Simon, the reason I double-checked and posted above is to establish that there's more to the story than just "something is wrong with the V.I. Player." I think that if my machine is working fine, there must be another factor causing people these problems.

Note that I was able to get my machine to click and pop as soon as I had the PCI-424 card receiving audio from a slave machine. It stopped doing that after I turned Altiverb off and back on again, but now I wonder if that couldn't have something to do with it.

It could just be a matter of breaking the camel's back too, and what makes it hard to track things like this down is that every machine will click and pop under a heavy enough load.

Nick, as we already have established, it is not a performance issue, since it can happen with any minor patch no matter the buffer size of your audio card and so forth. AND the fact that all other sample players don't exhibit this behaviour. And if a dual 2.66 Ghz machine with 5 GB RAM isn't enough for VI to play back one stereo stream, then something is seriously wrong[:)] There is something wrong with the VI engine - period. Just because this behaviour doesn't show on every single setup doesn't mean that there can't be something wrong with a piece of software. It may be a combination of software and hardware and drivers yes, but the thing still remains that this is a problem with the VSL engine only and not all the other streaming sample engines. I don't care if VSL coded the engine in the proper way, and that somehow all the other companies have found a workaround to make their engine work in OS X as it should, the fact is that there is a problem.

While I don't expect the VSL people to admit at once that there is something wrong, I DO expect a response more along the lines of "we will have our programmers look into it" instead of the response we are getting at the moment, which is so unlike VSL.

Simon, do you have Boot Camp with Windows on that machine? That would be an interesting test.

And I'm going to check the PCI-424 theory.

Nick, no BootCamp here. When I tried it back in september it didn't work very well with my bluetooth keyboard - ie. I ended up not being able to boot anything but Windows XP until I plugged in an USB keyboard to get into the Macs boot menu... So I am a bit anxious to do that again.

But why would that be interesting? The PC version of the engine may very well not exhibit these problems but that doesn't prove anything. Or it may have, and it wouldn't prove anything either, would it?

It wouldn't prove anything, other than that maybe you can run the PC version and not get clicks and pops on your machine. [:)]

By the way, the PCI-424 card isn't causing clicks and pops on my machine. Evidently it was just running out of horsepower that did it - which is understandable with all that stuff going on.

So the next question is why my machine isn't clicking and popping like the others in this thread. I know it's not because I'm smarter than anyone else, and Kays proves that it's not the California sun.

Hi all,

I posted all KNOWN reasons, why clicks and pops might occur on Mac, regarding unknown problems I already said:

@Another User said:

we are also investigating in order to find a solution

However this might take a while since the problems occur randomly.

Best,

Maya

@Nick Batzdorf said:

I know it's not because I'm smarter than anyone else, ...

Hmmmmmm, it seems you are... [;)]

Maya

Here is a word for those who have suffered from this problem with hopes that you will find relief as I did from JWL. Also I learned from my precious wife that any firewire device has to share the same built in firewire controller. Lesson-Only use one firewire device if it requires a large bandwidth. I am a very happy guy now.

Dear JWL:

We thank you for a suggestion that made sense. I did not know that because I had the Fireface 800 connected to the FW 400 port and the Rocstor HD with the VSL SE library connected to the FW 800 port that they shared the same bus and obviously VSL does not like to share. When I hooked the Rocstor up to the USB port and left the Fireface 800 alone on the FW 400 port, end of pops, and end of sound dropouts. Now I am kickin it. Many, many thanks. [:D] [[:|]] [H] [[;)]]

Power Mac dual 2.5 ghz with 4.5 gb RAM Rocstor ext HD USB port with VSL SE library and Fireface 800 on FW 400 port

Is that a USB 2 port for you external hard drive???

Tim

Yes. I also intend to look into buying a PCIx card for any other firewire devices I might need to use. I need to research this some with regards to compatibility with the Fireface. The USB 2.0 on the front of my Mac seems to work just fine.

just as a sidenote ... VSL as such does not care about the method you connect what and where ... it is the file access handled by the operating system which is affected, VSL *only* is requesting a huge amount of data most of the time.

doing some research regarding firewire 800 extension cards is a very good idea - there are some really crappy products on the market. unfortunately i could only find the german page explaining what some vendors have done ... http://www.rme-audio.de/techinfo/fw800alarm.htm
christian

I don't use any firewire harddrives. I use two WD 500 GB RE2 SATA drives internally for sample playback.

Another reason, why dropouts can happen is that Logic´s audio engine goes to a form of "sleep mode" sometimes. The result is that sample streaming from HDD doesn´t work anymore and only sample data which is already buffered in RAM will be played back properly.
In this case it helps to go into play mode in Logic and to play all tracks with Vienna Instruments instances for a few seconds. This will "restart" Logic´s audio engine.

Best

Maya

Can the Logic audio engine sleep mode be disabled while working or does this have disadvantages? [*-)]:

@Simon Ravn said:

I don't use any firewire harddrives. I use two WD 500 GB RE2 SATA drives internally for sample playback.

