Is Vegas 4 really useable yet?

decrink wrote on 6/8/2003, 9:27 AM

I took an 8 song children's CD from V3 to V4 right in the middle of the production. I finished all the mixes in V4. I now use 4 exclusively. I also did several films with multiple edits and effects and converted them to 4.0 and completed to DVD. Longest was 17 minutes. A few hiccups with the M-Audio drivers and asio and effects from V3 projects but once they got ironed out its been smooth. I removed all effects from tracks and busses before converting to V4. Seems there was a lot of stuttering with Acoustic Mirror and it doesn't work as an effect in 4.
I have another large project that was started in V3 and will now be completed in 4. I had to add live drum tracks and jetdv in the scripting forum helped write a script that plugs in all the new tracks. There are some great features in V4 for audio that make it so much better once you get used to using them. Effects automation, master busses for example.

My DAW setup is modest, an Athlon 1000 with 512DDR, two M-Audio cards. I've sank the budget into mics and preamps rather then upgrading hardware. Fast and stable enough for me.

Not looking back.
BB

scapedog wrote on 7/17/2003, 12:40 PM

My system: 1 GIG RAM 2.2 GHZ P4, 60 GIG UDMA
Using DELTA 44 sound card.

How did you iron out click and pops duirng playback, and simultaneous playback/record? seems like we have a similar setup (m-audio and all):

My Vegas Audio 2.0 LE works better than VEGAS 4c , although more
limited in functionality. At least there's no clicking, hissing and popping -- stretching during simultaneous playback/record -- it's unusable for me. Had to go back to Vegas Audio 2.0 LE.

akg wrote on 7/17/2003, 1:26 PM

For Audio
Vegas 2 > Vegas 3 > Vegas 4 !!!
Why ??

Cold wrote on 7/17/2003, 1:53 PM

I've owned it since the release, but haven't yet been able to do any serious work with it. The timing delay when recording overdubs kills the software for me. It's not realistic to expect a client to wait during an overdub session while I line up every take just so they can audition it with the mix. ASIO doesn't work at all with my motu 2408. I haven't really noticed clicks and pops but then again I haven't spent enough time playing around to say whether or not I have an issue. Realisticly, if I can't do paying work in vv4, all the great features mean nothing.
Steve S.

P.S. I've been waiting patiently for the vegas people to iron out the bugs, but after months of not having a usable piece of software, that doesn't handle day to day tasks that the previous version did, I'm seriously contemplating jumping ship.

decrink wrote on 7/19/2003, 2:09 AM

I talked to the guys over at Maudio and they walked me through the proper setup on the Delta 44. I just used it with a AP 2496 to record a ton of stuff in the last month, up to 8 tracks at a time added to 24 tracks and had no problems. Except with the damn metronome.
Using asio and no clicks and pops.
I don't think it was Vegas but the way I had my software and drivers set up for the Delta. Do some experimenting and try the various drivers suggested elsewhere on this board.
Hope you get it working.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 7/19/2003, 4:10 AM

Using 4.0b with ASIO (MOTU2408/2) solidly for since it came out. Only problem is the occasional small clicks on live playback. This does not come across in rendering.

geoff

drbam wrote on 7/19/2003, 8:47 AM

>>Only problem is the occasional small clicks on live playback. This does not come across in rendering<<

This still makes it unusable for me as I mix through a console. Jeez I wish they'd fix this thing! ;-(

drbam

Handsome wrote on 2/25/2004, 11:10 AM

I just started using Vegas 4 on a project. I also upgraded to two Layla 24s. I'm so glad to hear that the pops and clicks I've been noticing are from the software and not a problem with the Laylas.

bgc wrote on 2/25/2004, 4:03 PM

Geoff / Others
Vegas is up to version 4.0e. I have zero popping/clicking in using ASIO.
Vegas 4 is rock solid and has been for over a year for me.
B.

