Asio audio driver problem in GPO studio

[Richard Birdsall]

Hi.

Please can someone help me, I'm very new to music sequencing.

When I play back sequences using Cubase VST, they seem to lag (very noticable on the snare drums). From what I have read, I think this is latency?

I've tried everything i can think of to fix this but nothing works.

I'm sure the problem is this:

My audio card is an Audigy 2 (which supports ASIO Full duplex mode). However, when im am in GPO studio and try to select an ASIO driver form the "audio driver" drop down list an error message appears saying;

"Device: SB Audigy audio

Errorcode FFA-8-000D (887800046)

Info: Playback failed.

The audio system does not seem to respond.

Maybe card does not suppord full duplex mode."

This means i can only use the MME and Direct sound drivers.

However, when I open GPO as a stand alone program, I CAN select ASIO drivers, thus when I press a key on the on-screen keyboard there is no lag (as aposed to when using MME or Direct sound).

Therefore I'm pritty sure that if I can select ASIO drivers in GPO Studio, there will be no noticable lag.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why I can't access the ASIO drivers in GPO studio?

Any help will be much appriciated.

[David (plogue)]

My audio card is an Audigy 2 (which supports ASIO Full duplex mode).

Go to GPO Studio prefs and set samplerate to 48000, the only one live/audigy1 and 2 supports.

Cheers

[snorlax]

Go to GPO Studio prefs and set samplerate to 48000, the only one live/audigy1 and 2 supports.

Cheers

David, while we're at it, what does the message "set4chmode failed" mean? I get it every time I start GPO Studio.

Thanks...Jim

[Richard Birdsall]

Go to GPO Studio prefs and set samplerate to 48000, the only one live/audigy1 and 2 supports.

Cheers

Thanks for the help David.

I set the sample rate to 48000 in the GPO studio pref but for some reason I'm still getting the same error message. I can't understand why the ASIO drivers are available when I open GPO as a stand-alone program, but don't work with GPO studio.

[David (plogue)]

Hi.

Each driver manufacturer can prompt the user with a different message, and theres many of them out there, so we cant possibly try them all.

snorlax, could you tell me what hardware it is? and driver version.

Make sure you also dont have the same driver opened by another application.
In its current version, GPO Studio requires the monopoly on the driver.

[Richard Birdsall]

I think I'm finaly getting there. Dave, I dont know if you where answering me or snorlax here, but you said make sure another program is not using the same drivers. Well the only other MIDI related program i have installed is Cubase VST, so i un-installed it. GPO studio is now finaly able to run the ASIO drivers. I would now like to re-install cubase without facing the same problem as before. When i re-install Cubase, how do i stop it from using the same drivers as GPO? I've tried looking through all the options on cubase but as I'm a newbie...most of what i see/read just leaves me baffled.

Can anyone please tell me how to install Cubase and still be able to use GPO?

[Joseph Burrell]

You need to change the default driver in Cubase once it's installed. I had to choose a less than stellar DirectX driver in Cubase so I could use the Asio driver in Studio. This is the only way to get them to work in conjunction.

[Richard Birdsall]

You need to change the default driver in Cubase once it's installed. I had to choose a less than stellar DirectX driver in Cubase so I could use the Asio driver in Studio. This is the only way to get them to work in conjunction.

Sorry, I feel like I'm being a pain in the a** here but I'm very new at this....

I think this is how to do this in Cubase:

Options/Audio setup/Audio systems setup...

Then there's an ASIO drivers drop down menu where I can select a different ASIO driver. The list of drivers available is;

ASIO direct x full duplex driver
ASIO multimedia driver
Creative ASIO
SB Audigy ASIO [A000]

No matter which one I pick, I still can't use ASIO drivers in GPO studio. Am I doing the right thing or have I went in the wrong direction?

Also, I dont think I explained this properly - GPO studio won't work when Cubase is installed, regardless of wether Cubase is actually running or not.

It also might be worth mentioning that when I uninstall Cubase, the ASIO direct x full duplex driver is no longer in the list of drivers in gpo studio. So it seems that the cubase installation also installs that driver (and i think theres another one). I dont know if that means anything....

