Matt Regan Max Strength Guitar

[Matt Ragan]

This came up once before, and was resolved with some tweaking to the user\'s audio card configuration - here\'s the link:
http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/Forum3/HTML/001262.html (\"http://www.northernsounds.com/ubb/NonCGI/Forum3/HTML/001262.html\")

[nuggetz]

Why is it that this is the only sample library that chokes up Gigastudio? I mean I hear weird crackles, noises, etc when I play more than a few notes. What gives? I can play all of the high end/large pianos with no problem. pIII 1Ghz, 7200RPM drives, 512MB RDRAM

[nuggetz]

I read the thread but there really isnt anything explicit in regards to tweaking XP for Giga.

I find it hard to believe that I have no problem playing a massive piano sound, while just ONE note on this guitar library produces crackles and clicks.

It seems that the library wasn\'t built efficiently.

[John]

I haven\'t had any problems with this excellent library.

[SCARBEE]

What version of GigaStudio are you using?

Scarbee

[nuggetz]

I\'m using version 2.50 for XP. The latest build.

[Aaron Levitz]

That thread basically comes down to \"if your rendered .WAV files don\'t crackle, your problems can be remedied by following Dave Casey\'s PC Audio System tutorial.\"

Now, we haven\'t yet established that Nuggetz can record to .WAV without crackling [/i](it could be something else entirely)[/i], but given the scarcity of problems to choose from, this is probably a reasonable guess.

What isn\'t terribly helpful on that thread, however, is the reference to an article (which might not be so easy to find today as it was last time it came up) without actually providing a link.

I believe this is the tutorial in question: http://www.tascam.com/support/faq/pc_optimize/index.php (\"http://www.tascam.com/support/faq/pc_optimize/index.php\")
That\'s not XP specific, but something in there apparently solved MickyZ\'s problems.

So, yeah. Matt could have been more informative in his reply, but Nuggetz should count himself lucky to get any response at all after launching his query as a public attack. (play nice, ok?)

[nuggetz]

Public attack? By no means. I really love this library and I praise Matt for doing such an excellent job.

I\'m just a little frustrated at the fact that this library is really what I\'m looking for and it\'s not working, when other librarys larger in size work without a hitch. I mean I can hold the pedal down on the largest piano sample I have and literally pound the keys and no crackling or pops occur. With this library, playing one note produced pops.

By the way, I tried rendering the audio out to disk and I get crackling in the output. Hope that helps differentiate my problem in comparison to someone elses.

I didnt mean to attack the integrity of this library. If my message came across that way, I apologize. Obviously it\'s working for a lot of folks and it must be my configuration. I don\'t know anything about sample programming, but my best (uneducated) guess would tell me that this library works differently than others of the same size.

Matt, thanks for the link. I appreciate it, but like I said before, it really doesnt apply since my OS is XP.

[Matt Ragan]

I\'ve contacted Tascam and pointed them to this thread - it looks like they\'ll have tech support look into this, and do some testing of Max Acous with XP. If I hear of any clues to this mystery I\'ll post them here.

[Aaron Levitz]

Sounds great - that\'s all anyone can ask for, really. Good luck to everyone involved, and my condolences that they have to experience any side of this.

[pmuse]

Hello nuggetz,

Sorry you are having trouble with this excellent library. Here are some suggestions. Be sure also to send a diagnostic report to Allen at Tascam Support:

custser@teac.com

There is a simple test you can perform. Do a wave capture of a GigaStudio performance until you have heard these pops occur. Upon saving the resulting wave file, open and play it in an editor program such as Sound Forge or Cool Edit or a playback app such as Windows Media Player. If there are pops in the recorded wave file, it indicates a problem streaming audio samples off the hard drive into GigaStudio. If the wave file is clean, then there are issues with the sound card driver/hardware interface.

If the wave file is free of any pops and clicks, check the following:

1. Program version. GigaStudio is now updated to 2.5 available for free download to all registered users.

2. Sound Card driver update. Be sure to get the latest and proper GSIF driver from the sound card manufacturer.

3. Be sure you are not confusing pops and clicks with digital distortion. Try adjusting the attenuation level in the
settings page of GigaStudio.

If there were pops in the recorded wave file, check the following:

1. Make sure your DMA box is checked. To find this go to:
start-> settings-> control panel-> system-> device manager->disk drives-> select harddrive -> check DMA.

2. Try changing the vcache settings in the system.ini file. Setting the min and max cache to 25% of the RAM in the machine is the ideal setting. This will reserve some of the RAM for polyphony performance and this won\'t be available for loading sounds into. This will lower the amount of sounds that can be loaded at once for real-time playback.

3. Leave the \"virtual memory\" set to the default of \"let windows set virtual memory\" (in the device manager/performance tab). (Alternatively, some users get better results if they specify the Minimum and Maximum size of the Virtual Memory to the same number, 2X the amount of RAM in their system. This approach prevents the virtual memory drive space from fragmenting.)

4. Try turning vcache completely off in the system.ini file.

5. Turn off all background applications, especially Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee. This will cause periodic popping...

6. On that note, there was one user who had gotten a virus that caused popping. This was fixed by running norton anti virus….

7. The position of the sounds on the hard drive can also affect performance. In hard drive tests and reviews, the access and seek time are the fastest in the first few megabytes of data and get slower as the system accesses sounds further in. Defragmenting the drives will help keep the sounds consolidated and moved nearest the beginning of the drive data. With the GigaStudio, you can use Norton or any other tool you want. In tests with the GigaStudio, Norton defragmenting has made significant improvements in the performance.

8. Performance can sometimes be improved by having direct control of the PCI and IRQ settings for the sound cards and other devices. Some motherboards and chipsets will not allow the plug and play to be disabled making this custom setting impossible.

9. You may want to download and install the newest drivers available for your harddrives/motherboard/chipsets/
etc.

10. Some people have experienced better performance by going to control panel>system>performance>file system and turn the typical role of the computer to network server. You could also play with the read-ahead optimization setting. In \"troubleshooting\" of this same area you could try disabling write-behind caching for all drives or protected mode harddisk interrupt handling....

11. Also, try going to control panel>device manager>system and disabling USB.


I hope this helps. We\'ve also been told by some users that cacheman helps. It\'s a free application you can get from www.outertech.com (\"http://www.outertech.com\") that sets up your cache and file swap settings. We haven\'t tested this, so it\'s up to you... but that\'s the word on the street.

Make sure you take very good notes of your tweaks and only tweak one thing at a time. It might be a helpful reference in the future!

Kevin

[SCARBEE]

You can also try to resize the cluster size on your audio HD to 32. Partition Magic can do this, while data is on the HD. But be carefull and back up personal Data first. You must do this in dos (using 2 boot-discs) - especially if you have Norton installed.

Scarbee

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