Rednroll wrote on 2/25/2004, 4:08 PM

Can you guys give some more details on the problems you've been experiencing? What sound card? How many tracks the problem happens at? Your hard drive specs? Processor? Motherboard? Video Card? Any specific 3rd party plugins being used, Sony Plugins? I haven't seen any pops and click issues, but my projects haven't been all that big and complex lately either. Maybe we can find a common variable that everyone has and find out where the problem is. I wouldn't be expecting any v4.0 updates though, unless maybe we can come up with something concrete as to what's causing the problem and making all of you upset. If you're experiencing this problem regularly in a project, then try removing plugins one by one, and then reducing the track count, try turning off "draw waveforms and frames in events" within the preference>general menu and see if any of that helps. Any information in recreating this would be great, I happen to have a version higher than v4.0 on my system and would like to try and reproduce it there as well.

drbam wrote on 2/25/2004, 5:03 PM

I've never experienced pops/clicks with Vegas 4 but I do have a problem with a delayed playback start with more than 6 tracks. It made intensive editing incredibly frustrating. Sony techs worked hard with me to try and fix it last Fall but to no avail. I got tired of hassling with it and returned to Vegas 3 which works great. I'd rather be recording than spending my time sorting out software! In a few days I'm upgrading my mobo and hopefully that will prove to be a fix. If not, I'll continue with Vegas 3 and probably make a move to Sonar so I can use VSTi's. Oh well. . .

drbam

Ben wrote on 2/25/2004, 5:30 PM

Red - although V4 hasn't given me the sort of problems it's given others, I have had my fair show of clicks, pops, stuttering, etc. Definitely more problematic than version 3. Some of this may be due to M-Audio drivers - I'm <still> not sure which driver version I should be using for best performance (btw, can anyone help me out there?).

So, Red, my point is - from your pretty obvious clue that you're running the Vegas 5 beta, I'd love to know if it's performing ok and I pray that it's not going to be more of a resource hog than V4. Please, please, please open as many Vegas 4 projects into it as you can for testing! Sony - please continue the longstanding tradition of giving us a public beta so we don't run into the sort of nightmare you had with Acid 4.

Most importantly, I really do hope it rocks audio-wise. It seems like this version may be make or break for some of us as to whether we're going to jump ship; let's hope we don't have to. I've got my fingers crossed for MIDI...

Cheers
Ben

P.S. My hunch is that Sony have re-split Vegas into audio and video versions.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 2/25/2004, 10:00 PM

I thought everybodys' clicks and delays (i never had a delay) had been fixed last year. Mine were. Never any time offset like Cold had.

No problems at all with 4 in last build or 2.

geoff

fishtank wrote on 2/26/2004, 8:40 AM

The problem is that it appears Sony has no plans to iron out the bugs in Vegas 4. You can only hope that they fix most of these problems when you PAY for the Vegas 5 release.

I was NEVER able to record in ASIO using my Frontier Dakota/Montana cards without clicks and pops in any release of Vegas 4 - and it sounds like I am not the only one with these kinds of problems. I now use another multitrack app that has worked perfectly on the same hardware. I'm just hoping to get some good use of Vegas on the video side so I can feel better about spending money on it.

Rednroll wrote on 2/26/2004, 10:29 AM

"The problem is that it appears Sony has no plans to iron out the bugs in Vegas 4."

This may not be true, but you can certainly understand that they can't iron out, things that they may be unaware of how to reproduce. I hear a bunch of users whining who seem to have the same or similar problem. I asked for some simple information to help and narrow this down and maybe Sony can have a better idea of what the problem is. But, nobody has the time or are too lazy to make the effort, yet can come in this forum and continue to whine like children. I guess it's true what they say, "misery does love company".

