@chriskard said:

I got the information from an Apple engineer that the more RAM you have installed the better, because when physical RAM is still free, the Swap File Technology starts to use this free ram for its page file. So the samples are just moved from the Real memory of the thread "VSL-Server" to another area in the physical RAM.

Yes!

Some customers said that problems with clicks and pops would not occur with EXS. But most EXS programs aren´t as large as Vienna Instruments matrices or presets can be! Therefore significantly less RAM is needed and its rather unlikely to run into swapping problems. We did some tests with EXS where we forced the system to swap data from EXS and it showed the same behaviour like VI does when physical memory is overwritten (clicks and pops).

The only solution_at the moment_is to add more RAM (if possible). Hopefully the situation will change with upcoming operating systems and improved memory protection- and we are also investigating in order to find a solution (which might however reduce the possibilities in VI to load many samples).

It is also recommendable to use VI as efficiently as possible and to create your own customized matrices and presets out of the patches you really need for your arrangement and to remove all unused (!) playing techniques. The factory presets are extremely "RAM intense" and therefore they are not always the best choice - but they are great examples for showing the keyswitch-possibilities and functionalities of VI programs.

Besides all of this we mentioned that VI does not perform as good in Digital Performer 5.12 as it does in Logic Pro 7.2.3 or Cubase 4.

Best regards,

Maya VINSON

maya,
thanks for your explanations.
what you point out may be the reason for the problems that some people experience (who work with large arrangements and really stress their system). however, it cannot be the reasons for the problems i (and as it seems also others) have.
to sum it up once more:
i experience these dropouts loading a single matrix (20mb!!!) and having according to activity monitor 1.5 gb free! ram. i have checked this in the meantime and activity monitor shows 0 poge-outs while these dropouts occur!
it definitively has nothing to do with the size of the instruments either since i can run _much_ larger exs instruments than the simplest vi matrices which already cause problems.
since the vienna instruments apparently work fine for most users it must be a more specific problem (maybe some software-incompatibility, ...). i would be happy to provide you with information to figure out what cuases this. but this requires that you take our input seriously and don´t go on presenting possible causes that evidently contradict our experience.
best regards
kai

@Kai said:

since the vienna instruments apparently work fine for most users it must be a more specific problem (maybe some software-incompatibility, ...). i would be happy to provide you with information to figure out what cuases this. but this requires that you take our input seriously and don´t go on presenting possible causes that evidently contradict our experience.
best regards
kai

@ Laurent & Jerome: I will answer your questions as soon as possible

@ Kai:

We take every input seriously. Fact is however that we were unable so far to reproduce the issues you mentioned on our test machines here (iMac PPC 1.8 GHz/2 GB RAM and Motu 828 FW interface, Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 Ghz/9 GB RAM with an Apogee Rosetta 200, G5 PPC 2.5 Dual/6 GB RAM and RME Audiohardware).
Vienna Instruments are also used intensely in 3 different recording studios in Vienna and I contacted all of them in order to find out if they experienced similar problems. But nothing.... everything runs smoothly there.
We do our best to offer an efficient support and to solve the problems of our customers but neither do we have the (wo)manpower nor the responsibility to test every possible hardware/software-configuration on the planet. Sometimes a problem is simply not reproducible.

We can help you to find out what might cause a problem on your setup by sharing our experiences with you:

I remember at least 3 cases where Vienna Instruments showed a similar behaviour (playback errors with only one or a small number of patches loaded) and the cause was a broken RAM stick in each case.
RAM sticks of different manufactures might also have an impact of RAM usage and the overall performance. In another case this was the reason why errors occurred randomly on this setup, mainly in combination with VI and other samplers (understandably since VI is extremely RAM intense).

Regards,

Maya

Hi,

I also have a problem with VSE crackles and popping. I just got it on Friday, and I've tried all of the different buffer settings I could think of. Any time I play more than two instruments at once the problem starts.

My specs:
G5 2.0 ghz dual processor, 4 gigs RAM
OSX 10.4.8, Logic 7.2.3
The samples are on a seperate hard drive

I haven't yet tried reinstalling yet, so I'll give that a try and see if it works.

One more quick note, after reading this thread I switched Logic's audio drive over to built in audio and everything worked perfectly... So perhaps it's an interface issue. I have a Presonus Firebox and I've never this issue with K2 or EXS...

Same here. I am also using a Presonus product (Firepod). I can only use VI if I switch to internal audio. Presouns says it's Vienna Instruments issue and VI says it's presonus issue. Bottom line.....I can't use this software with my interface. And just last night....my patches and matrixes disappeared. ( In all fairness this last issue could totally be my fault). I am totally frustrated but I love the potential of this product if I can get everything to work right on my system.

