Yes, I experienced problems with Vegas B2 and an earlier Mixtreme
board I had, which was also unstable with good ol Sound Forge, so I
had Soundscape send me a new one all the while asking for feedback
from them and Sonic Foundry regarding whether they were actually
using each other's product...that goes for Any major Soundcard out
there...there really arn't that many variations, maybe twenty that
should be taken seriously. At any rate, Beta 2, which was very
stable with a much maligned SBlive (hey it works!) expired just as I
got the new Mixtreme (which seems stable with Acid and S Forge). I'm
not happy to report that bugs are abounding in Vegas 3, namely for
me, MTC dosn't work consistantly and indeed freezes the app, although
not crashing the system. And I still don't know who's zoomin' who.
Some suggestions for you that helped my box generally is to pump up
your RAM, it's cheap now...get a stick of 128 which should only set
you back a hunny...19-25 megs looks a little tight in your ram
overhead dept. I know Acid, which is admittedly more Ram intensive,
warns you with redness when it gets in your stated headroom range.
Everything on your sys will pop a bit more, I really noticed the
diff. One other thing, you may have to try and I know you'll dread
this: can you say clean install? Yep Mixtreme and Vegas crashed my
box so many times that the OS wouldn't boot, so I actually went out
and bought a new Maxtor drive (they're so cheap now) and started
over...saved the orig drive so I could retrieve unaffected
files...now that was ugly, but there's nothin' like a fresh start on
things, and I got rid of so much crap in the deal that my box
actually boots up and down in a reasonable amount of time! Hang in,
even though it's not ready for prime time SF will get their act
together, they DO have a track record, and even proven companies can
stub their toes now and then!

bor wrote:
>>Of course, now that the release of Vegas is days away, I'm
>>just starting to put it heavily through its paces, using it
>>for real-world projects as opposed to little test runs. And
>>as much as I like it, my box doesn't seem too fond of it.
>>
>>Namely, I'm experiencing repeated hard reboots once I push
>>the machine even remotely hard. It happens most often when
>>I'm doing a couple of short directx FX chains and >8 tracks,
>>but it's also happened when the machine is running as few as
>>four tracks with no outboard or track FX. The majority of
>>the time I experience this, I'm only using 4-6 simultaneous
>>tracks and 2-3 DX plugs.
>>
>>I'll be in the middle of playback-- or worse, recording--
>>and the next thing I know the screen is black and I'm
>>hearing the BIOS status beep as it runs yet another POST
>>checkup. *Not* cool.
>>
>>The first time it happened, I had just finished six tracks
>>worth of work and it surprised me, forcing me to put them
>>all back together by hand. After that, I've been saving
>>after the smallest mix change, but I've still lost several
>>great takes when the machine restarts 2/3rds of the way
>>through the record process.
>>
>>On occasion I'm also getting heavy gapping and choking that
>>seems to fix itself-- ie, if it doesn't work the first time
>>on playback, stop and try again and it will probably work.
>>Messing around with the buffer hasn't helped. My HDs are
>>defragged, I'm not running any TSRs (or anything else at the
>>time of Vegas usage), the RAM meter doesn't move (always
>>says I have 19-25 megs free).
>>
>>Now, I know my machine should be up to this task. So I'm
>>beginning to wonder if it's something evil with my box, or
>>if the software is a bit more inefficient than advertised.
>>From the looks of things, no one else is having similar
>>problems.
>>
>>Here's my sysconfig:
>>
>>PII 400 on Soyo SY6BB motherboard
>>64MB
>>relatively fast ATA-33 drives (clocked at 34-42 tracks
>>playback by event's speedcheck tool)
>>ATI Expert 98 8MB vid card
>>Gadget Labs Wave/4
>>
>>For those of you with similar modern configs, how are you
>>doing? I assume you're doing better than this, but after
>>through-the-grapevine legends of ordinary desktops running
>>10+ DX plugs on 30+ tracks simultaneously in Vegas, I can't
>>help but be disappointed with this situation.
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>bor
>>
>>

