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Subject: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

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Original Message 1/28 05-Nov-02 @ 11:42 PM Edit: 05-Nov-02 | 11:46 PM - bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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I've been trying to get soft synths working on my pc again, but they just hate working. Some of you will remember my dilemma with distorting soft synths. Well I tried tackling the problem again and it just isn't happening. So I thought maybe you guys would have some fresh ideas.

I have been getting frustrated with not being able to run soft synths, especially as xoxos is creating so many damned programs that look quite tasty. I tried running xoxos' Kerei (must thank you again for sending me that prog mate!), ES2, ES1 and Absynth but they all start sounding horribly distorted after 10 minutes of use. Even after I restart, delete the page-file, re-install, etc, etc.

So, any ideas???

FYI, here's my setup:

Gigabyte GA-7DXR running:
AMD761 Chipset;
AMD T-Bird 1.4Ghz;
512MB Generic DDR RAM;
40GB Fujitsu MPG3409AH ATA100;
40GB IBM Deskstar ATA100;
MT4 MIDI I/F;
Audiowerk8 MIDI I/F;
Matrox G550 Graphics;
Win2K;
Logic 5.3 (upgrade from 4.0)

Regards.

Steve.

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Message 2/28 06-Nov-02 @ 11:48 AM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

dARKSTATe

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The Audiowerk8 is a nice, but old card... Recently had to help a mate upgrade out of it cos of old driver/latency issues, were making life hell for him (pops'n'clicks) - dunno if this is related to your "distortion" issue though...

The rest of your build looks fine..

Marc_D

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Message 3/28 06-Nov-02 @ 12:24 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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Cheers for the help. You're right, it is an old card, but I haven't had any of it's well known troubles appearing on this setup. The thing is, the Audiowerk8 and Logic are designed to work well together, so I don't think that it could be causing problems with the Emagic instruments. But I'll look into it.

Thanks again!

Regards.

Steve.

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Message 4/28 06-Nov-02 @ 02:09 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

dARKSTATe

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Yeah, its got good EASI drivers for integration into logic..

Mebbe the card is just knackered plain and simple?? Sometimes the simplest fault is often the real one.. :-( Doesn't help you none, I know that...

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Message 5/28 06-Nov-02 @ 06:12 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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I just tried my mates Delta 10/10 and the problem goes on. Tell ya what though, the Delta was a right pain in the arse to get working. I'm never buying one of those things!

Regards.

Steve.

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Message 6/28 06-Nov-02 @ 06:35 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

influx

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man....that is SO odd.

I wish I could help. youre sure you have the newest drivers for the soundcard, etc?

and what about the motherboard? newest drivers?

I know I know, fat lot of help I am!

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Message 7/28 06-Nov-02 @ 10:24 PM Edit: 06-Nov-02 | 10:26 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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Cheers for your advice 'flux. It's much appreciated, but I tried that a while ago. I have tried litteraly everything that I, and many others, can think of. You also helped me out with this prob at first. I suppose that I was kind of being hopeful in expecting some mighty PC overlord to come along and laugh, while stroking his long binary beard, and say "You silly little man! You should have done... da-ta-da-ta-da".

Oh well. I am forced into using Hardware. Some wouldn't complain. Maybe I should just shut up. But damn! Some of these softs look soooo nice!

Regards.

Steve.

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Message 8/28 07-Nov-02 @ 09:35 AM Edit: 07-Nov-02 | 09:35 AM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

dARKSTATe

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Hmmm... (strokes beard thoughtfully..) ;-)

That'd be a mighty shame for you to have to forego the softsynths man.. I guess the last option is to try YOUR card and the Delta 1010 in another machine? And try a few other things like swapping the memory, gfx card etc.. At least then you might be able to determing more conclusively that where the fault is.. then mebbe you'll be in a position to decide whether a new box/fix/return etc. is an option if you wanna use the Software option..

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Message 9/28 07-Nov-02 @ 10:16 AM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

psylichon

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i know this sounds weird, but could you possibly upload a semi-high-quality sample of the distortion you're getting from your soft synths? You'd be surprised how telling distortion can be in problem solving. just an idea

psylichon

PS- thought #2- I've had time-based weirdness problems before, and they were all related to worn-out hardware: an overheated CPU, a failing power supply, and an overheated video card, in that order (so I've gotten quite good at recognizing these kinds of problems, unfortunately!) I know it's a pain in the ass to narrow it down. What you need is a supergeek. They have all sorts of parts to swap in and out of your system to narrow it down. If you don't have access to a SG, yer gonna have to plunk down some change to have it professionally analyzed for bad parts. That's if you wanna narrow it down to your drivers, which is probably what it comes down to. And since this 'PS' was longer than my post, I'll sign my name again:

psylichon

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Message 10/28 07-Nov-02 @ 10:49 AM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

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This isn't a solution, but out of curiousity, does the distortion still happen when you have the graphical interfaces of all the soft synths closed down?

A while back I was getting something similar to you, except that I was using Cubase. After a few minutes, the audio would just distort, and I had to close Cubase and re-open it. I found that if I had the GUI's of the soft synths closed down, it didn't happen. Even now, if I've got Battery open (the GUI part of it - I can still use it as an instrument) I get a few pops and clicks, but when it's hidden, I get none!

I never really fixed the problem cos I got a new motherboard and soundcard, so the problems kind of went away.

Maybe give this a shot?

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Message 11/28 07-Nov-02 @ 11:25 AM Edit: 07-Nov-02 | 11:26 AM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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Cheers for your replies fellas. I'll post a sample of the problem when I get home tonight. Alhtough it won't show exactly what is happening as the problem gets worse over a period of about ten minutes continuous play. It starts sounding kinda fuzzy, then kinda fuzzy n chunky, then it just sounds like 500hz distortion gone OTT.