Sorry again for being a pain :(

[Jeff Hurchalla]

I'd suggest for you to try uninstalling Cubase again and run GPO Studio to verify you can get it working. Then install Cubase once more, and without running Cubase even once, try to see if GPO Studio will still work. Ideally, Cubase should not have *any* effect at all on your Audigy drivers unless you are running it - if the behavior of the drivers changes based upon whether or not Cubase is installed, then this is a Cubase bug.. I don't know any other way to characterize it.
See if you can play around a little bit with Cubase and GPO Studio. It often helps to reboot in troublesome situations with drivers and try one thing at a time in hopes of finding what will work for you and what will not work, and hopefully in the end you may find there was some unexpected thing you missed.

Hope this helps

[snorlax]

Hi.

Each driver manufacturer can prompt the user with a different message, and theres many of them out there, so we cant possibly try them all.

snorlax, could you tell me what hardware it is? and driver version.

Make sure you also dont have the same driver opened by another application.
In its current version, GPO Studio requires the monopoly on the driver.

David, I now have an Echo Indigo I/O. I installed it today and the "Set4ChMode Failed" continues in GPO Studio. It seems to appear with any of the ASIO drivers (it also appeared when I was using a non-ASIO driver); with one of the ASIO drivers it appears several times.

Please let me know if you need more information.
Thanks, David!
Jim

[Richard Birdsall]

Thanks for the help jeff

[Jbon]

Dear friend ;
I am also a relative NUBEE, but these are real folks and I sense no pain, resulting from your newness or mine, other than the mere fact, and its implications about how little I may know, but, ICANFIXTHAT,and you can too, these folks are very interested in the unfettered enjoyment of GPO users all , so be well and that includes calm, the best we can muster, since it costs nothing and can have immense dividends.

Plus that little speech you could re-read to me if I seem on my next message, to be distraught,or rattled in any way ; its what we do as players of music, connected with being so sensitive and stuff, it always seems , so occasionally being told "all is well", to the best of my knowledge , never hurt anybody, and in some cases it can be very helpful, mostly when heeded, though.

Detecting an area of discussion in which I am not just "clueless",

I had to chime in , although I forgot to check the age of the thread, it might still be applicable, and any chance of maybe having some positive effect is worth the effort to me.
Cubasis , the one that comes with GPO, is literally your best means of using the Library in its form, to best advantage, with what I have found out so far, this is the case.
If you install Cubasis that was on the GPO disk, it will play your GPO as well as it can be played, and I found this leads also to enablement into my other desired host/applications as well, namely for me, AbletonLive.

So do not omit Cubasis unless you have found a better substitute.. and if so I need to know about it....if you please!!

But I definitely do doubt it.
Also whats more, I have acquired a new soundcard solution, AardvarkDirect-pro24/96, and this purchase had bundled with it, Cubase SE... This was likely a factor in my choosing the product,since I felt the Cubase, without the "is",somehow brings to my mind a version with training wheels removed or, omitted.
Nothing is probably further from the truth, I would wager, but its true about it having affected my choice. And so , I feel that CubaseSE is going to be a good thing ...
but not until after I break down and do some manual reading, evidently its not like Live, you can't just jump in and start creating with extreme FUN.... there definitely must be a period of study prior to any fun which is due to being"had".
But this is not pertinent much to this threads subject , so I quit that and return to:

Give Cubasis another chance!! you will be glad you did!!

there is a way to enable at least one instance of GPO and play like crazy... and I believe its possible to do a great deal more, but I must allow learning to take place, and discovery also, must become everyday, in order to fully advantage a larger fraction of GPO's capabilities!

best of luck to you and ciao-chow!

[Richard Birdsall]

I agree. Cubase and Cubasis are both very good when being used with GPO. Unfortunatly the same driver problem happens with both programs. I have also tried installing GPO and Cubase/Cubasis on my friends computer and still the same message apears when i try to pick the ASIO full duplex driver. So, because no one else seems to have this problem I'm convinced im setting things up wrongly.

Thankfully though, I mannaged to get the other ASIO drivers working in GPO studio (Creative ASIO duplex & SB Audigy ASIO). But for some reason the CPU usage, even when there is no music playing back and cubase is not running, is at 80 and 90. This is when I load the full orchestra with harp, but havnt even started to play a music sequence back. So when I play back just a handfull of instruments, the sound distorts very badly, then cuts out all together. I could understand why if I was playing back lots of instruments, but not with just a few.

