Technical Support

[ThaIllest]

Hello All,

I am an amateur producer currently having some technical issues producing and need some help. I use Maschine Software with external VST's and I am encountering multiple hurdles effecting my music production. I am learning to be more technically saavy but I do need some help with some internal/external issues.

The hardware:
PC w/ Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit OS
AMD A10-5800k APU with radeon(tm) hd graphics 3.8GHZ
16 GB RAM
Tannoy Reveal 601a Monitors
Maschine MK2
M-Audio Axiom 61
Focusrite Scarlett 2i4
SB Audigy Digital Audio Interface


The Software:
Maschine 2.2
Native Instruments Komplete 8
External VST's most 64 bit
Sylenth and 32 bit VST's bridged through jBridger


Issue 1 (computer crashing, delay, temporary freezing)
I am constantly freezing or crashing when I use between than 3 to 4 groups (48-64 sounds) within maschine. I try and use mostly the komplete VST's due to the fact if i use too many external VST's it will crash. I don't use any of my external effects either because of crash issue. I try and limit the amount of sounds/effects I am using but I would like to create more complex sounds with multiple instruments and external effects in which seems my computer will not allow for it. So this leads me to question:
-Should I purchase a new processor? More Ram? Better Soundcard?
-What are some recommendations for processors under $500 with good computing power?
-Are satellite processors like UAD 2 beneficial to increase computer production resources?


Issue 2 (latency, distortion, fuzz)
This might be the more frustrating of my issues as even when I feel I am on the right track, with limited instruments/samples/sounds I am running into sound issues whether it be minor midi latency, fuzz, distortion, pops, clicks. The sales guy at the music store mentioned it might help to purchase an external sound card and I have noticed a slight improvement upon buying the focusrite scarlett 2i4, however I still feel my sound output is not 100% as I can still hear the minor fuzz or distortion. These issues occur when I am playing instruments and also playing back tracks that I have already created.

I am stuck at the moment as every time I try and build momentum producing a track I always run into technical difficulties at the wrong time. Does anyone have any advice?

[tilldrop]

Sounds like a joke when you have a 3,8ghz CPU and are asking if you need a better one :O

Concerning issue 1: Have you looked at what the CPU % is when you are working? I usually can have about 8-15 instances of Serum (depending on unison etc.) before I have to bounce/flatten the tracks. You might want to look into doing that as well. I'm not sure how capable Maschine is when it comes to bouncing, but you can at least export single tracks load the audio back into the software. That should give you a ton of resources back.

Concerning issue 2: Check out 1) the driver to be the latest one (and use asio) and 2) check your sample rate and buffer size. Depending on the amount of tracks you might have to lower the sample rate or increase the buffer size a bit. This can easily save a ton of CPU as well, which in the case of a too small buffer size / too high sample rate can cause distortion or glitches. Obviously the latency will increase a bit, but you should still be able to keep it low. Try aiming for 25ms, see if you can "feel" the latency and if so decrease it a bit again. However unless you do a lot of resampling and down-pitching you will be alright with a 44 or 48 khz sample rate and a 256 or 512 buffer size.

[djafk]

ThaIllest,

It sounds like there are 2 problems occurring:

Issue 1 sounds to me like a bad/buggy driver or plugin. It is not normal for the PC to temporarily freeze or blue-screen. It may be very difficult to identify which one, but I have some ideas. Are you using Asio4all? Turn that off first and see if that fixes the freeze issue. After that, disable all 3rd party VSTs (anything that didn't come preinstalled from the developer). Also, number of samples shouldn't make this happen. With the hardware you spec'ed, you should be able to load this until your sound card can't handle it anyway.

Issue 2 - tilldrop has a good sounding troubleshooting process for determining latency needs. I am not familiar with the 2i4, but just about any external sound card is better than the built-in PC card.

Also, grab a free program called "DPC Latency Checker". This should assist in determining what hardware drivers might be causing issues. http://www.thesycon.de/dpclat/dpclat.exe It doesn't have an installer, you just run it and it displays the microsecond delays that all of your drivers accumulate. With your hardware, it sounds like you should be under 20us.

Let us know how these work :-)