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.

it is starting to get ridiculuos and boring to read arguments like *why is my helicopter much louder than my bicycle - there must be some construction failure with my helicopter* ..

besides that i can tell you, i'm taking the comment regarding a certain administraion as personal insult - not joking.

i am working with computers and various programs and operating systems since 1973, including but not limited to the early BSD (which is commonly known as predecessor of OS X) - so you can assume i'm understanding at least *something* from the stuff i'm talking about.

the usual procedure to track down an issue would be to remove all unneccessary components until you have a basic, clean and working system - then adding one piece after the other in various well considered sequences to find out when and for which combination the problem (and which problem exactly) arises to find the reason, not the effect.

the way you are re-iterating your rants is not only damaging the reputation of VSL but - with all respect - beginning to impair yours.

we are not saying the Vienna Instruments Player is perfect or cannot be improved, but it is definately impossible that a single instance with a single patch shows the described behavior if everything else is fine.

so either we are returning to the starting point and try to find the culprit in a cooperative manner or you continue to fill this forum with rants without taking notice of our suggestions and considerations.

our support can only be of any help if someone allows such a help.
christian

Christian,

First of all, these "rants" as you call them are actually quite calmly typed as a response to you guys that keep on essentially saying "It's OS X's fault, our player is perfect".

If VSL Player needs a substantial amount of processing to operate correctly, then I wish that I would have had that information before purchasing it.

In the spirit of co-operation, you start by giving me an inkling that you actually are concerned and I'll stop comparing you to Mr. George W. sound fair?

Nick, I was totally serious about you coming by my place. You got my number, and you live 20 minutes away....swing by, I'll show you what I'm talking about....then perhaps since you probably have more clout as a magazine editor than I do, you can help me get someone to listen.

Thanks guys...let's keep it friendly....don't read your own tone into what I type, people who know me personally know that I'm a friendly guy.

@Another User said:

i'm taking the comment regarding a certain administraion as personal insult

If you worked for me, and you did that, you definitely would be up for review. Bringing emotions to a professional environment is completely unnacceptable. Maybe that's ok in Europe, I don't know enough about European professionalism, but in the USA it's considered bad business and even opens you up to litigation to bring emotions to a corporation's public relations.

It's the same cycle as before, this thread. Someone stood up and said that how you conducted yourself was not standard, and you responded by feeding the emotion of the customer with further emotion.

When will there be diplomacy and professionalism with regards to these matters? Will it ever change at VSL?

Evan Evans

Thanks Evan, I appreciate someone else adding their feedback to this.

Christian,

If you could IM me perhaps we could try and figure this thing out as you could ask me some specific questions and see if we can get to the bottom of this issue.

As an added factor....I do everything at 48khz...could this be contributing to things? Could you guys run some tests with sessions running at 48khz and see what happens?

No problem, midphase, but I do wish there was a nice way to say these things sometimes. There probably is a way, but I am not so good at it. Sorry cm/vsl if I can't seem to be real friendly about my criticisms.

Evan Evans

@Simon Ravn said:

[quote=christofori][quote=Simon Ravn]I don't use any firewire harddrives. I use two WD 500 GB RE2 SATA drives internally for sample playback.

Simon, are you using OS X.49? I also have a new mac pro dual 2.6, with 9GB Ram & a bunch of 500GB SATA2 drive, while suffering an assortment of dropouts, no matter how many instruments are loaded.

I'm going to do an experiment- create a new boot drive (OS X.4[H]on my 10k rpm WD Raptor, install nothing but DP & VI, use a 500GB internal SATA2 for samples, & see what happens. I'll report my results to the forum.

Mark

Mark, 10.4.8/10.4.9, doesn't matter. And I don't get dropouts, I get clicks.

@Simon Ravn said:

[quote=christofori][quote=Simon Ravn]I don't use any firewire harddrives. I use two WD 500 GB RE2 SATA drives internally for sample playback.

Simon, are you using OS X.49? I also have a new mac pro dual 2.6, with 9GB Ram & a bunch of 500GB SATA2 drive, while suffering an assortment of dropouts, no matter how many instruments are loaded.

I'm going to do an experiment- create a new boot drive (OS X.4[H]on my 10k rpm WD Raptor, install nothing but DP & VI, use a 500GB internal SATA2 for samples, & see what happens. I'll report my results to the forum.

Mark
Mark, I have X.4.9 but do not use DP. I use LP 7.2.3. I predict your installation will not work if the way VSL VI handles its heavy processing load conflicts with the other hard drives competing for ram. I need to look at Herb's examples of the Mac setups for stress testing if they had more than 2 internal hard drives. Unfortunately, I thought only two Mac setups were mentioned and one was an iMac.
I have a question. When you have multiple internal SATA drives on one computer, does the operating system switch its attention from one drive to another at times feeding the RAM so that one drive cannot monopolize the system and this is causing sound drops and clicks and pops? In other words, could the problem be similar to the firewire clogging problem I experienced? If you had one internal SATA drive versus multiple ones would that make the problem go away? Does the fact I have the new VSL VI on an external USB or firewire while I have the Pro edition VSL, Colossus, and EW Symphonic Orchestra Platinum on an internal SATA identify the location of the conflict since my system is working? Would the problem others are having relate to multiple internal harddrives not counting the system hard drive? Would the VSL VI libraries on an isolated firewire bus and not on the internal hard drives solve the problem? An external firewire is not that expensive. This is an important question to me as I contemplate a new system. All I am saying is that I had the problem too prior to eliminating sharing of firewire resources with anything but VSL VI. Forgive me if my questions seem foolish as I am trying to learn to avoid these unpleasant experiences. I had wanted to upgrade to a Mac 3.0 ghz quadcore pro and put all my libraries on one computer with separate hard drives for each section and max out the ram at 16 gb. But it seems that may not work based on what I am reading. I.E. Not all ram is accessible, multiple hardrives may be a probelm, etc. Thanks. [*-)]

