Errors, trying to narrow down

PipelineAudio wrote on 2/11/2003, 6:45 PM
Ok I have now put the soundscape mixtreme PCI card into the PC formerly occupied by an RME HDSP 9652 and also RME Digi9652

I am trying my hardest to find out if the problems are truly on my end or are something wrong with vegas 4 that wasnt wrong with vegas 3

This is now the fourth PC, and a game of musical chairs with 4 different types of soundcards now. Also different hard drives, different CPU types, etc...

Here are the problems I am having with RME Digi9652, RME HDSP9652, Echo Gina, and now confirmed on the almighty rock solid soundscape mixtreme PCI card

1: Static blasts: Upon hitting solo, unsolo, mute, and unmute, sometimes noise that were described by another vegas user as " static blasts" appear. Nearly 0dBFS few hundred ms blasts of pretty much white noise, suspiciously sounding like a clock coming unsync'ed

2: Render glitches: Sometimes static blasts, sometimes just skips, sometimes just pauses when a file is rendered. Happens OFTEn in 24 bit renders, usually at the exact same place in time, havent been able to repro on 16 bit

3:"Open copy in sound forge" glitches: sometimes static blasts, sometimes just skips, sometimes just pauses. Havent tried in 16 bit yet but often happens in 24 bit copies

4: Stuttering on playback. Playback starts to skip and slows down slower and slower till you hit stop or the pc completely freezes, often followed by a hardware reset. Doesnt seem to matter if any plugins are used, or the number of tracks, or crossfades, edits or anything...I cant figure out what makes this more likely to happen

5: Stuttering on record. VERY similar to stuttering on playback.

6: Skipping on start of playback when track is armed. This doesnt seem to happen after a reboot for quite a while, but once it starts you need to reboot. Hitting play while the track is armed, whether recording or not causes a skip then seems to play OK, till some crackling that usually occurs soon after

7: Crackles. Seems to only happen in 24 bit mode, but asio or mme, same thing. Long after a reboot crackles seem to creep into the playback engine, track armed or not

I will be EXTREMELY happy to try anything anyone suggests to figure these problems out, just give me a hint on what I can do

Also if you know anything I should do to try and narrow these problems down I will try that as well.

Not trying to complain, just trying to help figure out what might be causing me and other users' problems

Comments

PipelineAudio wrote on 2/13/2003, 4:39 AM
forgot to ask also, those who are having problems, are you guys running dual monitors ?
LooneyTunez wrote on 2/13/2003, 9:18 AM
Sinlge monitor here.
SonyEPM wrote on 2/13/2003, 9:24 AM
Please help me reproduce these sonic blasts, using an Echo Gina (which we both have). System specs, how many tracks, how many armed tracks, project settings, audio prefs, ...everything. Park the info in this thread so everyone can see it- maybe this is a settings issue or maybe it requires an update. We need to repro it reliably first...

thanks
troven wrote on 2/13/2003, 10:31 AM
single monitor
SonyEPM wrote on 2/13/2003, 12:24 PM
Ok Pipeline, we have a repro with your uploaded project...investigating.
PipelineAudio wrote on 2/13/2003, 1:52 PM
OK, Machine 1:

Pentium 3 450mhz
Aopen AX6BC mobo
256megs sdram
Echo Gina 20
Promise UDMA 66 controller
Voodoo 5 video
Intel Ethernet card
Windows XP
Using 5.04 echo driver

machine 2:

Dual Pentium 3 700's
Supermicro P6dbe
Matrox G400 video
512 megs sdram
Soundscape Mixtreme PCI
Netgear LAN
Promise UDMA100 controller

machine 3

P4 2.4ghz
ASUS P4t-e
Matrox G550 video
512 megs ram
RME HDSP9652
Netgear LAN

Glad you found the files I sent up. those will work fine. The mono tracks are the originals and the stereo tracks are renders of the originals. One of the stereo tracks was made with dual monitor disabled, one with it enabled, not sure if that has nothing to do with it tho.

I thought possibly in the mix I sent that all those edits may be the culprit, so I also tried just throwing 2 mono 48k 24 bit files in a mix. No fx, no envelopes, both volumes down -6 dB. Just hit solo or mute enough times and you should hear it. I carried the drive with the files home and tried the same drive on both home computers...I also copied all the files to the home computer drives and still saw the same thing.

