Pops Spikes Piano

[Julia123]

I am having spikes and pops. The problem is a piano part with pedaling & lots of notes. I've tried a number of different piano's with both PLAY & Omnishphere and have the same result. The buffer setting makes no difference. Work priority is worse when high but at low the problem persists. I've watched my Mac's activity monitor and CPU/RAM looks fine as far as I am capable of telling. The DP processing meter makes sudden huge jumps into red and it's then that I get the crackles and drop outs. In my current case I have even shut off all other VI's and the spikes remain, only starting at a lower level so there are fewer drop outs. I do get the drop outs with only the single part enabled though! I adjusted the voices allowed in PLAY with no difference either. Since it's both PLAY and OMNISPHERE I am thinking it is DP? I did trash Pref., opened a new project, loaded up a piano, thought it was fixed, but then as soon as I added a few other VI's, it started right up. I turned them all off, and it still continued. I am so confused.

[Prime Mover]

Well, both PLAY and Omnisphere are known for being fierce on the CPU... fyi, they're also not known for having the best pianos, either. But first, make sure you have the VIs set to "Pre-Gen". Then it won't actually be running the VI in realtime but creating a behind-the-scenes cache (either RAM or disk, I've never known). If that doesn't work, freeze down the track. One of the things I love about both freezing and bouncing to disk is that it runs the VI and signal chain completely out of time (even when Pre-Gen seems to be at its limit), if it needs more than real-time to calculate everything, it just slows itself down to compensate. Once in a while it's even too much and jitters, but usually it's far more fool proof than realtime playback.

Fact is, no matter how powerful my system has been, I've always run into situations where my computer just can't keep up. Usually I think it's hard drive access, but occasionally also CPU, it's kind of par for the course. Just feel lucky we can listen at real-time at all, video editing beyond the most basic stuff has always been pre-render.

[Shooshie]

Just on a hunch, do you have multiple input hardware selected in the Hardware Setup dialog? If so, could you get by on just one when you're tracking? Try that and see if it makes any difference. I get something like what you're describing when I'm tracking if I use more than one audio input interface.

If you must have more than one input, you might try making an Aggregate Device in the Audio/MIDI Setup, so that multiple devices appear as one. This is all from memories that are like 10 or 12 years old, so I don't know if I'm getting it right, but if I'm wrong maybe someone will chime in.

Or, it may be something else entirely. But it's worth checking.

Shooshie

[Prime Mover]

Gotta admit, the first thing I thought of when I saw this thread title was a vision of my dad filling my upright with Vodka.

[Julia123]

Well, both PLAY and Omnisphere are known for being fierce on the CPU... fyi, they're also not known for having the best pianos, either. But first, make sure you have the VIs set to "Pre-Gen". Then it won't actually be running the VI in realtime but creating a behind-the-scenes cache (either RAM or disk, I've never known). If that doesn't work, freeze down the track. One of the things I love about both freezing and bouncing to disk is that it runs the VI and signal chain completely out of time (even when Pre-Gen seems to be at its limit), if it needs more than real-time to calculate everything, it just slows itself down to compensate. Once in a while it's even too much and jitters, but usually it's far more fool proof than realtime playback.

I just did a thorough run through on all of my Play settings. I messed with streaming but didn't see a specific pre gen setting. The problem remains. Omnisphere for piano was just a test to see if the same thing was happening with a different VI but I did have streaming on. When I switched streaming off just to test, I still had the same glitches as well.
I do have DP pref set at Pre Gen. Just to test I switched VI to real time, and the same drop outs continue.
I'm not even close to being able to Freeze or bounce because this is happening with even brand new projects, first take, before anything is even started. BTW, this is both during recording and during play back.

The thing is, I used to be able to use this exact same PLAY piano sample with this current iMac configuration so I'm not thinking it's just my computer not able to handle it.

Just on a hunch, do you have multiple input hardware selected in the Hardware Setup dialog? If so, could you get by on just one when you're tracking? Try that and see if it makes any difference. I get something like what you're describing when I'm tracking if I use more than one audio input interface. Shooshie

I was hoping it was that but if you are referring to Host Buffer Multiplier I just double checked and do have that set to 1. The only difference I can see between now and when the same samples used to work is my computer HD is getting pretty full. I hope it is something simple I'm missing. I've been testing this thing for hours now with no luck. The Play samples are on a drive that is in an OWC encasement using FireWire 800, but that is the same as it always has been as well.

[David Polich]

PLAY has been buggy from the very beginning and still is. My advice -
seriously, just forget about using it. Maybe it works better on Windows,
I don't know. You're in 10.6.8...that's another problem right there.

Omnisphere - that's always been a CPU-hog and a memory hog. One of its
issues is still that when you load a new patch, it doesn't free up memory
that was already loaded to. You are just piling on more RAM usage with
each new patch that you audition. Even with 32GB of RAM, if you audition
something like 20 Omnisphere patches you can easily run up against your
RAM limit, and spikes and pops and stutters are going to happen.

Like the old patient-doctor joke about "doc, it hurts when I move my arm"
and the doctor's reply is "well, don't move your arm". Bail on PLAY...
you'll be glad you did. There are so many piano VI's out there that actually
work.

[Julia123]

Omnisphere - that's always been a CPU-hog and a memory hog. One of its
issues is still that when you load a new patch, it doesn't free up memory
that was already loaded to. You are just piling on more RAM usage with
each new patch that you audition. Even with 32GB of RAM, if you audition
something like 20 Omnisphere patches you can easily run up against your
RAM limit, and spikes and pops and stutters are going to happen.

I had no idea about the RAM piling up! I did hear it was a hog but I do see problems arise and then disappear after I close and re open, that explains that. In this case the exact thing was happening though with both PLAY and Omnisphere so I don't know if it would be PLAY specifically. I spent a ton of $$ on my PLAY package and still kind of depend on it at this point. I can't wait to try some new strings so maybe that could be my break away. I'm really happy with the VOtox and choirs though, I don't think I could part with them. I'm tempted by a number of things I see out there to replace much of it. Thanks for the heads up.