Hello, everyone. My name's Gabriel and I'm a would-be
Vegas user. (I own Vegas Audio and have been considering
purchasing Vegas Pro at the recommendation of friends who
use Vegas in their own demo and project studios.)
I'm posting this because I know there must be at least a
few people in my situation who share my frustrations.
Please note that it is not my intention to discourage
anyone from using Vegas Audio or any other Sonic Foundry
product or to receive free technical support.
I recently received a copy of Vegas Audio bundled with a
Midiman M-Audio Delta 1010, thinking this would be an
excellent opportunity to try out Vegas and decide once and
for all whether or not I should purchase Vegas Pro--a
matter I'd been debating for weeks.
Several people I know have used Sonic Foundry products
extensively and gave high recommendations. Vegas Pro even
converted the most hardened DAW-hating luddite I know into
a technohead who swears by Vegas!
Well, I installed the software and was more than a little
dissappointed.
Attempting to play back a single four-minute stereo wave
file produced slightly garbled, static-riddled results.
Adding a second track made the distortion quite severe.
Occassionally, the system would get so bogged down trying
to play back the two tracks, Vegas would stop.
My system isn't a quad Xeon server, but it should be able
to handle two or three tracks of digital audio.
I'm using a 550MHz processor and 512MB of 8ns ECC RAM.
Operating systems, applications, swap files,
and data are all on separate SCSI IBM UltraStar drives,
with the digital audio streaming from an Ultra160 drive
capable of sustaining roughly 50MB/s!
Sure enough, I played back the same two tracks of digital
audio with other applications--no problem. Cakewalk
indicated only 1% to 2% CPU usage while playing back these
two tracks. Further, these other applications can easily
handle more than 16 tracks of audio on my system with no
problems.
Only Vegas had problems.
I tried to look at the RAM and Disk usage meters on the
status bar at the bottom of the Vegas window for a clue,
but there were no such meters to be found. The status
bar was there all right, but it only displayed the
Record Time meter--NO RAM or Disk meters! These meters are
clearly visible in a number of Vegas screen shots and are
clearly described in the documentation, but I don't have
them.
Cakewalk's RAM and CPU meters show up on their taskbar.
Why don't the RAM Disk meters show up on Vegas' taskbar?
It's in the screen shots...
Following suggestions in the documentation, I adjusted
the playback buffering. No matter how I adjusted the
buffering, playback was exactly the same. No plug-ins or
other applications were running and only core services were
running.
Reducing my display's color depth to 8-bit (256 colors),
the refresh rate to 60Hz, and the resolution to 800X600
eliminated most of the distortion and enabled me to play
back more tracks without difficulty, but if other
applications work flawlessly with my usual display
settings, I expect Vegas to work with them as well.
Besides, reducing overhead from the video subsystem did
nothing to restore my missing RAM and Disk meters.
I rebooted the system and tried to record something. Vegas
responded with an error message stating "the device
specified in use by another application." There were no
other applications running. I examined all the background
processes running on the system--there was nothing that
would be using any of my sound hardware's resources. No
apps were running invisibly in the background, no anti-
virus, no power power management routines--nothing.
By constantly rebooting, I was eventually able to record
a single track of garbled audio. For a moment, I thought
it was only garbled because of playback problems, but
saving the digital audio to a file and examining it with
cool edit revealed that Vegas was indeed garbling the
sound during the recording process.
I've read all available documentation, adjusted every
setting, consulted with other Vegas audio users I know,
reconfigured my system various ways, un-installed and
re-installed drivers, applications, and even the operating
system and after four days, no one has been able to make
Vegas work or even explain why it doesn't. No one can
explain the missing RAM and Disk meters, either.
I am not willing to pay more than $20.00 or so to have a
technician troubleshoot an issue that has already been so
thoroughly investigated by myself and several friends (I
am a technician, incidentally, as are most of my
associates.) that finding a solution is highly unlikely.
The product, although highly touted by several people I
know and whose opinions I respect, doesn't work for me.
Has anyone else had numerous or similar inexplicable
problems with Vegas? Does anyone know if these problems
are related to the bundled Vegas packages only? Has
anyone had these problems with a retail version? Should I
buy Vegas Pro or cut my losses and stick with other
apps?
If anyone has opinions regarding anything in this
posting or if anyone else is experiencing these
problems, please reply. I can't believe I'm the only
one.
