake. Keep only the OS and program files on your C: drive. Especially don't keep your Audition temp files on it. The only temp file you could allow on the root drive is the OS one. The OS grabs file locations and re-sizes them unless you stop it, and that's never been a good idea. If you have enough RAM, then you can dispense with the paging file altogether, to some advantage. There's a control panel for this - it's pretty easy to find. On this laptop (with insufficient RAM to ditch the paging file completely) it looks like this:

Don't let it do anything automatic at all - this just slows things down. And set the size of the paging file so that max and min are the same, so the system can't 'manage' it.

Most importantly, don't save any work on the C: drive - Microshaft could easily trash that for you. External drives are your friend. If you have one you can connect permanently, then keep Audition's temp file locations set to it as well. On the DAW I use a sacrificial SSD for them; if it crashes through being overwritten too many times, it doesn't matter.

But however you look at it, the chances are that it's your system that is causing you all the grief, not Audition.

LaSalamanderAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks so much for your thorough reply SteveG(AudioMasters)!

I immediately went and disabled my paging file (I'm guessing with 32GB of RAM, that should be fine.)

Then I moved all my files to a secondary internal HDD, my F drive. I don't have an an external SSD, so hopefully this is at least better.

Then I moved my primary disk cache to the HDD E drive, and the secondary disk cache to the F drive.

Then, with excitement and trepidation, I opened up Audition, ran my monster session, and....no appreciable difference. I get something like a 7-second delay between hitting play and getting playback. I can pre-render all the tracks I can, and that shrinks the delay to maybe less than a second, which would be fine, except then all the pre-render tracks go mute after about a second. But I suppose that's a different problem....