Quad Cortex Is Corrupting Audio On USB Record On All 3 Devices (2 Laptops 1 Desktop)

Two or three replacement QCs, seems like the problem could be elsewhere, like the PC, or we would be hearing tons of reports on this. Latest motherboard drivers installed on PC? PC has latest Windows updates? Anti-virus software causing a problem or some other process that’s running periodically on the PC? USB driver conflict? What makes these issues sound unlikely is that it is happening on multiple PCs.

Any problems with unreliable power in your studio/home? Is your QC and PC plugged into a UPS?

Have you tried alternate DAWs? There are free ones out there such as Cakewalk and Tracktion. Might be worth checking out. Is this happening on any/all presets?

I would also uninstall, and then download and reinstall the USB Audio driver again if you haven’t already. Remove any USB devices other than mouse and keyboard. Try different USB ports. Even though you have tried several, I would also try yet another USB cable.

Yes Original power supply, connected to its own plug on the outlet

Alongside all of those things I crossed out, I downloaded Tiny11 and only installed the absolute crucial drivers.

It seems to the issue with the ASIO, here’s a reddit thread that seemingly has narrowed it down to a specific figure stat: USBaudioOutrdwrdistanceaverage

https://www.reddit.com/r/NeuralDSP/s/XDSQ8v9BIM

“While I was writing a post trying to explain to aid troubleshooting, I thought to check the USB info in settings, and noticed the value for “USBaudioOutrdwrdistanceaverage” was turning red when spiking above ~500, coinciding with the glitching. A minute or so after I found that page (prepping to take a photo or two), it stopped doing it, value levelled off at around 370-380, and no more glitching.

Long shot asking here, but does anyone happen to know what that stat is? What affects it? What can I do if it starts spiking again?”

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The thing is, I’ve used multiple other interfaces, this was never a concern.

I’ve used Headrush pedalboard at 24bit with 96KHz sample rate, this would obviously put more effort on the PC and yet it has never caused any issue like this on all 3 of these PC.

I also used the NUX Mighty Plug Audio at 24bit with 48KHz, same scenario, no issues.

I can’t pin point any more causations, the only commonality is the Neural DSP ASIO driver

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You might be correct but if it is the ASIO driver, I wonder why it isn’t impacting more users? You have tested this on multiple PCs and reported the issue affecting all of them. It doesn’t seem to be hardware specific but instead popping up on different pieces of hardware -different motherboards, different graphics cards and drivers, so you would think it would be a widespread problem. Unless you are running something on all three PCs you tested that is causing driver conflicts. This sounds like an issue for Neural tech support to get sorted out. Looks like your troubleshooting has been fairly comprehensive, other than perhaps trying a different DAW.

Btw, what Windows versions have you tested on?

Probably not it but have you tried turning off the ‘USB selective suspend’ setting under Windows ‘Power Options’ settings?

I do all the updates as they come in. Prioritized performance mode in all the options, did that battery one as well, and also disabled CPU boost

PC1 Win 10 22H2
PC2 Win 11 23H2
PC3 Win 11 23H2

I downloaded the Initial Release 5.31.1 - Feb 1, 2022 ASIO driver and so far it has not produce the same issue with 2 hours of testing.

Lets see after a few days, testing on PC3 Currently

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Hello
Does the glitches are totally gone with performance and CPU boost disabled ?
I am trying very hard to find a solution
Have a nice day

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Sadly. Nothing is working.

I do not know what to do next, and I think I’ll have to quit my shortly lived Quad Cortex era… sigh

This is a shame… What said Neural DSP ? It seems this issue is well known from a certain time.
I am actually chatting with them via a support ticket I hope they will find a way.

I tried this recently :
Bios update
Cable to USBC directly
Powered USBC dock
Asio4all
And more that I don’t remember

We can join our forces to make it work fine if you are OK ?

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Hey there
I don’t know this diagnostic page on the QC
How can I reach to this page ?
I saw that you said in another ndsp forum thread that cortex control could screw the usb communication ?

Hi gnumarco
Thanks a lot for your answer
I found the usb diagnostic I will make a video when the glitches will appear

But good news so far, I uninstalled cortex control and Google chrome ( I noticed that things were worse when using chrome)
And for an hour I had no glitches, juste a few crackles
Maybe it is correlated ? I will do more trials this week

If it happen again I will diagnostic

Kind regards

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Hello
Here is a drive link with a video when I have the usb comm issue
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CtBKWF0imOfwd27m8PCnCf0Cuji6zEC7

At the end I play with driver to make communication back to normal so after disabling / enabling safe mode, the comm is OK

Thr thing is my set up is to play at work at lunch time so I have only QC connected to the laptop

It’s okay
Thanks a lot for the time you took for me
Although I am glad that you could be able to point out the cause of your issue

I will wait for an answer of the support maybe they will be able to help with this situation :crossed_fingers:t4:

Have a nice day and thank you again very very much :pray:

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Have you received any update from NDSP?

I’ve done again fresh install of windows and only crucial driver support and it is still happening from time-to-time. Sometimes in 10 minutes, sometimes in 1 hour.

By hardware do you mean, hardware of the computer or the Quad Cortex itself?

Hello
After a few exchanges with Ndsp support, they asked me to return the unit for further inspections.
I did try to to make a fresh install of windows 11 and same issue. As you again, the occurence is random and it may come in 1min as 1 hour.

I tried with a QC of a friend and I did not experience the glitches. With friends QC nothing, when I plugged mine glitches occured after 2min…

Maybe the problem comes from the unit itself.
I will tell you what happen next !

Sorry for late reply
Have a nice day

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Heya,

Did you have a resolution from this repair?

I’d love to get an update too as I have the same issue.

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Exact same problem for me with Linux, where I never had any problem for >10 years with 4 different usb sound cards.
It can’t be a hardware problem, or a driver problem on th OS side.

There is clearly a serious bug in the software inside the QC in the way it handles the usb connection.
NeuralDSP should stop telling people to return units or buy other cables.

They should look at their code and fix it!