I've shared this story before, when I first installed Vegas 4 beta 1, it wouldn't even install on my system, yet v3.0 seemed to have no problems. I waited for the next update. This one installed, but now I had all kinds of stuturing, popping and clicking. I reported it as a bug, but everyone else that was testing the program out hadn't been seeing the same thing. So I decided to look in other areas on my PC. IRQ's, DMA's Hard drive fragmentation, Sound Card on a shared PCI slot, video card shared with another card. What I ended up doing was a Windows XP update. The update installed the SP1 updates and also detected there was an updated driver for my video card. I went through the update process and upon completion V4 ran like a champ. Then I went back to some Vegas 3. projects and played them back and it was like someone had put a supercharger in my DAW. If you think moving to Cubase or Sonar will solve all your problems then go do that and quit whining about it. Just make sure you come back to this forum when you start to dig into that program and find all the bad things out about it. Please, if you have a problem don't become part of the problem, help fix it. Whinning about something may have fixed problems when you where a child, it's time to move on from that approach.

sloaners wrote on 2/26/2004, 11:15 AM

i've recently started using vegas 4 to mix audio and i am having problems trying to iron out clicks and pops. any suggestions?

Cold wrote on 2/26/2004, 5:35 PM

Red, I will do a clinical test of everything I was having issues with on the weekend. I will post my findings at that point.
Steve S.

fishtank wrote on 2/26/2004, 11:43 PM

Sorry....but I have been through everything on my machine over and over again. Latest drivers, fresh OS install (Win 2K) and then an upgrade to Win XP - it's a clean system with no games, no IRQ sharing yadda yadda yadda.

I have an email from SF/Sony tech support that claims V4 dual processor support will be addressed in the next update or two. This was a year ago - nothing has happened and they now IGNORE posts on the subject. You can call it whining or whatever you like...but I paid good money for this product and it does not work satisfactorily to say the least. Others do have a right to know how this product is performing at this stage.

And don't tell me the crap about being able to reproduce problems. I can gaurantee that my problems could be reproduced if Sony assembled the exact hardware I have (it may only take testing my audio card!) - the problem is that they would never bother to go through that much trouble.

I've said it before and I'll say it again....I'm not impressed.

doctorfish wrote on 2/27/2004, 4:22 AM

I've been using Vegas 4 solidly since the beta. I use an M-Audio Audiophile, an Egosys Wamirack 24, and an Egosys Waveterminal 192M (all with ASIO drivers) and I've hardly had a hiccup. I never had a problem with any popping or stuttering, even on my lowly home machine. It's too bad that some users have unsolvable problems but I suspect there are many that are getting good results. For what it worth my computer specs are:

Pentium 4 1.7 ghz
asus p4t motherboard, intel chipset
1 gig ram
win xp pro sp1
ati optimus 9100 video card
egosys wamirack 24
m-audio audiophile 2496

Pentium 3 650 mhz
512 mb ram
generic motherboard, via chipset
win xp pro sp1
nvidia gforce video card
egosys waveterminal 192m

Dave

Rednroll wrote on 2/27/2004, 5:46 AM

Fishtank,

"And don't tell me the crap about being able to reproduce problems. I can gaurantee that my problems could be reproduced if Sony assembled the exact hardware I have (it may only take testing my audio card!) - the problem is that they would never bother to go through that much trouble."

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you. Sony does assemble hardware all the time to reproduce problems. I recently ran into a problem which I thought may have been soundcard/hardware related. I informed them I had an Echo Gina card. They asked me Gina20 or Gina24? We have both and will install that card and try to reproduce. I see many people have had problems with m-audio cards and the UAD-1. Sony installed those components and informed them what to do. Neither was a Vegas problem I believe BTW. I see them asking for system specs on this forum all the time for users posting similar problems, so they can recreate. You can't expect them to have every sound card, every video card, every motherboard to assemble and every PC configuration possible? They would be out of business just from buying hardware. If that's what you want, then what you need to do is buy a MAC and Protools, because that's the philosophy behind that cobination. Buy our computer with our hardware, and we can make sure the software you run works perfectly.

