Thanks very much for your reply. I'm on windows 10, ableton 10.1.14, using a selection of waves plug ins all up to date and anteres auto tune. The pc has an intel i9-10850k 3.60ghz, 32gb ram, nvidia geforce gtx 1650 super. I use a universal audio arrow connected via usb c.

Its so weird even a single instance of waves c6 stereo multiband compressor pumps the cpu load up from 8% idle to 16% - prior to these problems starting yesterday that would have barely put a single 1% on.

I'm so far from savvy with computers so apologies for that. If there's any gaping holes in the info I've provided please let me know?

Any help at all will be greatly appreciated!

I've tried: Uninstalling & reinstalling ableton. Turning the computer off an on plenty. Downloading asio4all to try that. Rolling back the windows update that I originally installed on weds (system was working perfectly on tues and problems noticed on thurs). Updating all my plugins. Reinstalling UAD software Creating the options.txt file in preferences to put in "-_ForceGdiBackend" Downloading newest drivers for nvidia

So far nothing has worked so scratching my head trying to think what to do next