The static blasts are a big problem, but the ones that really have me concened are the rendering glitches, and the way itll just freeze up around edits, or sometimes for no reason. It is TOTALLY unpredictable whether or not it will record even a single track, input monitoring on or off, no difference. Sometimes it will work fine sometimes it starts skipping then slowing down. Same thing on playback. These are files that will record and play perfectly in vegas 3.

Funny thing: it is hard to repro this when I am by myself, but if a customer is around---KABOOM..crash and glitch city...just ;like the car is fine when the mechanic isnt around I guess

I turned on the performance log thing in XP, and Im not sure If I created the right tracking line things, but it *seems* like the static blasts and skipping happen, the RAM use goes up to 100 % for a VERY short spike. DO I need more ram ? 512 megs in the P4 machine
karlc wrote on 2/17/2003, 5:39 PM
I logged on to find out whether we should upgrade the studio's version of Vegas Video to 4.0 ... from the looks of it, I think we're gonna wait ... simply can't afford to have anything but a stable machine. Vegas Video has been working like a tank the past couple of years, so if it ain't broke ...

KAC ...
Rednroll wrote on 2/17/2003, 5:54 PM
My V4 has been working pretty solid on the audio side on two systems. I tried my first Video editing attempt with Vegas4 and reported, 3 bugs and a tremendous headache. I think that ended my inspiring career as a video editor for the time being. I even uncovered the old Normalize switch bug on an audio event, where when you select Normalize and it makes the audio in the event disappear. Overall this is a pretty solid release. All software has it's initial release bugs...even the almighty Microsoft and Windows XP.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 2/17/2003, 5:57 PM
Red sed
"I turned on the performance log thing in XP, and Im not sure If I created the right tracking line things, but it *seems* like the static blasts and skipping happen, the RAM use goes up to 100 % for a VERY short spike. DO I need more ram ? 512 megs in the P4 machine"

Sounds more like a caching issue in V4, or an XP service (or other applet) that needs to be killed.

geoff
Rednroll wrote on 2/17/2003, 6:11 PM
I didn't say that!!! That was that other Pipedream character. Let's try to not let that happen again or I'll be forced to hunt you down and make you listen to Pipeline's box set collection of N'sync remixes he's been working on.
:-)~
PipelineAudio wrote on 2/17/2003, 6:36 PM
yeah what the hell was that ? LOL that was me

and hey Karl WHERE THE HELL YOU BEEN???

Im dreaming of dual card mixtreme ASIO in V4 so I can chuck these RME's to the dumpster

are you still running those?

Stick around you are one of the calm cool voices of reason around here

This release has been weird, many have reported no problems and in fact better performance, while others are having very odd problems that dont happen in V3. You can bet your asquith that SF is on it, tho

Once you try the FX parameter automation and the buss tracks you will be HOOKED errors or no errors, dont even bother trying to hide from Vegas 4, itll get you :)
Rednroll wrote on 2/18/2003, 5:15 PM
"4: Stuttering on playback. Playback starts to skip and slows down slower and slower til you hit stop or the pc completely freezes, often followed by a hardware reset. Doesnt seem to matter if any plugins are used, or the number of tracks, or crossfades, edits or anything...I cant figure out what makes this more likely to happen"

I was having this similar problem the first time I installed V4 on my system. It was one of 2 things. I had an early release of Windows XP. I did a Windows XP update and installed all the SP1 updates. I also used the Windows update to check for updated hardware drivers and found there was an update for my video card, and installed that. After that all my stuttering and locking problems vanished. My other system is running Win2k and have not seen these problems.

If that doesn't fix your problems, call the JoeD hotline, after all he is the almighty DAW builder always jumping in to help you out. LOL!!
ScoriaMM wrote on 2/18/2003, 6:38 PM
>>4: Stuttering on playback. Playback starts to skip and slows down slower and slower till you hit stop or the pc completely freezes, often followed by a hardware reset. Doesnt seem to matter if any plugins are used, or the number of tracks, or crossfades, edits or anything...I cant figure out what makes this more likely to happen<<

Hey Pipe, did you try the new hammerfall drivers? Version 2.434 posted on 2/10/03. Matthias in the RME forums said this fixed similar problems in Vegas 4. This is for the HDSP cards (Multi/Digiface and Hammerfall DSP). Drivers for the 9652 will be out shortly apparently.

