Playback starts to go haywire after a while.

For seeking technical help with Digital Performer and/or plug-ins on Windows.

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This forum is for seeking solutions to technical problems involving Digital Performer and/or plug-ins on Windows, as well as feature requests, criticisms, comparison to other DAWs.
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opeth13
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed May 12, 2010 2:53 am
Primary DAW OS: Windows

Playback starts to go haywire after a while.

Post by opeth13 »

Hey there, so my tech info is in my signature. I currently have 16 days remaining in my DP8 demo and I'm pretty happy with it, however I want to make sure I get the following issue ironed out if I'm going to be making a purchase at the end of the trial.

My audio driver setup in DP is as follows (configurable options descending):
Asio > M-Audio USB ASIO > 44100 > Internal > Override Internal Buffer unchecked > 256 > Priority Boost checked

I've tried disabling priority boost, playing around with latency (I have this issue at 512 samples as well).

EDIT: I'm having issues at any latency (1024, 2056). Plugins will not playback on recorded MIDI notes, stuttering, notes triggering out of time, etc. :(

I'm using the midiman and a Kawai K4 keyboard as my MIDI controller. I will load an instrument track with a MIDI track outputting to it and I'll record my MIDI performance, and then I'll stop and playback the entire track and my Model 12 track will have dropped out. It's not muted and nothing is solo'd at this point. I'll have to exit DP and restart it or change my audio driver to something else and change it back to the working driver for Model 12 to start working again. This behavior seems to also occur when I have a segment looping for a while. My project only has a handful of tracks currently so I'm not even at 25% cpu utilization.

Another issue I'll have that I can replicate every time is when I'm switching through presets in Modulo. At some point, the audio engine will start to crap out and most of the presets will start to sound like bit-crushed static'y garbage. I can't figure it out. I've been producing with this hardware setup for a while now. I've used other daws which don't have this issue on my system.

Any thoughts? I really like DP's workflow and I used to be a DP7 user when I was in the Mac ecosystem a couple of years ago. I just can't produce longer than 30 minutes right now without having to troubleshoot audio playback issues.
Intel Sandybridge i5-2300 cpu 3.10 GHz (quad core w/o hyperthreading), 6gb ram, Win 7 64bit, DP 8.04 (32 bit), M-Audio Midiman, M-Audio Fast Track USB audio i/o.
opeth13
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed May 12, 2010 2:53 am
Primary DAW OS: Windows

Re: Playback starts to go haywire after a while.

Post by opeth13 »

Hey, I just wanted to update this post in case anyone else runs into similar issues. I was basically having all sorts of odd audio issues after looping a certain segment of my track for longer than a couple of minutes. The issue was user naivete.

So I noticed using the performance tab on the task manager that the audio dropouts and anomalies would occur the moment after any one of my cpu cores hit 50% load. I know windows only allows an application to use 50% max cpu by default. Running as admin (admin is granted by clicking 'Show processes from all users' button), I was able to right click on the DP.exe process and left click on Realtime (you can also use high, but Realtime will let the app use all cpu allocation even if it means halting the system a.k.a. win! ok jk not so win but worth noting).

I also kicked my buffer up to 1024.

Last but not least, in my efforts to troubleshoot, I discovered that I had practically every single plugin instrument and effect window open in the background, behind the main DP window. Closing all the various windows alone reduced a ton of cpu overhead.

Anyway, with the steps mentioned above, I had pretty much flawless, reliable playback, with all other seemingly random or strange issues resolved.
Intel Sandybridge i5-2300 cpu 3.10 GHz (quad core w/o hyperthreading), 6gb ram, Win 7 64bit, DP 8.04 (32 bit), M-Audio Midiman, M-Audio Fast Track USB audio i/o.
opeth13
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed May 12, 2010 2:53 am
Primary DAW OS: Windows

Re: Playback starts to go haywire after a while.

Post by opeth13 »

I give up. I have 11 days left in my demo. I don't think I'm going to be able to finish my project. I really like DP. I just can't justify investing in it right now on the Windows platform. If I had some money and time to burn I would gladly do it because I want to see it succeed on this platform. However, I don't have those luxuries at the moment so I'm going to have to check it out again in the future to see how it's come along.

I'm still get dropouts and weird MIDI issues. Perhaps it's my ASIO driver, but I really don't think it is. I'm going to demo another DAW for 30 days and I'll chime in if it is driver. However, at 2048 buffer and 7 or so tracks, with a handful of effects, I really don't think I should be having the issues I'm having.
Intel Sandybridge i5-2300 cpu 3.10 GHz (quad core w/o hyperthreading), 6gb ram, Win 7 64bit, DP 8.04 (32 bit), M-Audio Midiman, M-Audio Fast Track USB audio i/o.
opeth13
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed May 12, 2010 2:53 am
Primary DAW OS: Windows

Re: Playback starts to go haywire after a while.

Post by opeth13 »

seems like the forums having issues... So for what it's worth, here's what I got done in my free time (2-3 hours a week) with the demo:

DISCLAIMER: genre - edm

https://soundcloud.com/raffivegas/dp-test-proj
Intel Sandybridge i5-2300 cpu 3.10 GHz (quad core w/o hyperthreading), 6gb ram, Win 7 64bit, DP 8.04 (32 bit), M-Audio Midiman, M-Audio Fast Track USB audio i/o.
airfield
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2013 11:27 am
Primary DAW OS: Windows

Re: Playback starts to go haywire after a while.

Post by airfield »

I admire your sticking to it as long as you did. 23 days left of my 30 day trial and I'm about to uninstall. Too many problems, too much humbug. I just don't have the time to spend trying to make DP8.04 work.
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