Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

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creativeforge
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:56 pm

Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by creativeforge »

I've been experiencing unholy amounts of crashes over the past few weeks (Windows 7).

Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz 88 °C
Bloomfield 45nm Technology
24.0GB Triple-Channel DDR3 @ 534MHz (8-8-8-20)

Storage: SSD 320GB free storage left, virtual instruments plugins on a different SSD, etc.

So I'm looking to see if the sound device setup in congruent with better performance.

1- I have set it up at 48000hZ, 32bits. Is this problematic? It was 192 bits by default, but I thought it was overkill for my kind of projects.

2- I'm using ASiO on a M-Audio FastTrack Ultra external soundcard.


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Do these make sense? ▲

3- Also, every time I shut down Mixcraft (v8), it hangs for a bit, showing "not responding" in the top bar, and then it shuts down. But other times it just crashes MX. Freeze, force shut.

Not sure what's up with that. Anyone can look at these settings and suggest something I may have overlooked?

Thank you in advance!

Andre
gaffster
Posts: 107
Joined: Sun Jul 18, 2021 1:56 pm

Re: Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by gaffster »

For me the older Win32 bit plugins are usually the culprits. Sometimes they even playback or mixdown to the wrong pitch. Pretty much any plugin I use can handle 44.1KHz so that is my starting point.
creativeforge
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:56 pm

Re: Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by creativeforge »

Well, today the first time I played the project, it was stuttering. Freaky!

I'm using an M-Audio ASIO (using an M-Audio external card), so I guess my question had to do with : which is the best to work with virtual instruments: WaveRT or ASIO? And which ASIO is recommended with Mixcraft?

Andre
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Mark Bliss
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Re: Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by Mark Bliss »

I would suggest the best choice is likely the ASIO driver for your interface.

Try the setting in the third image from your previous post. Adjust the buffers to 512 and try that. 224 is going to be pretty demanding on your system.

Start there and try it for a while.

*While the core WAVERT setting in your second image may be useable, it will likely never work as well as the dedicated ASIO for your interface.
WAVE (your first image) is generally a poor choice, as it will cause very high latency (the time between playing a note and hearing it will generally be too high to be useful)
Stay in tune, Mark

My SOUNDCLOUD Page
creativeforge
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:56 pm

Re: Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by creativeforge »

Mark Bliss wrote: Mon Nov 15, 2021 2:36 pm I would suggest the best choice is likely the ASIO driver for your interface.

Try the setting in the third image from your previous post. Adjust the buffers to 512 and try that. 224 is going to be pretty demanding on your system.
Thanks for the suggestion, Mark. I did make the adjustment, and it's slightly better. But the program still takes like about 4 minutes to open the project (24 MIDI tracks with virtual instruments, 3 SEND tracks, maybe 3 AUDIO tracks).

Now I'm wondering if it's because my soundcard is connected USB only, no power supply. Some features of the M-Audio mixer are hidden due to that.

I'll try to run a Windows update, we never know. Do you see any weak link on my system otherwise?


Operating System
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1
CPU
Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.67GHz
Bloomfield 45nm Technology
RAM
24.0GB Triple-Channel DDR3 @ 534MHz (8-8-8-20)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer INC. P6T (LGA1366)
Graphics
32ML60TM (1600x900@60Hz)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti (ZOTAC International)
Storage
931GB Samsung SSD 870 EVO 1TB ATA Device (SSD) (OS drive, 370GB free space)
931GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB ATA Device (SSD) (v-i & VST drive, 287GB free)
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Mark Bliss
Posts: 7313
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2012 3:59 pm
Location: Out there

Re: Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by Mark Bliss »

The USB bus powered interface shouldnt be a problem for your usage. I dont think that is a concern.

The driver/buffer suggestion was for the "stuttering"
The load time issue is likely a separate and different thing.

What version/build of Mixcraft are you running? I seem to recall some people experiencing this on some older versions/builds.
But it also could be some other detail specific to your configuration. 24 virtual instrument tracks could be a lot of load if for example they are complex sampler style VI's depending on here the instrument is loaded in memory, where the samples are loaded in memory... Just as an example.
Stay in tune, Mark

My SOUNDCLOUD Page
creativeforge
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:56 pm

Re: Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by creativeforge »

Thanks Mark, as usual a well thought-of reply. 8)

I'm exploring the VST3 issue. I am using a plugin that only shows as VST3 (Waves S1 Imager). I'm looking for an alternative, because I can't stand Waves "checkpoints" anymore. I just spent another 2 hours trying to get through their Waves central "issues." Enough is enough. After all the years I've used their plugins, time to move on. Lots of very worthy developers out there!

I'l let you know how it goes.

Regards,

Andre
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Sturdy
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Re: Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by Sturdy »

One thing that helped my stuttering was to change the CPU power management - changing cpu power control to "high performance" vs. the "balanced" or "power saver" modes available (I'm in win 10). There's a setting for minimum cpu under processor power management - minimum processor state that lets me set the minimum processor state. It seems maybe, at least on my machine, with audio the processor going in and out of power conservation mode can cause the crackles. Setting that minimum processor state higher (to 50% or so like is default for high performanc e mode) seems to help my system respond in timely manner to surge in processor demand that audio processing or generation can cause.
creativeforge
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2016 9:56 pm

Re: Preferences/Sound Device: am I doing this right?

Post by creativeforge »

Thanks for the tip, Sturdy, yes, these are set to performance. I still think having too many virtual tracks is making it hard on the CPU (on THIS computer, Win 7). But certainly something to always keep in mind is what is the rest of the computer busy doing at the same time.
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