"I have an email from SF/Sony tech support that claims V4 dual processor support will be addressed in the next update or two. "

Ding..Ding...Ding...Ding!!!! Finally a useful piece of information. You think maybe this could be the variable causing the problem? I don't have dual cpu's on both of my systems, and am not experiencing the problem. Maybe if others who have the same problem could give this little tidbit of information, we might be able to come to a conclusion that this is the problem variable, therefore avoid this configuration. How about some more from you now, since you probably didn't intend to slip that one out? Souncard? Video Card?

RichMacDonald wrote on 2/27/2004, 8:30 AM

>>"And don't tell me the crap about being able to reproduce problems. I can gaurantee that my problems could be reproduced if Sony assembled the exact hardware I have (it may only take testing my audio card!) - the problem is that they would never bother to go through that much trouble."

>I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you.

Exactly. Wish it were not so, but you're 100% wrong, Fishtank. Even if they did assemble all your hardware, they might not be able to repro. There are millions of ways for your software configuration to go wrong that are not repeatable. E.g., the problem could be some software you installed and uninstalled a year ago. Or you could have a marginal power supply. Now if you were to send your computer to Sony, then maybe. Or if you gave them all your hardware specs then mailed them a backup of your hard drive(s), along with the windows registry, maybe.

"Unable to repro" is the kiss of death for them fixing your problem "as is", i.,e., with all the info you're provided them. You're frustrated. Remember, so are they. Nevertheless, that puts the ball back in your court. You can work on fixing the problem yourself, provide more info (often impossible to be sufficiently complete), or you can give up. You're in the bleeding edge and that's just the way it is.

fishtank wrote on 2/27/2004, 9:59 AM

First of all, I have carefully chosen and assembled my hardware. I have a VERY expensive PC Power & Cooling PS, Corsair Registered ECC Memory, real MP processors and NO overclocking to mention just a few things. This computer is by far the most stable machine I have ever used. The most important fact is that Nuendo runs perfectly without click & pops on the same hardware and Vegas 4 (using ASIO) does not. Please don't assume that my hardware and config is crap as I'm 99.9 % sure that is not the issue.

Now, I do agree that maybe my soundcard and Vegas 4 just do not play well together - but Nuendo does work so I can only surmise that V4 is at fault. It seems that I am one of the only people on the planet using the Frontier Dakota and Montana cards. I seriously doubt that SF/Sony has done extensive testing with these. I still say that I would be surprised if Sony could not easily duplicate my problems with the same hardware.

One problem is the "How dare you say anything bad about Vegas..." attitude here. I mentioned that Sony totally dropped the ball on dual processor support and the response here is "Maybe running dual processors is your problem". What??? You missed the point. Sony did not come through as promised and I'm supposed to pretend that is OK?

Rednroll wrote on 2/27/2004, 10:30 AM

One problem is the "How dare you say anything bad about Vegas..." attitude here.

That's not the attitude at all. The problem is that this is a user forum and us "users" are trying to help you narrow down the problem and suggest to look at other possibilities, because everyone is not experiencing the same problem. That doesn't mean Vegas is not at fault and how dare you imply that.

" I mentioned that Sony totally dropped the ball on dual processor support and the response here is "Maybe running dual processors is your problem"."

That wasn't my opionion, it just could be a varible causing your problem. Maybe they did drop the ball on dual processor support. I have no idea, since I don't have a dual processor and don't seem to be having the same problem. Just pointing out a difference, that may cause your problem. This is a type of trouble shooting technique, to identify differences and narrow down the variables.

" What??? You missed the point. Sony did not come through as promised and I'm supposed to pretend that is OK?"

You missed the point, we're not here defending Vegas, we're pointing out other considerations. You missed the point in that I gave you the same type of comparison that even on the same system Vegas 3 worked fine for me and Vegas 4 didn't, yet you keep pointing in the direction that Nuendo works fine so Vegas must be the problem. I could probably go over to the Nuendo forums and find someone who has a totally different setup and is saying Nuendo isn't working but Vegas or Sound Forge is. Does Microsoft word and notepad work fine too, how about Windows Media player? I'm trying to point out that they're not the same program and may access drivers and system resources differently.