http://www.rme-audio.com/download/w2dsp243.zip

-ScoriaMM
PipelineAudio wrote on 2/18/2003, 8:08 PM
yeah thanks! Thats the version I have ( tho in about it says .432) Actually Matthias made a special driver also for Vegas 4 that flushes the ASIO buffers too!
ScoriaMM wrote on 2/18/2003, 9:38 PM
2.50 just posted.

http://www.rme-audio.com/download/w2dsp250.zip
rgdbv wrote on 2/25/2003, 8:54 PM
6: Skipping on start of playback when track is armed. This doesnt seem to happen after a reboot for quite a while, but once it starts you need to reboot. Hitting play while the track is armed, whether recording or not causes a skip then seems to play OK, till some crackling that usually occurs soon after

This is exactly the problem I am having. Except that it doesn't fix it when I reboot. Any suggestions?
pvnuk wrote on 2/26/2003, 12:21 AM
I have been having similar problems since upgrading to Vegas 4.0.

If I touch a track and slide it while playing or mute / un-mute , I get really bad digital spikes.

Also quite a few of my renders have digital spikes, glitches and solid digital blocks in them for now particular reason.

I am getting the dreaded cross-fade clicks as the cursor passes over the end of a fade.

Help,

Paul
Geoff_Wood wrote on 2/26/2003, 10:16 PM
I just took the plunge and bought 4 (115).

I seem to be getting a few clicks and pops on playback that I never used to.

WinXP / Celery 1G1, 7200, MOTU 2408/2 lastest drivers(+ASIO) ,blaa, blaa

Playing back a 18 track piece with a few plugs working that sucked 55% in VV3 with Classic Wave mode WDM driver, with ASIO (latency/buffer giving 1,2, 5 msec) now sucks 85% and gives random clicks in playback. Recording an additional track sends the CPU soaring to 100%.. Dunno if that relates to Pipe's problem at all ...

geoff
tbrowning wrote on 2/27/2003, 1:22 AM
Same thing here. I have a MOTU 2408 as well with a dual P3 700, 2Gb RAM. In the beta release I had a few problems with stuttering and skips, but thought it was just the beta. /and the ASIO worked. Now, I can't use ASIO drivers at all. It locks the system to even try. Plus I am getting tons of stutters on tracks when playing back in V4. Another funny thing I noticed was that tracks recorded in v4 seem to still have transiet problems when played back in VV3. But VV3 stuff is still working as seamless as always, as long as everything was done in VV3.
karlc wrote on 3/7/2003, 5:03 PM
Hey Aaron, How's it going?

Yep ... still running dual Mixtremes on a dual processor/Win2K box. It has been so solid for the last couple of years that I no longer have the stomach for _any_ bugs whatsoever. Don't even know, or care, what version I am running, just as long as I can forget I am working on a computer ... which is the way its been for sometime now.

I just stuck my nose in to see how many of you guys are still bleeding from the upgrade ... maybe by .02x it will be time to take the plunge again.

Keep these guys civil.

KAC ...
Geoff_Wood wrote on 3/7/2003, 5:24 PM
XP, MOTU 2408/2 latest drivers, 512MB, Celeron 1G1, 7200 Barracuda, G450 with bus mastering disabled, Contour Shuttle Pro (USB)

My 2408/2 is totally unusable with even 1 mono track in ASIO - pops and clicks on any playback at any latency, and extreme CPU usage. Big CPU spikes with zooming.

With MME drivers I get usable recording recording and playback and CPU only 5% higher than VV3 , but pops and clicks (playback, recording OK with 5 trax...) with any action that causes a graphic change (zooming tracks, dropping menus, changing active windows, etc) during playback. The Time window display seems to update 'jerkily' instead of smoothly as in VV3. Have tried all levels of G450 video ' acceleration rollback' - no change.

Looks like there certainly is an issue with MOTU ASIO (and others ?) And something in the display drawing department.

Audio-only (no video media) and no input monitoring being used.

*With* input monitoring any ASIO playback is totally garbled, and in MME the monitor signal seems hugely delayed, like maybe 0.3 seconds.

Hope that give a bit more to work on.....

geoff
RobSoul wrote on 3/12/2003, 12:27 AM
I'm having the same issues with V4: struttering on playback (play or record), loud noise spikes - especially when AutoPlay-ing a file in the Vegas explorer window, and some strange artifacts when rendering.

V3 ran great for me.

Has anyone found the problem or the solution yet?

Rob

My System:
Vegas 4.0 (build 115)
WinXP
Pentium IV, 2.0GHz processor
1 GB RAM
Dakota sound card