Sincerely,
Gabriel
Vegas user. (I own Vegas Audio and have been considering
purchasing Vegas Pro at the recommendation of friends who
use Vegas in their own demo and project studios.)
I'm posting this because I know there must be at least a
few people in my situation who share my frustrations.
Please note that it is not my intention to discourage
anyone from using Vegas Audio or any other Sonic Foundry
product or to receive free technical support.
I recently received a copy of Vegas Audio bundled with a
Midiman M-Audio Delta 1010, thinking this would be an
excellent opportunity to try out Vegas and decide once and
for all whether or not I should purchase Vegas Pro--a
matter I'd been debating for weeks.
Several people I know have used Sonic Foundry products
extensively and gave high recommendations. Vegas Pro even
converted the most hardened DAW-hating luddite I know into
a technohead who swears by Vegas!
Well, I installed the software and was more than a little
dissappointed.
Attempting to play back a single four-minute stereo wave
file produced slightly garbled, static-riddled results.
Adding a second track made the distortion quite severe.
Occassionally, the system would get so bogged down trying
to play back the two tracks, Vegas would stop.
My system isn't a quad Xeon server, but it should be able
to handle two or three tracks of digital audio.
I'm using a 550MHz processor and 512MB of 8ns ECC RAM.
Operating systems, applications, swap files,
and data are all on separate SCSI IBM UltraStar drives,
with the digital audio streaming from an Ultra160 drive
capable of sustaining roughly 50MB/s!
Sure enough, I played back the same two tracks of digital
audio with other applications--no problem. Cakewalk
indicated only 1% to 2% CPU usage while playing back these
two tracks. Further, these other applications can easily
handle more than 16 tracks of audio on my system with no
problems.
Only Vegas had problems.
I tried to look at the RAM and Disk usage meters on the
status bar at the bottom of the Vegas window for a clue,
but there were no such meters to be found. The status
bar was there all right, but it only displayed the
Record Time meter--NO RAM or Disk meters! These meters are
clearly visible in a number of Vegas screen shots and are
clearly described in the documentation, but I don't have
them.
Cakewalk's RAM and CPU meters show up on their taskbar.
Why don't the RAM Disk meters show up on Vegas' taskbar?
It's in the screen shots...
Following suggestions in the documentation, I adjusted
the playback buffering. No matter how I adjusted the
buffering, playback was exactly the same. No plug-ins or
other applications were running and only core services were
running.
Reducing my display's color depth to 8-bit (256 colors),
the refresh rate to 60Hz, and the resolution to 800X600
eliminated most of the distortion and enabled me to play
back more tracks without difficulty, but if other
applications work flawlessly with my usual display
settings, I expect Vegas to work with them as well.
Besides, reducing overhead from the video subsystem did
nothing to restore my missing RAM and Disk meters.
I rebooted the system and tried to record something. Vegas
responded with an error message stating "the device
specified in use by another application." There were no
other applications running. I examined all the background
processes running on the system--there was nothing that
would be using any of my sound hardware's resources. No
apps were running invisibly in the background, no anti-
virus, no power power management routines--nothing.
By constantly rebooting, I was eventually able to record
a single track of garbled audio. For a moment, I thought
it was only garbled because of playback problems, but
saving the digital audio to a file and examining it with
cool edit revealed that Vegas was indeed garbling the
sound during the recording process.
I've read all available documentation, adjusted every
setting, consulted with other Vegas audio users I know,
reconfigured my system various ways, un-installed and
re-installed drivers, applications, and even the operating
system and after four days, no one has been able to make
Vegas work or even explain why it doesn't. No one can
explain the missing RAM and Disk meters, either.
I am not willing to pay more than $20.00 or so to have a
technician troubleshoot an issue that has already been so
thoroughly investigated by myself and several friends (I
am a technician, incidentally, as are most of my
associates.) that finding a solution is highly unlikely.
The product, although highly touted by several people I
know and whose opinions I respect, doesn't work for me.
Has anyone else had numerous or similar inexplicable
problems with Vegas? Does anyone know if these problems
are related to the bundled Vegas packages only? Has
anyone had these problems with a retail version? Should I
buy Vegas Pro or cut my losses and stick with other
apps?
If anyone has opinions regarding anything in this
posting or if anyone else is experiencing these
problems, please reply. I can't believe I'm the only
one.
Sincerely,
Gabriel