I'm sure this should not happen, considering my computers specs (1.5Gb RAM, exactly the processor recomended to run GPO, and an Audigy 2 sound card). Surely a PC with the recomended specs should be able to play back a full orchesta without problems? I even tried it on a friends PC with an even faster processor, same problem. This convinces me even more that the problem lies with how I'm setting things up (as in, soundcard settings, gpo settings etc), but i dont know what it is that I should change.

I've read that a way to fix this is to lower the sample rate or increase the buffer size (or both, I cant remember now). So the buffer size in GPO studio and on my sound card is already at 512 (it won't allow any higher). The creative and SB ASIO will only work when the sample rate is at 48000Hz. Therefore the only way to lower the sample rate, thus stopping the sound distortion, is to select an MME or direct sound driver. Then that means the latency is awfull and notes are missing.

I've just about given up hope now. All I have been doing in my spare time for a week (exactly since I recieved GPO) is trying to overcome these two problems, practically non-stop. I'm so disapointed. The sounds of GPO are such an improvement to what I've been previously using, I'm itching to use them properly but it doesnt look like I ever will, the way things are going. Whats worse is the fact that I bought this computer SPECIFICALLY for GPO, based on the recomended specs.

Please don't see this as a complaint, other users dont have these problems so I'm probably the cause of them. I just hope someone can help.


Given my computer specs, and that my sample rate is 48000Hz and buffer size is 512, should I have this problem?

If so can anyone recomend what I should do to fix this. What settings should I use in my souncard options? What mode should I use from the drop down list on the card settings (eg..."creative full duplex mode", "creative half duplex mode" etc). Perhaps the best people to answere this would be people with a similar comp to mine, and with the same soundcard. Maybe someone can tell me how they have thier Audigy 2, cubase/cubasis and GPO studio set up so that they work together at 48000Hz with a buffer size of 512.

I am thankfull for any help. I've pritty much given up now. It seems such a waist to have GPO and not being able to use it. Not to mention the new computer...

One more thing, when I say "latency" I might be talking about something else...

I understand latecy to be dalayed notes. What I'm talking about when I say latency is where some notes come in too late, and some not as late. The resulting effect is that where I might have 3 notes evenly spaced, the 3rd note might sound closer to the second than the second to the first even though they should all be the same. So the note lenghts actually seem to change and the result is a messy sound, like a school band. Hope that makes sence.

[CString]

Given my computer specs, and that my sample rate is 48000Hz and buffer size is 512, should I have this problem?

If so can anyone recomend what I should do to fix this. What settings should I use in my souncard options? What mode should I use from the drop down list on the card settings (eg..."creative full duplex mode", "creative half duplex mode" etc). Perhaps the best people to answere this would be people with a similar comp to mine, and with the same soundcard. Maybe someone can tell me how they have thier Audigy 2, cubase/cubasis and GPO studio set up so that they work together at 48000Hz with a buffer size of 512.

Richard,

I feel for you. This kind of stuff is very frustrating. I am by no means an expert, but I do have an Audigy 2 Platinum Pro. Mine works. I'll list for you how I'm set up. Maybe you will see something different. Maybe somebody will see something wrong with mine. :) Also, before doing anything else, make sure you have installed the most recent Audigy drivers.

PC:
2.8GHz P4 (Hyperthreading 800MHz FSB)
2 x 512MB DDR RAM
AOpen AX4SPE Max Mother board (Intel 865PE chipset)

GPO stand alone player settings under "File", "Setup"
Interface = ASIO
Sample Rate = 48000
Output Device = SB Audigy 2 ZS ASIO [9000] (Ignore any error messages)

Now, click on the "ASIO Config" button and select a latency time. The Output Latency box will NOT show the new time until you exit back to the Kontakt player. After you do, you can go into File/Setup again and you will see the number has changed. Exit out of the stand alone GPO.

GPO Studio:
Go to "Settings", then "Audio Drivers" and select SB Audigy 2 ZS ASIO[9000](duplex)

Now, go to "Settings" and click preferences. Choose 48000 for sample rate and make sure the buffer size matches the buffer size you have set in Cubasis! After that, you select the ASIO Config button and set your desired latency level. You will have to experiment to get that nailed after you get everything working.

Cubasis:
When you open Cubasis, if your sample rate is wrong the program will ask you if you want to change it. Hit NO. Go to "Options"/"Audio Setup"/"Audio System Setup." Set your ASIO driver to "ASIO DirectX Full Duplex", Number of channels = 32, Sample Rate to 48000.

