Anyone familiar with EW steinway?

[jonathansorensen]

Maybe that's it JD. I do have Kontakt and it loads up. I don't use it because it constantly freezes and I like the sounds in EW better. Maybe I'll try unloading Kontakt and going back to an older version of play. Maybe I'll unload a bunch of plugins and just start adding them back in 1 at a time and see if it is an interaction . . .Thanks for the idea.

Best,
Jon

[jdstamper]

Jon,

Good idea, that sounds like the right approach. My DAW is Sonar X2, and typically when plug-ins conflict, Sonar will crash on me. Most of the time I don't lose much ground due to the auto back-ups in Sonar.

But your DAW may have different symptoms under the same conflict. I think somewhere buried in EW documentation it states that if you're using Kontakt, you should load EW first to avoid problems. Or maybe that was fixed in some later version of Play.

In any case, good luck, I hope you find the problem.

Jim

[jonathansorensen]

Cool . . .I was unaware of the EW, kontact thing . . ..here's hoping that's it. . .Well at the very least, I know why Kontact freezes every time. . .

Best,
Jon

[jonathansorensen]

Jon,

Good idea, that sounds like the right approach. My DAW is Sonar X2, and typically when plug-ins conflict, Sonar will crash on me. Most of the time I don't lose much ground due to the auto back-ups in Sonar.

But your DAW may have different symptoms under the same conflict. I think somewhere buried in EW documentation it states that if you're using Kontakt, you should load EW first to avoid problems. Or maybe that was fixed in some later version of Play.

In any case, good luck, I hope you find the problem.

Jim

Ok, I unloaded Kontakt and my system loads up way faster which is great because I rarely use Kontakt. However, the problem with play continued, so seriously that I have two tracks I can't print because every time, the piano is so slurred and sloppy it sounds amateur. Then . .. ...I finally found a solution but it suggests other problems. I use a Hammerfall 9632 soundcard. When I'm playing back I set it at 1024 (about 23 ms) to reduce strain on my system, especially when I'm playing back lots of midi tracks. However, I found that when I reduced the buffer to about 3 ms, suddenly all the flams and sloppy playback in the Play engine stopped. I started playing the parts as they were written (or played)

I'm not so savvy on how these systems talk to each other. Any ideas on why an increased buffer would lose accuracy on midi playback? It's not actually loading a audio file to be played, it's executing a midi command, activating and executing the library of sounds. So does that mean somewhere in the clocking system of my computer or soundcard and Cubase, it's going in and out of synch so badly I can hear it?

I know you can't just answer the question for me but if you could even direct me to a general topic that will help me sort this out, that would be much appreciated. I'm sure this is the beginning of a steep learning curve for me.

BEst,
Jon

[mojobone]

If you're on XP, there's a common Windows system preferences/audio tweak that might help, involves a setting to give background services (such as audio and MIDI) priority. Vista and XP both consider media a background service by default. I'll see if I can dig up the details....

the Advanced page of the System applet holds a Performance Settings button: if you click on this and then select its Advanced page you'll find several settings worth tweaking. Check that Processor Scheduling is correctly adjusted for best performance of 'Background Services' rather than 'Programs'. Next, click on the Change button of the Virtual Memory section. You can then either choose a 'Custom size' -- most people recommend 1.5 times the System RAM for both Initial size and Maximum size -- or if you have 512Mb or more RAM, you could select 'No paging file' to get rid of the swap file altogether. Make sure you still have enough RAM for sample storage if you decide on the latter option.

From: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar02/a ... an0302.asp

[jonathansorensen]

Thanks Mojo,

I have it set to best for background programs but I'm going to try going with no paging file. I have 15 gigs of ram so maybe it won't be a problem. If it is, I'll allocate some space for a paging file again.

I do wonder if it is a clocking problem somewhere between Cubase, Play, my soundcard and my PC. Although I suspect that if it is a clocking problem, it should be a problem regardless of buffer size.

All I do know is that when the buffer is set high, Play becomes very sloppy during playback. No other VSTs, Halion plays tight as ever, just Play. Maybe it has to do with how many samples Play loads in . . . I'm gonna play with that. . .


Best,
Jon

[jdstamper]

Another thing to try if you haven't, is the EW Support forum. It's a great forum to help troubleshoot EW issues.

Jim

[jonathansorensen]

I have been there but am not overly impressed. Good news is, the Taxi forum is probably one of the best information sources out there


JS

[jdstamper]

You probably know this already but just in case ... The East West Support forum is different to access than their public forums. It requires you to login using a forum ID (which may not be the same as your East West account, for me it's 2 different logins). You can't see the forum called Support until you've logged in with a forum ID, then it will appear in the list along with the other forums.

Sorry if I'm just pointing out the obvious.

[jonathansorensen]

No worries . . it is a confusing site. I log in but EastWest, for being a good library, has horrible customer service. I had a simple question when I purchased and it took weeks to receive an email back. When I did it would be obvious that they hadn't even read the question. I begged them to call but no way. After two months of emailing, I just gave up.

Their site requires that you answer an anti-spam question every single time you submit a question which is fine but I don't have the original box and don't know what color it is. They also require you to answer an anti-spam question to even search the forum for topics related to yours; every single time, even if you are logged in.

When it comes to their sounds and midi engine, not bad. When it comes to customer service or any type of usability for the site, etc. in my opinion it's a nightmare. Bleh!

Always better info here at Taxi to tell you the truth.

Best,
Jon