playback stalls and vst related crashes

[tas]

Hello

out of a sudden I am getting playback/recording stalls without anything chaning on my machine (xp on a quad mac pro). Its been about a month and recently I upgraded to SP3 and the latest Pyramix version but still the same. I was wondering what the possible causes/remedies could be as I doubt that the machine is too slow. This happens on very cpu-light projects.

On slightly heavier projects (max 23%cpu) where I use VSTs I have many problems. IN fact I have a specific project where I cannot remove a VST as the project will stall and have to be killed. And generally adding or removing VSTs takes about a minute. I was wondering if other people have the same experiences or any good advice. In fact I am beginning to wonder if PMX native was a bad choice for music production(tracking is ok but mixing not) - or if running on a mac is the bad choice for that matter.

thanks

[fl]

out of a sudden I am getting playback/recording stalls without anything chaning on my machine (xp on a quad mac pro).

It sounds like something has happened to increase the processing load on your computer. Have a look at the thread I wrote on Optimizing a MacBook Pro for the lowest Latency: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4125#p14489, and although not everything will apply to your desktop machine, there are some things that will. Get DPC Latency Checker first thing and see what's going on when you are actually playing back from Pyramix, and take it from there. Many of the XP optimizations are useful to employ when running an Audio application anyway.

BTW, you didn't list your interface or how you're running Windows - Bootcamp? Parallels or Fusion? It's possible that some new version of the ASIO driver for your interface has caused some interference.

[tas]

Hi Frank

Most of those things I 've already done.
I'm on bootcamp with a Prism Orpheus and now that you mention it I have upgraded its drivers a couple of times and it might have been indeed that I get the stalls after that. I will go through all those tips and run the latency checker and get back with resuts.
I generally try to keep my windows system as clean as possible and have installed nothing apart from PMX and a couple of other audio apps and have loads of free HD space. Still frustrating to be getting such problems.

So any idea why PMX sort of re-loads the whole project when adding a tiny-weeny VST (and takes half a minute to do so). Just thinking if its a matter of my configuration...

thanks.

[fl]

So any idea why PMX sort of re-loads the whole project when adding a tiny-weeny VST (and takes half a minute to do so). Just thinking if its a matter of my configuration...

Pyramix has to rebuild the mixer after every plug-in addition or removal, and that usually takes a couple of seconds on my system (iMac/MacBook Pro with RME Fireface 800 - XP SP3 under Bootcamp), although I'm not running more than fourteen tracks at a time. No idea what it could be if it's taking longer than that....

[STA]

What are you using in the way of hard drives - internal or external?

Is there anything that could be writing to/reading from the hard drives at the same time, like a big windows service or a virus checker or anything?

Regards,

Shaun

[tas]

I'm using an internal drive and I disable the antivirus when I remember. Can't thing of any other services disrupting the flow. By the way what latency values are acceptable as they are caclulated from that tool?

[fl]

By the way what latency values are acceptable as they are caclulated from that tool?

If by "that tool" you mean DPC Latency Checker, then any value less than 1000 micro-seconds will show up as a green bar, with values between 1000 and 1500 as a yellow, and above 1500 as a red bar - the implication being that any value below 1000 is acceptable for audio purposes. In my own tests, I've found that my iMac, while playing back a fourteen track recording from Pyramix, shows values ranging between 120 and 380 micro-seconds, while my MacBook Pro shows values between 320 and 680 - all in the green. I have, however, experienced audible clicks and noises when playing back a Surround mix-down with three or four instances of the free SIR (impulse reverb) VST plug-in, which DPC L.C. shows as still being well within the green zone. Increasing the operating latency of my Fireface to 512 samples or more remedied the problem, so my suspicion is that there are processing loads occurring within my audio interface which are independent of anything happening in the computer, and hence, unaffected by any of the optimizations to XP that I have applied. Perhaps there is something similar happening inside your Prism...

In my earlier post, I cited the thread where I detailed my finding that running Pyramix with the level meters in the Track Headers (Timeline) disabled, I get far lower computer latency values - dropping from an average of 700 micro-seconds to around 300 in a typical session. This reduction, however, does not show up on my iMac, so obviously there is some graphics operation that is handled by dedicated hardware on an iMac that is handled by the central processor on a MacBook Pro. Those people with configurable PCs should be able to optimize performance by choosing suitable graphics hardware, whereas laptop owners will more or less be taking their chances with whatever is hardwired into their machines.

[STA]

I'm using an internal drive and I disable the antivirus when I remember. Can't thing of any other services disrupting the flow.

Is it an internal drive for audio or is it shared with the system drive? Also, what kind of fragmentation level is your drive?

What Antivirus are you using - some leave services behind doing things even when they are supposedly disabled!

Just out of interest, what kind of track count are you working at when experiencing the stalls?

[tas]

Hi,

I have a single drive and partition for my windows system. I should have made partitions beforehand I guess. Would that have made a great improvement? I'm on 26% fragmentation so yes I need to defrag soon. I haven't had any stalls since I followed all the tips on the link posted by Frank. Truth is I thought I had changed the optimisation for background services but I was wrong.
The projects I was getting the stalls are 16 and 24 track ones. That 24 track one sometimes takes more than a minute to load. I also have described how adding or removing vsts somtimes takes ages, but this behaviour is not consistent so its hard to pindown the cause. When running these projects I get an average latency of 300 microsecs
I am using Kaspersky by the way and STA you're right, the process still runs when disabling.

PS. I did a file search while running a PMX project while writing this post and that caused a series of stalls, but I guess thats not surprising at all.

thaks for the help and interest

tas

[STA]

Hi,
I haven't had any stalls since I followed all the tips on the link posted by Frank. Truth is I thought I had changed the optimisation for background services but I was wrong.

That's good news then! If you do get any more problems in the future then putting a second drive in just for audio would probably be the biggest improvement you'd see, but obviously if its working fine now then there's no need to spend the money!

I found that with Kaspersky too, it is a good AV but it is quite a big program. I use Avast at the moment as out of all of them it seems to disable the most when you click 'disable' but its still primarily concerned with catching viruses rather than staying unobtrusive. I'm quite interested to see what Microsoft's Morro will be like when the project's finished as they're saying it will be written specifically for low-performance computers like netbooks; presumably that means it should still stay out of the way on higher-performance computers!

Happy Pyramixing,

Shaun