Tim

IMac G5 2.0
1.5 gig RAM
presonus firepod
250 gig la cie
160 gig la cie

Maya, thank you for your thorough explanation. But the bottom line is still, like Kai pointed out, that the Vienna Instruments exhibit this "pop" behaviour with just about every patch, until the patch has been "run in", whereas I can run a 10GB Synthogy Ivory or Native Instruments Akoustik Piano, without ever running into this problem. This means that this is not an OS X issue, but a Vienna Instrument streaming engine issue... [*-)]

It isn't a catastrophy, because so far I have always been able to make a perfect render, either with offline or online bounce, but still, I think it is something you need to look in to.

simon, i've pointed out earlier that one had to compare the number of (loaded) samples (not the GB of the library) and obviously other libraryies use a different size for the perload buffer. IIRC total number of samples was 2000 and preloadbuffer 348 KB, whereas a single loaded legato patch has 3000 or more samples and a preload buffer of 64 KB
christian

Just out of interest, the samples are already bundled together into one file, right? I know they are as far as we're concerned, but Andrea's routine to consolidate the EXS files made quite a difference, and I'm just wondering if the OS sees the samples the same way.

What about when you just play the piano and the harp from VSE? I still get clicks and pops with only the piano pedal up and normal harp patches loaded. Even when I tried the ram management feature I still get the same clicks and pops.

On more quick question: Have Mac users using other VI collections been complaining about these issues or just people using SE?

nick, one of the reasons to *bundle the files* was to avoid the high amount of filehandles (in the sense of one for each .wav files in exs instruments) which has roughly the same effect as the merged instruments.
christian

tgfoo, i know it can be annoying to locate the culprit, but there are audio interfaces working very well (eg. apogee, RME) and others which don't.
althogh the RME fireface (as example) works in most cases even if chained with a harddrive i would not recommend it. if i read your post correctly, you already confirmed the issue dosn't show up with internal audio.

i've formerly posted some comments to firewire in general and connecting certain devices - every device connected to a firewire controller is sending a request for bandwidth, so does your harddisk and your soundcard (and the controller itself of course).
the Vienna Instruments player requests data from the operating system, the OS from the drive. if the drive does not get enough bandwidth now there is nothing VI can do to change this and it's up to the respective drivers to allow smooth side-by-side operation of various devices.

eg. firewire video cameras announce themselves as *live devices* and receive all bandwidth they need, all other devices on the bus now have to use what remains ...
christian

Deal Vienna guys (and girl),

I think that so far all you've been doing is blaming the problems on everyone else except yourself.

While I'm glad you show pride and confidence in your product, all that we're asking is that you ackowledge that there is the possibility that something might be up on your end and that you have your software guys look into it seriously.

There are several of us chiming in here, and probably a much larger number of users who simply don't post or check this site, and that silently deal with the issue.

The fact that these issues do not appear in any other soft sampler (EXS24, Kontakt2, HALion, SampleTank etc.) regardless of the size or complexity of the instruments seem to indicate that VSL VI (and particularly something within VSL SE) might be to blame.

So please....look into it! I really don't care if your local studio guys are not reporting any issues....I assure you that the problem is very real and very annoying.

Thanks guys (and the lovely Maya).

midphase, apologies ...

@Another User said:

The fact that these issues do not appear in any other soft sampler (EXS24, Kontakt2, HALion, SampleTank etc.) regardless of the size or complexity of the instruments seem to indicate

neither *regardless of the size* (of what?) *or complexity* is a valid statement.
clearly Vienna Instruments Libraries are the far most big and complex sample libraries around.
you can easily receive similar or even the same effects with a huge amount of VSL exs libraries loaded, but of course you cannot know this, because you don't have some.

i'd ask you to take all components into consideration including but not limited to hardware, software and the overall system before indicating something without knowing the whole story.
christian

@Another User said:

nick, one of the reasons to *bundle the files* was to avoid the high amount of filehandles (in the sense of one for each .wav files in exs instruments) which has roughly the same effect as the merged instruments.

Understood. This was the successor to the Evyn Evans hack to increase the restriction to the number of open files in OS X 10.3. But Redmatica's Consolidation routine also had some other benefits if I remember right. I assumed that you've done the same thing in the V.I. Player, but I was just checking.

By the way, it looks to me like you really do have to take all the components into consideration. Right now I have a Metric Halo 2882 box hooked up with a MOTU PCI-424 card in an aggregate device.

Just for the heck of it I doubled a bunch of parts in the sequence I have open to see if more than two instruments would click, and they definitely don't.

So I have an Ivory Italian Grand going, and then the following VSL Preset Level 2 programs (the kitchen sink programs with everything): solo VLC, solo BSN, solo flute. That's all inside Logic, and all running through an Altiverb Phillips Hall (2.8 secs). Then I have two stand-alone V.I. Players running outside Logic, one running solo vln and one running solo bass (both Level 2 again).