I have narrowed it down to just the oscillators of the softsynths. All of the effects on the synths (filters, delays, chorus, etc) work absolutely fine. It is purely the signal generators of the synths. So if we can find someone who knows exactly what happens when a soft synth oscillator is run, then we should be able to seriously narrow the problem down to a few bits and pieces.

Basically, I have cancelled out every device in my machine, save the CPU, RAM and, god forbid, the Motherboard. I know for a fact that everything else is definitely not the cause.

The strange thing is that my system does not have ANY problems WHATSOEVER other than this! I no longer even get Logics overload or MIDI timing errors.

And, Si, the distortion happens no matter what. I have tried your suggestion.

Anyhow, thanks for all of your help!

Regards.

Steve.

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Message 12/28 07-Nov-02 @ 02:27 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Ragnaroek

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You mentioned you have cancelled out RAM. Did you test your configuration with someone elses's RAM? Thing is, RAM is one of the things in a computer which is nearly impossible to test without specialized equipment and it could cause the weirdest problems (while everything else is working fine).

Another thing (if you haven't done it yet): try to put your sound card into an another slot.

hope your problem will be solved soon...

/R

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Message 13/28 07-Nov-02 @ 05:28 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

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Another thing - does this distortion happen if you use the synths in stand-alone mode?

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Message 14/28 10-Nov-02 @ 07:20 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

brett

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have had similar problems back when i built my pc.

i second the idea of stripping the system back to the video and audio device. Also software. A bad cracked plug-in can cause a system to malfuntion. Don't know if you have any bug ladden plugs in there, or have installed any media software after the logic install that could have currupted it, like a directx update or windows media player codecs. Get back to just the audio card, and video card. swap the ram with a freinds and see if stops, if it is working, start adding hardware and running the app again. this could take a weekend or two but you can get to the bottom of it one program and pci slot at a time. The hardware is so much easier to debug then a software conflict.

There are also things in windows 2k that can cause issues. like networking services etc.

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Message 15/28 11-Nov-02 @ 03:26 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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Right, I have re-installed Windows200 before only installing Logic (nothing else, save drivers) and the problem still occurs almost instantly. And as I said earlier, I have narrowed the problem down to RAM, CPU, or possibly the motherboard. I have tried using different HDDs, Audio Cards, Video Cards. So it looks like I'll have to find someone with different manufactured RAM to myself, as I am willing to bet that this is the problem. It seems that as the Oscilators run, there must be something corrupting the data stored in RAM, hence the gradual degredation of the sound.

Anyhow, I'll see what I can come up with.

Regards.

Steve.

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Message 16/28 11-Nov-02 @ 05:04 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

milan

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to be honest, looks more and more like a motherboard problem to me. try the soundcard in another pc with a solid mobo and see. i had all manners of unexplainable and inexplicable problems with my soundcard, mostof which affected my system only partially (like you vsti-only problem)and when i switched to a new pc they all vanished like wiped by a magic cloth.

hope you sort it out.

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Message 17/28 11-Nov-02 @ 07:09 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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If it is a motherboard problem, then that's a pain, as I have had a briliant time using this mobo. The GA-7DXR works an absolute treat for Audio. Solid as a rock, with the possible exception of this problem, and I am probably not going to switch just for the use of Softsynths.

Regards.

Steve.

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Message 18/28 12-Nov-02 @ 09:25 AM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

dARKSTATe

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Ouch! Great mobo or not, that's a big hit you're taking there dawg.. ;) No softsynths in this day and age is a large slice of technology you're cutting out of your make up.. all for a �70 mobo replacement..

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Message 19/28 13-Jul-03 @ 12:07 PM Edit: 13-Jul-03 | 12:09 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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And half a year later... RESOLVED! It was the motherboard afterall (spot on the nose Milan). I upgraded to an ABIT a little while ago, and over the last week I have been playing about with the EVOC and ES2 synths and they sound great! The EVOC is amazing for filtering drums etc to give your tracks those funky little synth lines.

Software synthesis... Steve has arrived! I'm actually quite excited about this [rubs his hands together and grins].

Cheers to all who helped on this very long and drawn out problem!

Regards.

Steve.

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Message 20/28 13-Jul-03 @ 01:05 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

milan

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hehe... congrats!

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Message 21/28 13-Jul-03 @ 01:32 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

beds

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finally made it out of the stone age!

congratulations. what a bummer though eh? wouldn't happen on a mac would it? pfff

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Message 22/28 14-Jul-03 @ 05:44 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

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shall we file this under:

"don't use via chipsets for music, use amd ones" *cough*

or was it an Nvidia chipset?

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Message 23/28 14-Jul-03 @ 06:52 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Influx

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VIA works FINE

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Message 24/28 14-Jul-03 @ 08:40 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Moujik

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Agree with Influx 100% - never had any problems with audio on my VIA chipset PC.

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Message 25/28 15-Jul-03 @ 02:30 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

dARKSTATe

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Thirded... Remember VIA Pre KT266A = BAD... but then we've been down this road Neo..

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Message 26/28 15-Jul-03 @ 03:25 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

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i mean is the new abit steve bought a via chipset or nvidia

??

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Message 27/28 15-Jul-03 @ 04:32 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

dARKSTATe

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Only allah knows..

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Message 28/28 15-Jul-03 @ 04:35 PM - RE: bin tryin' softs again to no avail!

Steve Roughley

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It's a nVidia Nforce (ABIT NV7). This probably wasn't a chipset problem anyway, as I have made 2 DAW's for mates that make use of the ABIT boards with the AMD761 chipset (exactly the same as the GA7DXR) and they are still goin' fine. And I have now heard of two other GA7DXR users with the same problem.

Regards.

Steve.

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