At this point everything should be functioning. If not, make sure you have the most recent system drivers i.e. motherboard, video card, etc. There is an outside chance that the problem is with the chipset on your motherboard. My old motherboard had a VIA chipset and it was never a question of IF a program would crash - it was only a question of WHEN. And that was if a program would even run in the first place! Might not hurt to run Windows Update and see if there are any critical updates you are missing.

Another question. This is going to seem stupid - are the Ad_Link cables firmly connected from the soundcard to the I/O box?

Hang in there, Richard. Sooner or later it will work if you stay with it.
-Chad

[Richard Birdsall]

Chad,

Thank you very much for your help. Its nice to see kind ppl who are willing to spend time to help someone who they've never met :) .

I'm going to try all of your suggestions, I'll post any progress I have on here.

Thanks

-Richard

[CString]

Chad,

Thank you very much for your help. Its nice to see kind ppl who are willing to spend time to help someone who they've never met :) .

I'm going to try all of your suggestions, I'll post any progress I have on here.

Thanks

-Richard

You are very welcome. Not a problem at all. Keep us posted. -Chad

[Richard Birdsall]

make sure the buffer size matches the buffer size you have set in Cubasis!

Chad,

I'm setting it up now. Is the option to change the Cubasis buffer size in "audio setup" "audio systems setup" then in the ASIO configuration window? Im not sure If this is Cubasis' buffer size or something else.

[Richard Birdsall]

Still says the cpu usage is at 60 - 70 ish. This is when the orchestra with harp is loaded into gpo studio. No other program is running.

I still havnt updated my motherboard ( ASUS A7V8X-X) drivers becasue I d/led what I think is the lates update and it wont even open.

I also havnt updated windows XP because that computer is not on the internet.

Is their a chance that the my GPO disks may be faulty? I'm pritty sure their not because the programs all seem to install without any trouble.

[Richard Birdsall]

In the trouble shooting section on personalorchestra.com theres a bit that seems to hold the solution to my problem:

"USER SOLUTION submitted by Jack Gray "I initially had troubles loading a full complement of instruments. I also had huge "VST CPU" spikes, long load times...Then one magical day, I tried changing the locked sample rate on my MIA MIDI card from 96000 Hz to 41000 Hz. All of the above issues immediately vanished. Memory usage and load times were halved. Ambience now runs at 100% with no problems. I assume this meant that the samples were being converted at load time, and so were consuming twice the memory and twice the load time. Another item: I learned that increasing the audio buffer sizes on my card aided greatly in eliminating the VST performance spikes that were causing audio dropouts. If I need low latency (i.e. for MIDI input), then I decrease these buffer sizes accordingly."

Can anyone tell me how to change the "locked sample rate" on my audigy 2 please? or even how to find it.

I might have done this already, i dont know. If someone can tell me where to find the "locked sample rate" ill know. HOPEFULLY this is something I havent tried yet.

[CString]

Can anyone tell me how to change the "locked sample rate" on my audigy 2 please? or even how to find it.



Richard, that should be controled in the parts of GPO where you select the driver. The card should be variable. The only place I know of on the Platinum Pro to adjust sampling rate output is from "Creative Mediasource Go!" under "Product Settings/Device Controls." However, that only controls digital output rate from the I/O box. Shouldn't affect what you're doing.

The answer your other question about the buffer in Cubasis is yes.

[CString]

Still says the cpu usage is at 60 - 70 ish. This is when the orchestra with harp is loaded into gpo studio. No other program is running.



Richard,
Just as a reference point for you, I loaded up GPO with as many instruments as I could, along with Netscape running in the background and my processor usage only cycled between 8-15%.

What version P4 are you using (including the front side bus speed)?

-Chad

[Richard Birdsall]

ITS WORKING!!!!!! :)

Thank you all for helping me!

It turns out the problem was me after all.....

I was loading wet samples, not dry ones. I'd kick my self in the face if I could. I'm so stupid. Every time I opened a GPO studio file, I'd open the same one - The full orchestra with wet samples. For a change i opened the default orchestra (im assuming this is made up of dry sampels) and the cpu usage is at 20 ish.

I had totaly forgoten the file I kept opening was made intirely of wet samples.


So.......

can anyone tell me the difference between wet and dry samples? I dont know what it means.

