I'm having bit of a recurring issue with mixdowns involving EastWest's play.
If I take a simple piano line, use Bechstein piano (for example) as the patch and play it , it runs fine in regular DAW mode, but when I do a mixdown its clipping the ends off all the notes making it sound like theres a brutal gate on it or something like that. It just sounds...... bad....... If I flip over to Pianissmo well that works fine. Unfortuantely I've got $2K+ worth of sample libraries that I'm struggling to figure out how to use here because the mixdown just wrecks performance. I should note it seems to work OK in Ableton and sonar.
So I don't think its specifically mixcraft, nor is it specifically EastWest Play, its what happens when the two of them go into whatever the hecks happening in mixdown. And I can't find a solution?
Try the advice on the thread you quoted and mix the track down to an audio file before your final mixdown. I do this with every track. Then I can check each render. Most people consider it overkill, but it sure beats spending time trying to find a few bad sample renderings in a 50 track mix.
Slap it onto your Master as the very very very last plugin and activate it and then just play your project. Works like an absolute charm to the extent where I don't even bother with Mixcraft's own Mix Down anymore (more often than not Mixcraft's own Mix Down puts a "spike" or "pop" at the beginning of some of my audio tracks which causes a big problem if it goes unnoticed and you then feed your mixed down audio into mastering software).
Theres not a lot in that thread to try, other than "upgrade to the latest Play". Well its 7-8 years later and I'm on the latest. (Theres also "use edirol". Um, no, lol.) The problem seems to be that the mixdown mode just doesnt seem to be compatible with the play plugin, which is a major problem in my books. I'll try the MRecorder thing. Its a hack, but hey, its where we're at.
Have you tried mixing down to a wav file with the same sample rate you're using in Mixcraft's Sound Device preferences? For example, if you're using a sample rate of 48000 Hz in Sound Device preferences, try mixing down to a wav file with a sample rate of 48000 Hz.
Oy. Melda doesn't make "hacks"!!! LOL!!! Only joking i.e. I'm sure that's not what you meant.
For the sake of interest:
MRecorder will "record" (save to a WAV file) the exact audio in your project EVEN IF the project stutters upon playback for whatever reason. This tells me that it is doing the exact same thing as Mixcraft's Mix Down facility i.e. it's simply encoding whatever is being fed to it is all. What's more: it's actually independent of the sound device driver in use (Mixcraft's Mix Down is not i.e. some months ago there was a problem with some of the IKM stuff and it would mix down fine if selecting Wave RT or WAVE but not if the ASIO driver was being used which tells me it CANNOT be independent of the sound device driver). Only thing to know really is that it will "record" to the same sample rate as your project setting and only to a WAV file. This isn't a problem i.e. if you're going to send your mix to mastering software it should be in uncompressed format anyway and if you need to rather mix down to another format (MP3 for example) you could either call the WAV file up in Mixcraft and mix down to MP3 or use other software for the conversion (I use Sound Forge Pro 12.0 for this purpose when needed but I'm sure even something like Audacity will do the trick).
Have you tried mixing down to a wav file with the same sample rate you're using in Mixcraft's Sound Device preferences? For example, if you're using a sample rate of 48000 Hz in Sound Device preferences, try mixing down to a wav file with a sample rate of 48000 Hz.
Greg
Will give it a try. The vst inline recorder thing does work, but its kind of fiddly as I do work with Tape a lot and like having things with fairly precise start and stop times. So this would perhaps be a solution
The vst inline recorder thing does work, but its kind of fiddly as I do work with Tape a lot and like having things with fairly precise start and stop times.
Huh???
When you use it make sure that "Pause when playback disabled" is ticked. Then click on the big record button. At this point MRecorder is effectively "armed" for "recording". MRecorder is then in perfect synch. with Mixcraft i.e. it will only start "recording" when you hit Mixcraft's play button and stop immediately when the project has finished playing.
