Greetings

[Bruce Bowers]

Well, maybe I was a bit blunt with my first post. I am new here, but have had my Giga gear for a while. I am hoping to meet some interesting and moldable folks, and look forward to exchanging ideas with everyone here. I have been a professional film composer for about 10 years now, but I am not exactly in the hotbed of the film world up in Northern Wisconsin. What the heck, I like the atmosphere and real estate is still cheap.

So, any ideas on this RAID issue?

I have two GigaStudio systems.
One on a Abit BF6 PIII 700 MHz 374Meg RAM(Soundchaser build)
The other a recent home build Abit KG7-RAID (two Maxtor 40G as RAID 0) Athlon 1.2G 1Gig RAM.

PIII 700 is fine

I am having trouble with Giga Piano on the Athlon 1.2G RAID. On sustained notes, I get multiple attacks while the note is sustaining.
It\'s like the notes are looping back to the attack portion of the waveform.
Other samples seem to be OK,but I haven\'t done any real scoring yet.

Any hints?

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Bruce Bowers
Hungry Hill

[Bill]

I was always under the impression that Raid 0 added redundancy, but slightly degraded performance. I Think Raid 5 (requiring 3 drives) improves performance.

[Bruce Bowers]

HI Bill,

Thanks for the response.
RAID 0 uses 2 striped drives to split the data flow between two drives that act as one. It should speed up total throughput on read and write, but does not neccessarily change access time which is critical for GSt. I have the RAID for video throughput on the same machine. It probably doesn\'t help GigaStudio, but I assumed it would not hurt. I have seen posts from folks that have successful RAID systems, but not the one I have.

Anyone?

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Bruce Bowers
Hungry Hill

[Flying Poo]

Hey Bruce,

Sorry I can\'t be of any help myself but it seems like we are looking for similar answers. Currently I am running gigastudio on a p3 800, 256 mb ram with raid 0 spread over 2 ibm deskstar drives. I get decent performance but am running into the pop/click problem once I hit about 80 notes. Other times it will make a click after only a couple of notes....so it doesn\'t always seem to be polyphony based, although the clicks do become more frequent as I begin to use a lot of voices. Aaargghhh...not sure if this is a harddrive issue, a mother board issue, a cpu issue, a ram issue...
I\'m in the process of investigating a new system myself, and am still uncertain as to whether I should continue with the whole raid idea. I have 2 western digital 120g drives still in the wrapper...gonna order the rest of the components soon. I realize raid will give me obverall better throughput, but it\'s the seek time that I\'m concerned with. I would think that access times couldn\'t be any worse (possibly even better ?)with a raid system than with just a straight ide setup, but then again I\'ve seen quite a few people with great results not using the raid, and not so many success stories using raid. Still really uncertain.
I read about your problem with the redundant note attacks. Have you also had any problems with clicks or pops ? Have you tried pushing the polyphony to the max ??

Wish you luck...let me know if in fact you get good results using your raid, and I\'ll keep my ears/eyes out for anything which may be more insightful regarding your specific problem.

Cheers,

Robert

[Flying Poo]

Oh yeah...I forgot to ask...

Bruce, you mentioned you also have a p3 700 running giga without any problems. Any clicks or pops on that system ? What polyphony can you squeak out of it ?
I\'m assuming you are using a straight ahead single ide drive setup...what drives ? Any other tweaks on that system to get it to run smooth ??

Thanks again,

Robert

[Bruce Bowers]

I am running a Maxtor 40 gig on the P III 700 for sample data. I think it\'s ATA 66. No problems at all with pops and clicks. I run about 70-90 voices usually.

It\'s kind of a different set up. I use it live to generate a string section sound driven by my Zeta MIDI violin system, through a PowerBook running MAX, so there\'s tons of cc and note messages coming down the pipe on 15 channels (3 channels per string, 5 string violin).

The only problem I have had is a few hung notes, but that seems to have gone away by putting a 10 ms throttle on each channel.

I believe the problem I am having with the Athlon 1.2G is pretty similar to popping troubles I have had in the past, just more drastic. It seems that the pops are just discontinuities in sample playback. What I have now are really BIG discontinuities that jump all over the sample file and re-read the attack sometimes.

Just guessing, and the real solution is probably something really dumb, like changing an IRQ or the stripping width on the drives or sunspots or whatever.

Maybe if we keep this thread rolling long enough someone with more experience will chime in.

I know it\'s an issue that has come up before, but I haven\'t yet read any solutions that are useable for me. One fellow changed a BIOS setting he called \"PCI master buss time out\" I do not find that parameter in my BIOS settings so that won\'t work for me.

Cheers,



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Bruce Bowers
Hungry Hill

[Kobb]

Hey Bruce,

It\'s nice to see a fellow Badger around here (my tent is posted down in La Crosse - what city are you from?). I\'m also a fan of the local scenery, and it\'s good to hear from someone from the neighborhood making their living as a composer. I\'m just embarking on that mission after spending years doing the recording studio thing. Now all of the money I make recording other folks\' music is invested in the new Giga system so that I can get up to speed a bit.