When I bring the stereo outs of a slave computer into Logic I do get a couple of pops, but muting the MIDI part going to the slave eliminates them.

In the meantime that's three massive VSL instruments alongside the biggest Italian Grand program inside Logic, plus two massive VSL instruments outside Logic.

Now I'm going to close this browser and see whether that gets rid of the clicks and pops...

[returning]

...and either it did or closing Activity Monitor did - but it's on the edge, because the first time I played the sequence it clicked, then I turned off Altiverb and it stopped, and I turned Altiverb back on and it's now playing.

2x2.5 G5, 8GB of RAM. 256 sample buffer.

Oh, and I also turned off Remote Desktop Connection for the Windows slave. It's still getting MIDI Over LAN, however, so the gigabit ethernet connection is still live.

VSL guys (and Maya)[:)], your arguments are becoming pretty thin here... Are you saying that playing a single VSL patch, playing back 1-2 stereo voices at the same time, which causes random clicks when played for the first minutes, is more "complex" than hitting all of my white keys (more or less) on a chromatically sampled piano? So, playing back 30x44.100x2 samples per second, is less demanding than playing back 2x44.100x2 samples? C'mon...

I, like midphase am a LITTLE tired that you blame audio interfaces and harddrives, OS X etc., no matter if this problem occurs on a host of different hardware. I will give you this much, that I am currently using a firewire interface from m-audio. This might not be the most super pro interface and it does use FW (although you say that RME, firewire or not, would be fine), but doesn't it seem rather odd that all other sample playback engines work fine, despite my silly m-audio interface?

I will try this when I switch to a MOTU PCIe solution, and see if the problem persists. If it doesn't, OK, so your sample engine isn't working well with many soundcards, unlike Kontakt 2, EXS24, Synthogy etc etc. If it does, there is a problem with the Vienna playback engine across the board. Either way, something IS bad in the VI engine. I am not a programmer, so I don't have the faintest clue about what it is. Somehow, I suspect the "server" design concept to be the culprit here though. Your engine basically runs as some strange (??) daemon connected to an AU instrument in some way (feel free to explain the concept in detail, since I don't know much about it, I am just guessing from what I see in the Activity Monitor and how the "server" takes a long time to load the first instance).

You mention that other playback engines might use bigger buffer sizes. Well, if so, give us users the choice to increase the buffer size in the engine, if that is what does the trick.

simon, i'm under the impression you don't like the arguments and therefore reiterate some details divorced from context ...

from back to forth: increasing the preload buffer means higher usage of RAM -> expected immediate response: i can't load the instruments on my computer.

you mentioning you're not a programmer and i have to admit i'm a poor if not actually no C++ programmer, but i can assure you: the engine and it's design is pretty brilliant.

if you get another motu (possibly actually on a mac) hopefully the drivers are working flawless - something one can not say about all drivers for this devices.

please consider we are not blaming any sound card or operating system or method of connecting a harddrive - i just want to explain in words as simple as possible the context for performance of a computer for certain combinations you should prefer or avoid if you need or like a good audio system.

in a nutshell: average computers can play less articulations from less demanding libraries at a given performance, more demanding libraries with more articulations require more than an average computer.

there are a few, but often decisive factors a sample library producer can only influence up to a certain pont - an example is the newest *pro application update* from apple, i'd assume they wouldn't provide it if everything works also fine without it, another one the still applying limit of gigastudio to 1 GB, the limit of number of exs instruments, ect ... endless list

of course also VSL is continuously developing to provide the best possible performance for our users, but also i'm trying to shed some light on various other general conditions which should not be ignored.

christian

@Another User said:

there are a few, but often decisive factors a sample library producer can only influence up to a certain pont - an example is the newest *pro application update* from apple, i'd assume they wouldn't provide it if everything works also fine without it, another one the still applying limit of gigastudio to 1 GB, the limit of number of exs instruments, ect ... endless list

of course also VSL is continuously developing to provide the best possible performance for our users, but also i'm trying to shed some light on various other general conditions which should not be ignored.

christian

It just seems like it doesn't matter how much evidence you are provided from users which all have the same problems with very well equipped machines, the only reaction we get is: This is an OS X problem, the VSL player is flawless.

simon, we have a reference machine here almost identical to the one you mention, and it is actually in an extraordinary bad condition (regarding a clean system and the amount of applications installed) and it plays really huge performances flawlessly - so one SHOULD assume something else is in the game if a single instrument pops or klicks, right?

a single patch runs even on an old G4 1,25 (also somehow devasted softwarewise) without any problem.

so i really don't know what VSL had to admit - if you don't like to consider points from above, it is your decision, but then please don't blame VSL to be responsible for a certain state of your system.
christian