For the sake of interest (and "me being me" of course): I've tested by nulling output files (files created using Mixcraft's own Mix Down option and files created from MRecorder). They null perfectly (assuming no issue with the Mixcraft Mix Down at the time of course) i.e. they're identical (sample rate and bit depth being equal of course and no "POST-PROCESSING" in MRecorder).
Regards,
Dale.
Last edited by dpaterson on Fri Nov 09, 2018 8:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
I stand by my first post. If that doesn't work for you, the drive you have Pianos on is probably too slow. It should be on a different drive other than your OS and DAW. I remember when Pianos was released (yes I've been working with EWQL stuff that long) many of the users had to move the library to a separate SSD in order to get it to work properly.
I'm curious as to why the drive speed would make a difference??? If the project was stuttering etc. upon playback (and this NOT being due to buffer sizes and the like) then I'd agree but mixing down should just be reading and writing data not (and if the drive was slow or some other such related access time or speed issue then it would just take a bit longer to mix down not)???
Have you (the OP) tried changing your audio driver to something OTHER than ASIO just before mixing down??? I see a line or two possibly referencing this (in a post or two above) but it's unclear as to whether or not you've tried this. Only reason for the suggestion is that I had an issue with something from IKM i.e. project would play fine but NO audio in the output file when mixed down with the ASIO driver in use but everything worked fine when mixing down with WAVE or WaveRT selected at the time of mixing down (and updates were required by both Acoustica and IKM to resolve).
I have no experience whatsoever with this "EastWest" stuff though i.e. just "pulling at straws" and tryin' to help is all.
I'm curious as to why the drive speed would make a difference??? If the project was stuttering etc. upon playback (and this NOT being due to buffer sizes and the like) then I'd agree but mixing down should just be reading and writing data not (and if the drive was slow or some other such related access time or speed issue then it would just take a bit longer to mix down not)???
The way it was explained to me is it's not so much drive speed (though EWQL says their Hollywood Orchestra will only run properly from a SSD) but what else is happening on the drive at the same time during mixdown. In this case if Pianos is not on a dedicated drive the dense streams must be read. If there are other libs on the same drive being used, they must also be read. If your OS is on that drive, it is constantly writing and reading files. If your DAW is on the same drive, it is also reading and writing files. etc. etc. Drive speed comes into play in how many of the above can be performed in a given time without dropping something. In the case of reading samples, I would think that would probably at the bottom of the priority list as far as computer operation.
Thats fine and all, but the Play plugin really is multitrack beast, think Kontakt, but different manufacturer. Most of my tracks have 4-5 instances with 7-8 audio tracks per plugin. Its a *huge* pain in the neck to dump them all out to stems and remix them again, especially with film scoring where you've got messes of cues and other bits and pieces to work with.
shayneoneill wrote:Thats fine and all, but the Play plugin really is multitrack beast, think Kontakt, but different manufacturer. Most of my tracks have 4-5 instances with 7-8 audio tracks per plugin. Its a *huge* pain in the neck to dump them all out to stems and remix them again, especially with film scoring where you've got messes of cues and other bits and pieces to work with.
OK I'll give it one last try. We are not idiots here. I have been using EWQL Play libraries since 2008 and Kontakt libraries since 2009. I use them both in my orchestral template. I know the differences and I know the similarities. If you had researched Play properly you would know from studies done one both the Soundsonline Forums and VI-Control Forums that it is more efficient to use single instances of Play per instrument and NOT load up the player with multiple instruments. Works better for resource use, works better for instrument control. Loading player instances is a more efficient workflow method in Kontakt for resource use. This has been established several times over the past 7 years or so.
So, the most likely way to fix (as explained multiple times above) your problem is to alter your workflow so that your EWQL Pianos are on a separate track and mix that track down to a wave file BEFORE doing your final mixdown. Maybe it won't work (for reasons I also stated above), but you won't know unless you try it.