FEEEEEW I'm so relieved. Its over a week of CRAP over with.

*ahhhhhhhhhhhhh :) *

[CString]

ROTFLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wet samples have reverb added. Takes up serious resources - as if you didn't notice. :D Glad it's fixed!

-Chad

[Richard Birdsall]

Maybe I spoke too soon.

There is an improvement in CPU usage, but even when its at 50 there are missing notes and distortion. And its still going to about 70ish when I playback only a few instuments. This still seems wrong. And should it have been that bad with wet samples? I dont think so...maybe im wrong.

Plus, I'd hate to be stuck with dry samples because the wet ones are so much nicer (to my ears anyway).
Chad, you asked "What version P4 are you using (including the front side bus speed)?"

Sorry I dont understand the question, I'm not very good with computers as you can probably tell. :o

[Richard Birdsall]

Wet samples have reverb added. Takes up serious resources - as if you didn't notice. :D Glad it's fixed!

-Chad

I assume your using dry samples too?

[CString]

I think it's safe to say that most of us use the dry samples. I use the reverb plug-in (Ambience) that comes with GPO for reverb.

My question concerned your CPU. What version Pentium 4 are you running and what is the front side bus rating? I seem to remember you saying that you bought the minimum needed to run GPO. Was that correct? My guess is that the minimum CPU would be pretty well taxed playing back the full orchestra. I have a reasonably high end CPU and it gets pushed with the full orchestra. Maybe Gary or somebody else on his crew can shed more light on that.

At least we've made some improvement. I wish I had more expertise to help. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much at the limit of my knowledge. I think you are going to have to take this problem to the big guy. :) It's a pretty good bet that he will do whatever he can to help. He has frequently shown all of us here that he is very committed to customer service.

-Chad
Ps. You should definitely make an effort to get Windows upgraded!

[Jeff Hurchalla]

Richard, are you opening the stock template files from GPO Studio (such as 'Percussion', 'Band', 'Brass Quintet', etc), or are you creating and opening your own Studio files? It's perfectly fine for you to create and use/open your own files, and it's expected that you will do so :) But make sure you always load the dry version of the instruments, without exception, if you do this. The wet instruments will just kill your CPU usage. On the other hand, if you have been loading the stock templates, then the wet instruments are not to blame for the high CPU - all the template files consist of solely dry instruments.

If you like the sound of the wet instruments, I'd suggest for you to use Ambience, which is included with GPO and which is even integrated with GPO Studio when you use that. If you want more reverb, the easy way is just to increase the wet % in Ambience and/or increase the reverb decay time.

Does this help?

[Jbon]

Richard, that should be controled in the parts of GPO where you select the driver. The card should be variable. The only place I know of on the Platinum Pro to adjust sampling rate output is from "Creative Mediasource Go!" under "Product Settings/Device Controls." However, that only controls digital output rate from the I/O box. Shouldn't affect what you're doing.

The answer your other question about the buffer in Cubasis is yes.
On both my Aarvark and Tascam there is a control panel type presentation-window one is the area for driver choice and the other is not, its more like a mixer.. but wherever you have to choose the drivers used there should at least be the choice between MS drivers and the audigy ones, someplace , you having xp and the audigy, My xp didn't work right with audio until I got sp-1, but this might be way off..

Just hang in there & remain as calm as you can manage to do.. it is the worst thing to endure... a lingering nagg/glitch thingy problem

I will say that I have read some harsh reports about those cards for serious audio .. you can hear anything, though.

I just put myself in the po-house for a few weeks purchasing this Direct pro 2496.. and I am using my older sound card in tandem with it .. the aard uses software mixer or virtual style.. and tascam has a pretty handy control surface though I have limited uses for it I do use some aspects of it all the time. but the thing abou the aard is zero latency I think I can already vouch for andremain quite pleased overall..

I have been trying to tune -in my music production atmosphere/facility, for almost two solid years now .. and I go to sleep every night the next morning, if at all..do not get discouraged nother day tomorrow

[Richard Birdsall]

Thanks for the help people.

Yep It seems to run ok with the dry samples.

Jeff, yea that does help. I've always had Abience reverb on but I've never fiddled with the controlls in there. Sounds better now, thanks.

Chad, my processor is an AMD Athlon XP 2200+ 179Ghz.
The recommended processor for GPO is a 1.8Ghz.