Good Morning, Simon. I have felt your pain. I am curious and you may have said this in previous posts - Does your problem persist with the use of built in audio? My problem was timed with the use of the FW 800 port-ie that was the act that caused my problem. Did you attach anything new when you loaded VSL SE? If built in audio works, then it would seem to point to how info is handled internally with more than one HDD. Resolution of this issue is important to all of us as I am contemplating a new system.

@Simon Ravn said:

I don't use any firewire harddrives. I use two WD 500 GB RE2 SATA drives internally for sample playback.

Good Morning, Simon. I have felt your pain. I am curious and you may have said this in previous posts - Does your problem persist with the use of built in audio? My problem was timed with the use of the FW 800 port-ie that was the act that caused my problem. Did you attach anything new when you loaded VSL SE? If built in audio works, then it would seem to point to how info is handled internally with more than one HDD. Resolution of this issue is important to all of us as I am contemplating a new system.

Hello.

I still haven't tried with built in audio, since I don't have that connected to anything, but I will test it with a MOTU PCIe solution soon and see if that changes anything.

And no, I haven't attached anything special. And it's not VSL SE, it's every VSL instrument that behaves like this. It is related to the VSL engine in some way. Maybe the engine needs to be coded in a slightly different way to work 100% on OS X - I don't know, but Native Instruments and others got it right.

I'm with Simon in thinking "I give up"

You guys are worse than the Bush administration when it comes to aknowledging problems!

This is really too bad since all that we're asking is that you:

A. Admit that there "might" be something wrong with your app.

B. Look into it beyond just testing it on your office machine.

I'm running Logic Pro 7.2.3 on a Mac Dual 2ghz G5 with 4.5 gigs of thoroughly tested RAM and a 500gig internal SATA drive only devoted to sample playback. My OS is 10.4.9 and I'm using a Digidesign Digi002 with a Digocore Drive 7.1 My only other plugins are NI stuff, Stylus and the built in Logic instruments.

If you guys can configure a machine which has my same specs and you're not getting any clicks or pops when you use VSL VI, then I'll stand corrected that this is a VSL issue....but until then you have to at least admit that there could be an issue on your end!

Oh....and to answer Christopher's statement that I don't know how complex VSL VI instruments are compared to other sample libraries....hmmm...let's see. I load up 1 instance of VSL SE soloAlto Flute legato and I get clicks and pops.....I load up 20 instances of EXS24 playing orchestral string sections with auto alternation, release samples and mod wheel crossfade and no clicks or pops. I load up a dozen Kontakt 2 instruments from QLSO with the SIPS Kontakt script for legato playing and I also don't get any clicks and pops. Even Sonivox Flying Hand percussion which has 400 meg instruments with tons of velocity layers and round robin alternation doesn't give me issues. True I don't have an side by side comparison of VSL VI vs. VSL....but come on!

One last thing....FYI, turning off the Release Samples will sometime get rid of the clicks and pops....could the release samples be causing these problems?

I see two clues in your post, Kays. First, if turning off the release samples gets rid of the noises, either you're getting data corruption somewhere or the number of voices is pushing the system over the top. That doesn't mean it *should* be doing that, just that it is.

Second, Digidesign's Core Audio drivers have been known to be...[slumps as Digidesign rep hits him over the head with a frying pan]

Nick,

The issue here is not whether or not I'm pushing the system over the limit (I'm not), it's why this happens ONLY with VSL VI.

With all due respect Nick....neither Simon nor myself are amateurs, we started using this technology while most people were still using hardware samplers (and virtual instruments didn't even have a name...let alone a magazine), and I think I can speak for Simon when I say that we've both have had to develop our troubleshooting skills the hard way (ie. not by posting on a forum to get a quick answer).

Give me a call and come by my place....I'll show you what I'm talking about....you can sit at my system and futz with it until your satisfied that this is a VSL VI issue.

Also (to clarify) the turning off the release samples thing only works sporadically, so I'm not quite sure it's related to the issue at hand.

I know you and Simon know your onions, Kays, I'm just trying to help figuire this out. Or maybe there's a way around this to stop it from happening.

As you say, the question is why the V.I. Player is crackling on your systems when other things aren't. And why is it not crackling on mine, at least not until I push it hard?

You and Simon are convinced that it's simply because of code in the player. I can't say that's not so, but the fact that it's not crackling prematurely on my system makes me think there's something else going on - and what I think is going on is that it's pushing your system harder than the other instruments are. Crackling is a symptom of many problems, of course, so it's also not guaranteed that you and Simon have the same one.

I'm not trying to be patronizing, but as much as I like Pro Tools, writing Core Audio drivers may not be Digidesign's highest priority. That may cause problems when you push the system.

Or maybe I'm wrong - the player is totally messed up, and both cm and Maya are stonewalling so they can get jobs in the Bush administration.