VSTi Sample help
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Posted on Feb 18, 2010 11:52 am
Fragile
Member Since: Sep 30, 2009
In my EWQL goliath program, i have an issue lately where in my DAW, sometimes the samples start "cutting out" immediately after they're triggered. Other times they are retriggered after a few milliseconds and looped like crazy. The samples are being streamed from my harddrive, as the piano is just BARELY too large to fit into my ram even if it were completely unused. My processor is only running at around 15-30% capacity. I've tried upping the ASIO latency time thinking maybe that'd help. It doesn't. I'm unsure what to do now. once it starts doing it once there's no turning back. it gets worse and worse. sometimes if i restart my system it won't be as bad but thats about it. usually it still does it even then. Though oddly, i swear if my PC is off for a long period of time then it works fine. Idk. Could just be wishful thinking on my part distorting my judgement.
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pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Feb 18, 2010 12:43 pm Sounds like the page file is filling, meaning your ram is getting too filled.
I open task manager / performance (CTRL-ALT-DEL -> Task manager) and watch the ram / cpu when I'm loading things. My current e-drum kit expirement loads just into memory, but I drop some things from RAM before I do.
Even if you aren't maxed out, just being close will have the page file swapping things up and down from HD, and if you're already streaming from HD, then you may get these hiccups. I know I get them sometimes, but usually not enough to pose a real problem. Hopefully my newly purchased soft module will help out with that.
Feb 18, 2010 02:00 pm Okay let me see if i'm wrapping my head around this... it usually takes a few explanations to sink down into my thick head (: I'm on 7, so i actually have a semi transparent gadget always on top watching my CPU and RAM. When i was having issues, RAM was around 70% full. Is that enough to cause issues? 4 gigs ram, 3 usable. My CPU rarely spikes over 30% while in project. Sometimes when its first loading up it'll go up to around 50-70%.
Okay, hope that gave the rest of the details on whats happening to me. Now for some random knowledge questions...
When you say "swapping things up and down from HD" what do you mean? I don't understand whats going on, in fact before yesterday i assumed Goliath loaded instruments into RAM, and didn't stream from disk at all. Why do these "hiccups" occur? Is my harddrive just looking up too much information and deciding to not play the samples? I'm just quite curious as to what is actually going on "behind the scenes" here that is causing all this drama
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Feb 18, 2010 08:16 pm Usually, for PC type work (not audio), the Hard drive is way faster than what we need. Meaning, if we want, say, 75 pages of text, the PC will grab it from HD in about 50 ms. Pretty darn fast. But in this reading, the HD may have picked up bits here, and bits there, not really in a steady stream, but in chunks. We're not quick enough to notice this, so it's fine.
But, with audio, we need VERY close data transfer from HD for us not to notice. So the HD could be moving parts up from the HD to the processor, and out the audio card & speakers. But, if you start filling up memory, then the PC has to take 'pages' of RAM memory, and store them to the HD for temporary storage. This is done in a swap file in windows.
So, we may have the PC starting to send RAM pages of memory down the the HD for temp storage, but the processor is working to keep the audio playing smooth. Add to this, that windows is trying to use the HD on and off (hopefully not) and you may get little 'pauses' where the data can't be picked up quick enough for you to not notice.
Something you may be able to do, is run performance monitor (used to be called perfmon.exe in XP) and put in a meter for page faults. This will tell you if your memory is looking for a page of memory but can't find it in ram, so it has to look to the HD for it. If there's any page faults, then you may hear it.
Run the perfmon w/ page faults while the project is running. This should let you know if it's PFing or not.
The 50-70 % is loading the samples / data into memory. totally normal, as there's a lot to do.
See if you can turn off the stream from HD, maybe that'll help. Or, see if you can drop some things from memory, to get more available. I'm not sure what can be dropped from 7, but it's worth a shot. Maybe there's some cheat sheets for memory cleanup on the interweb.
On the PC being on longer fixes the problem, memory addressing ages, so some things may be swapped out that you don't need, so it's possible, but you'd need to be VERY inquisitive to prove it =).
I saw that widget too, on some PCs they're setting up here at work.
Also, maybe your vid card is too hoggy with pci bus (which maybe the USB lives on). PCI Latency tool should tell you if the vid card is too agressive. You may be able to turn that down, so the other devices get a fair shake at the PCI bus. ( not sure about usb, but it's worth a look ).
Feb 18, 2010 11:25 pm Okay... its starting to sink in haha. I can feel it. I am on the verge of understanding all of this. Just need a few more moments of hands on use to fully get what you're saying. Thanks for the explanation. And i'll certainly muck around with the permon. And adjusting my video card settings. If nothing else, now i at least have a starting point here which i can start to look around and see what the problem here is. Never thought the video card could affect it like that! And unfortunately i can't stream the piano. It says the sample requires like 3 gigs or something (well, the one i like at least). whatever it is, it said its too large to dump into the RAM. though, maybe i misunderstood. Maybe it was telling me the piano AND the rest of what was in my RAM was 3+ gigs. which wouldn't be a big deal.
Right now i'm just writing, and oddly enough the sample was freaking out too much for that. I ran disk cleanup though, and now its running super fast. Which was odd imo. I plan on loading any files to RAM that i can when i freeze them. I've had issues in the past of having to spend an hour freezing a single instrument again and again til it didn't cut out once. Especially the strings with those long notes.
Speaking of disk cleanup however, that thing freed up like 3 and a half gigs!!! Is that normal, or does audio production tend to leave a lot of undeleted temp files? I hadn't ran cleanup in awhile, maybe never on this PC. but its only a month old PC. 3 gigs is a lot of junk files!
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Feb 19, 2010 01:50 am audio work can certainly leave huge chunks of junk around. But I wouldn't figure that it would show up in a disk cleanup. Though I'm not sure what you used, so it's possible I guess.
I'm not sure about rest of it.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Feb 19, 2010 04:09 pm You can look and see if there is a selection for Direct From Disc Streaming. Native Instruments has used that for years and I love it. It eliminates going to RAM for the sample and streams it right from its source on the disc. Saves a lot of headache by going that route.