bor wrote:
>>Of course, now that the release of Vegas is days away, I'm
>>just starting to put it heavily through its paces, using it
>>for real-world projects as opposed to little test runs. And
>>as much as I like it, my box doesn't seem too fond of it.
>>
>>Namely, I'm experiencing repeated hard reboots once I push
>>the machine even remotely hard. It happens most often when
>>I'm doing a couple of short directx FX chains and >8 tracks,
>>but it's also happened when the machine is running as few as
>>four tracks with no outboard or track FX. The majority of
>>the time I experience this, I'm only using 4-6 simultaneous
>>tracks and 2-3 DX plugs.
>>
>>I'll be in the middle of playback-- or worse, recording--
>>and the next thing I know the screen is black and I'm
>>hearing the BIOS status beep as it runs yet another POST
>>checkup. *Not* cool.
>>
>>The first time it happened, I had just finished six tracks
>>worth of work and it surprised me, forcing me to put them
>>all back together by hand. After that, I've been saving
>>after the smallest mix change, but I've still lost several
>>great takes when the machine restarts 2/3rds of the way
>>through the record process.
>>
>>On occasion I'm also getting heavy gapping and choking that
>>seems to fix itself-- ie, if it doesn't work the first time
>>on playback, stop and try again and it will probably work.
>>Messing around with the buffer hasn't helped. My HDs are
>>defragged, I'm not running any TSRs (or anything else at the
>>time of Vegas usage), the RAM meter doesn't move (always
>>says I have 19-25 megs free).
>>
>>Now, I know my machine should be up to this task. So I'm
>>beginning to wonder if it's something evil with my box, or
>>if the software is a bit more inefficient than advertised.
>>From the looks of things, no one else is having similar
>>problems.
>>
>>Here's my sysconfig:
>>
>>PII 400 on Soyo SY6BB motherboard
>>64MB
>>relatively fast ATA-33 drives (clocked at 34-42 tracks
>>playback by event's speedcheck tool)
>>ATI Expert 98 8MB vid card
>>Gadget Labs Wave/4
>>
>>For those of you with similar modern configs, how are you
>>doing? I assume you're doing better than this, but after
>>through-the-grapevine legends of ordinary desktops running
>>10+ DX plugs on 30+ tracks simultaneously in Vegas, I can't
>>help but be disappointed with this situation.
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>bor
>>
>>

>>>>For those of you with similar modern configs, how are you
>>>>doing? I assume you're doing better than this, but after
>>>>through-the-grapevine legends of ordinary desktops running
>>>>10+ DX plugs on 30+ tracks simultaneously in Vegas, I can't
>>>>help but be disappointed with this situation.
>>>>
>>>>Thanks.
>>>>
>>>>bor
>>>>
>

Well, you can put me down in the disappointed section as well. Maybe it's just that sound forge has been
so incredibly stable (the most reliable piece of software I've ever owned) and the "standard" for PC editing that I
just expected their multitrack editor would blow everyone away. I have a PII400, 256 megs ram and a maxtor
7200 RPM drive and I can't get it to record 24 tracks at once and barely play back that many (forgetting about
direct x stuff.) I get tracks that fall out of time with each other or play back at high speed or sort of "pop & hop."
I've really tried to like Vegas but it just doesn't seem to measure up against the others, let alone be
superior to them. The one common factor among all these programs is the reviewers always seem to be able to
do twice as much with half the system. I'm not a system analyst or anything but I have been using computers
since 1983 and I do at least knwo the basics and can tweak things. If there's something I'm missing I'd sure
like to know because I've tried everything I can think of. From defragging the drive to disabling write-behind
caching, auto insert notification, power management, lose resolution graphics , trying various virtual memory
settings, etc, etc, etc.

Bob

It sounds as if there are multitudes having problems running the promised number of tracks, even if no one
else is experiencing the blackout syndrome that has stricken me. I too have faith that, in time, SF will retune
the app to the point where it runs as promised. I just hope-- more for their sake than my own selfish reasons ;)
-- that they'll put out another beta and retune it sufficiently before its retail release...

As for the perceived lack of support, particuarly on this board-- the company is small and they're trying to get
the product out on time, and this BBS system they've set up ain't the most efficient or sensible in the world. It's
probably not helping their image or advance sales much, but then again I don't feel like there's anything they
can do about it.

I'm sure that SF'll be a bit more supportive once their customers have actually paid good money for the product.
However, I'll wait until other people have paid enough bugfix-inspirin' cash into the pot before I drop any dukats
of my own. Dealing with Vegas extensively/exclusively in the past few weeks, I've learned that it's got a long
way to go yet. I don't think 1.0 is going to be The One (as is usually the case).

I do hope they'll make it priority one to tune it up for optimum DX performance-- after all, one of the biggest
advantages of the program is the ability to not only use DX plugs, but to use them in a way that SAW can't
(automated FX send levels). The ability to use tons of these things simultaneously (or at least more than three
of 'em) would save me oodles of HD space and experimentation time going back and forth between Vegas and
a destructive editor. Right now the program is just too choke-y once a few plugs are thrown into the chaos.

Echoing the holdings of others, I'm not impressed by the new Track FX protocol, as I'm sure it will be ages
before anything I use in DX will be available in Track FX, if ever. DX just needs to work better in Vegas. SF may
be big in the industry, but it's really asinine to expect everyone to change over from an existing standard just
for the sake of better performance in one program. (...even if it does give the shaft to M$.)

Keep on keepin' on, Sonic Foundry...