This is from Herb's stress testing. Also, most of the Windows systems tested used firewire. The sound management is MADI on one and built in on the other. My guess is the problem may go away with limiting VSL VI to an isolated firewire bus until this gets sorted out. But then, I could be wrong.

First Vienna Instruments Stress Test results on Mac OS X

So here they are, the first official test results with the new Vienna Instruments as Audio Units on Mac.
As on the PC platform, we have tested the Vienna Instruments on various computers and doublechecked on similar machines. All computers are fully equipped DAW´s that are used in everyday studio work, no additional tuning.

More tests are in the works, with different processors and hosts. Test results for the Quad will be released as well, we expect more Vienna Instruments to be loaded with maximum amount of RAM.

The limit of RAM usage is about 2.8 GB for the Vienna Instruments in a computer equipped with 4 GB RAM, that translates to 47000 samples.

The testing routine: Play a (really stressy!) stress test song with different loading options (more instruments, less RAM, and the other way around). All instruments are playing all the time, using all kinds of matrices and patches, and of course including additional MIDI data like ModWheel and different assigned sliders.

You always see the maximum Vienna Instruments possible in the given setup without any sonic trouble.

TEST COMPUTER 1

Processor: G5, 2 x 2.5 GHz,
Ram: 4 GB
OS 10.4.2
Data storage: Firewire 800
Host application: Logic 7.1.1
Soundcard: RME HDSP MADI with 648 MADI Interface

Latency at 512 Samples (12ms) / 2.5 GB Ram usage
Maximum Vienna Instrument instances: 24 (CPU 90%)
Maximum Samples loaded: 45000
Maximum polyphony: 300 stereo voices / (CPU 70%)

Latency at 256 Samples (6 ms) / 1.74 GB Ram usage
Maximum Vienna Instrument instances: 23 (CPU 70%)
Maximum polyphony: 200 stereo voices / (CPU 75%)

TEST COMPUTER 2

Processor: iMac G5 single, 1.8 GHz,
Ram: 2 GB
OS 10.4.5
Data storage: Firewire 400
Host application: Logic 7.1
Soundcard: Built in Audio

Latency at 512 Samples (12ms) / 1.08 GB Ram usage
Maximum Vienna Instrument instances: 11 (CPU 85%)
Maximum Samples loaded: 17400
Maximum polyphony: 250 stereo voices / (CPU 80%)

Latency at 256 Samples (6 ms) / 1 GB Ram usage
Maximum Vienna Instrument instances: 9 (CPU 85%)
Maximum polyphony: 160 stereo voices / (CPU 80%)

Last edited by herb on Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:55 pm; edited 2 times in total

@Another User said:

When will there be diplomacy and professionalism with regards to these matters? Will it ever change at VSL?

since i'm not working for a govement my need for diplomacy is fortunately limited but i'm allowing myself the exaggerated opinion to be sufficiently professional.
if you read through my posts, what might take you a while because this one is # 5.000, you should find i'm rather rarely getting emotional, although occasionally i'm not afraid to dispute with our users (note: i'm not wording it customers) intending to track something down to a rational cause.
christian

Still waiting for that PM or e-mail from you Christian...you know, the one where you're concerned enough to want to find out more about my issues so that together we can work on solving the problem?

midphase, you have already written to support@vsl.co.at providing as many facts about your machine and setup as possible?
such a request should also include RAM and device configuration, installed software and steps already taken trying to solve the issue. sometimes, if not often apperently unrelated details are leading us to a solution.
christian

@Another User said:

in the USA it's considered bad business and even opens you up to litigation to bring emotions to a corporation's public relations

It's not impossible that I'd make it through the first morning at that corporation, but no way would I last an entire day.

In Britain emotion has been banned altogether. If you want to smile or weep you have to go to Italy.

hahaha

midphase, thanks for sending some details to our support. the email also came to my eyes and a few things come into my mind:
4,5 GB RAM, this seem to be mixed RAM sticks - are they of the same timing?
digi core driver 7.1, is there a reason for not using their latest - usually newer drivers are performing better
digi002 + KORE 2, not sure now which interface is used how for output and what exactly does the 44.1 to 48 kHz conversion (logic?)
do you remember if the update from 10.4.8 to 10.4.9 went without noticeable oddities and have you applied the pro application update?
i didn't notice any other sample libraries listed, only plugins, so to what compares SE

i have the strong feeling you should temporarily remove some components to get a better testable situation, i'm not sure we can even duplicate your setup in detail - please keep our mac support updated.
christian