[Bruce Bowers]

Howdy Kobb,

I am not in a city really. I\'m in the bustling burg of Washburn (pop. 1500 or so) on Chequamegon Bay, Lake Superior, just south of Bayfield and The Apostle Islands.
I have a studio as well, but have done very few outside clients (that may change, scoring work has been pretty slim lately, maybe because I started doing the video side of things as well and my clients are now competitors)
I have a friend down in LaCrosse who teaches at Viturbo and I played a concert down there back during the Sesquicentennial.

Thanks for the hey!



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Bruce Bowers
Hungry Hill

[Flying Poo]

Hey Bruce,

Well, sounds like you\'re pumping a lot of midi data through your pipes pretty succesfully. Also, a thumbs up for making a living composing. I do also myself, mainly scoring for video game titles.

If you have a moment, could you possibly test getting higher polyphony from your p3 700 system ? What happens if you load something like gigapiano, and set gigastudio to its max polyphony. If you then hold down the sutain pedal and do full length keyboard runs (and bang as many notes as you possibly can ). Do you get clicks and pops then ??

I\'m asking because I want to know if I really need to invest in a higher end computer, or if it is possible to achieve great results from my p3 800 ( running raid ).

Tomorrow eve I\'ll be adding another harddrive to my system, but I\'m going to install it as a separate, single ide drive. That way I can directly compare playing samples off my raid system vs a regular drive setup.

Will report what happens !

Thanks,

Robert

[Bruce Bowers]

I checked my polyphony using Giga Piano. Not so great. Around 90 or 100 I get assorted hash and garbage including the looping trash type stuf f I get on my RAID machine (although on the P III 700 it was much less audible because it was looping in the lower applitude decay portions of the wave file. )

Processor useage was only running around 45-50%

I think this shows that if you don\'t go looking for it, or have a special need there are performance issues in GSt that one can be oblivious to. I guess it doesn\'t matter until it screws with your music and then it matters a lot!
In my daily use of GSt, I was not having any trouble, but the limitations are not that far beyond my useage when I went to check it out.

Any tips on improving things. I know from past experience that all kinds of seemingly unrelated parts of the computer can have an effect on this (video card settings, BIOS settings, drive settings, sound card settings, etc)



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Bruce Bowers
Hungry Hill

[KingIdiot]

the thing is I dont believe its Giga\'s performance thats the issue, its all the other things taht amount to giga\'s performance.

I get 160 note poly from doing runs with GigaPiano on a FREAKING LAPTOP! usualyl you get better performance from a single instrument. Still there are all kids of little thigs that make for problems. I originally had problems with release triggers on my desktop until I got a new driver for my WamiRack. Make sure you have the latest drivers. AND try older drivers. They may give better performance to Giga. Make sure the drives are in DMA mode. Turn off extra software taht might start up on the computer. All these help, but there could be underlying issues with hardware. Make sure you are using good clean cables...stuff like that.



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Really...I am an Idiot

[Kenn159]

King Idiot
Try to do the test on your lap top that was mentioned here.
Hold down the sustain pedal and play like a mad man[basically simulating what happens when sequencing several instruments through giga studio]and if your lap top does not have any pops and clicks I would be very suprised.
Im still running a Pen 3 450 , and experiencing the common pop and click problem plagued by everyone.
Im ready to buy an new computer , but Im just waiting for someone here to post a system that is pop and click free.
Im even seen people with pen- 4- 2 gig machines complaining about it.
I personally feel the pop and click thing is Giga studios biggest weakness.

[KingIdiot]

Kenn,

Thats the only way I do get 160 note poly. With gigapiano ONLY loaded and playing. Its the first test I did with it on the lap and it blew me away. However with multiple instruments i get about 140 max.

This is with Directsound on a Toshiba Tecra 8200 laptop PIII 850. I believe its a 7200 drive, but other people think its a 5400 I have to recheck. I dont think a 5400 would perform like this.

On my desktop I get about 140 note poly max as well. athlon 1 gig. No pop, crackle, stop.

Its usually about settings, and there are a multitude of issues that can cause problems. Its not Giga IMO, but hardware issues, or software issues.

of course all my tests are without any other audio running on the sequencer....did I mention I was running Cubase on the same machine? http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/images/icons/smile.gif Once I start to run audio from the same drive it chokes at about 80 voices.

Other issues that can cause problems are power saving features. My laptop chokes at about 80-100 when some of these are turned on. You may also want to invest in a good power supply. This\'ll make sure the drives aren\'t starving for power. also interface cards and etc take up power.

I\'m telling you, I\'m surprised at my performance on the laptop, but it REALLY does perform this way.

Another thing is, that jsut loading the piano up doesn\'t really give you the same test as if there is multiple instruments playing. Multiple gigs are stored at different places on the drive, which means MORE access time is needed to get to them. ALL the piano samples are located close together, which means less. THOUGH this may mean cracks and pops because the drive may perform \"noisy\" at close/small movements. Whiich could be the probklem I had with release triggers on my desktop early on. Anyhow,...if your system is set up in a way that works best for giga, you shouldn\'t get pops and crackles.


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Really...I am an Idiot