Here's another trouble shooting technique where you do an A/B comparison where userA has Vegas 4 and works fine, where userB has Vegas 4 and it doesn't. So now are we still convinced that Vegas 4 is the problem or does it lean more towards the differences in the system? Yes, but it's really not conclusive but, that's the whole point you're showing when you say Nuendo works fine, but Vegas doesn't. You may be totally correct that this is a Vegas problem, but until we can get it narrowed down to the common variables with users that seem to be having the same problem, then the best we are doing is placing uninformed blame.

You now mentioned that you have "the Frontier Dakota and Montana cards". This is good information, maybe everyone else having the same problem is using this card? Have you tried removing these cards, and using another one, like maybe the onboard sound card and see if you have the same problem? If you haven't then that shows me, you want someone else to do your trouble shooting for you and incenuate it's their responsibility to fix it for you, where it could very well be the Dakota drivers. If you can't take on your own responsibility and do a little self trouble shooting, then do it the easy way. Use Nuendo it seems to work for you.

RichMacDonald wrote on 2/27/2004, 2:19 PM

>First of all, I have carefully chosen and assembled my hardware. I have a VERY expensive PC Power & Cooling PS, Corsair Registered ECC Memory, real MP processors and NO overclocking to mention just a few things. This computer is by far the most stable machine I have ever used. The most important fact is that Nuendo runs perfectly without click & pops on the same hardware and Vegas 4 (using ASIO) does not. Please don't assume that my hardware and config is crap as I'm 99.9 % sure that is not the issue.

Fishtank, not sure if I should butt in further because I have no experience with this particular problem, but please allow me:

"This is your computer talking. Everything you said is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if I have gold-plated everything. It doesn't matter if I have never crashed. It doesn't matter if one app works perfectly while the other doesn't. One single error in my registry, one single out-of-date driver, one single incompatible update can cause this to happen! There are any number of reasons why it might not be the fault of Vegas."

I'm sure you'll understand that as far as the computer is concerned, 99.9% ok is the same thing as 100% crap :-) I program for a living, so I learn this every day. The computer is the most unforgiving piece of equipment ever invented.

If you haven't lately, do an experiment: Get a tool to analyze your registry and report any problems. There are free ones available but they won't perform the fixes. Don't bother with the one from Microsoft. Are you clean? If you've never done this, I'll bet you have all kinds of errors, some of which may matter, some off which won't. Even Microsoft (or, *especially* Microsoft :-() cannot install a program which doesn't immediately cause a flood or errors in your registry.

>Now, I do agree that maybe my soundcard and Vegas 4 just do not play well together - but Nuendo does work so I can only surmise that V4 is at fault.

Look, you may well be right, but you could very easily be wrong. For example, in which order did you install Vegas and Nuendo? Perhaps you installed Nuendo last and that broke the Vegas install. I haven't a clue, I''m just asking question so you can hypothesize and test. Have you tried a fresh OS install, installing only one, only the other, one then the other, the other then the one? Its real easy to blame Vegas, but others have already posted that *everthing works for them*. Doesn't that tell you something? It tells me that somewhere out there is a solution. It also suggests to me that unless you take some initiative, you've going to be just as stuck this time next year.

>I still say that I would be surprised if Sony could not easily duplicate my problems with the same hardware.

Let me tell you what its actually like for the Sony engineers. In *all* cases, its like looking for a needle in a haystack. Now sometimes the needle is sitting right there on top, sometimes it not. They either find it or they have to give up at some point. If they fail, its up to us to reduce the size of the haystack so they can retry. But the mantra of "if we can't repro it we can't fix it" is a law of nature, not bad customer service.

Good luck. And hopefully you have a working approach that can keep you going in the meantime.