DP 4.6 IS OUT

[Sylver]

Originally posted by Shooshie:
Well,

Which is it? Dashboard? Or the reprocessing of soundbites in the background? I don't know at this point, and I'm not going to figure it out tonight, but I'll look into it more closely tomorrow. But as you can see, it's very possible that it wasn't Dashboard at all. OR... it could be a combination of BOTH!

I dunno, I'm an OSX newbie, but have lots of computer experience and it seems likely to me that it would be the background processing. Theoretically, Dashboard CPU activity should drop to 0% on widgets when not in use. I just checked with activity monitor, and that does seem to be the case(They do stay memory resident, but I would think that they get unloaded if that memory space is needed. Mac memory managment seems to be pretty strong). Seems to me that background processing like audio resolution conversion and such would be pretty processor intensive, and that would chew up lots of clock cycles, and therefore more likely to cause processor spikes.

Just my 2 cents.

[methezer]

I turned off a couple of the beat-detection processes that were going on in the background. This fixed all dropout problems for me.

Then again, my dropout issues weren't too serious. They would only happen on the initial playback. All subsequent playbacks would be smooth. It seems that the problem intensifies when using DSP cards like TC powercore etc. and this is probably due to 3rd party hardware/plugs not being ready for the dynamic cpu management stuff

PB G4 1.67, 1GB RAM, DP 4.6, 10.4.1, 896HD

<small>[ July 10, 2005, 08:08 AM: Message edited by: methezer ]</small>

[Henry Robinett]

Hello Sylver and ryst! Well it's background processing for me all the way. I brought up the background panel and changed the settings so I can see what it's doing when it's doing it and it always cocincides with the drop outs.

[bigdaddy]

Background processing might be part of it, but it's not the whole picture (for me at least).

I played around with the pitch automation last night and it's very good. One thing I noticed while reading the pdf is that both delay comp and analyze soundbytes needs to be on to use the pitch stuff. In my case, delay comp is/was on from the get go, but I had the analyze soundbytes feature set to wait until needed. Dashboard has also been off since early yesterday.

So in my case, the spikes should be minimal, right? Nope. Even under those circumstances, spikes were still present, but not terrible - Very rarely did I have dropout.

Turning on the analyze soundbytes ASAP feature and playing with the pitch stuff caused constant spikes which tripped the overload indicator in the meter every few seconds. It was hard to tell if I was getting dropouts as I was only listening to a short section of audio while correcting pitch.

I'd even admit that mybe my hardware is too slow to handle these new features, but if I see Shooshie and others with much faster Mac's having similar issues, then I have to believe that my hardware is capable and that there's something up with either Tiger, DP 4.6 or the combination of the two.

[Kubi]

Originally posted by amplidood:
Posting my warning again about timing erraticness when playing VI's from a V-Rack. It's all over the place. Put the VI back in the chunk with everything else....perfect. You can print it, invert phase with a Trim, and get total silence with the MIDI tracks playing.

Recreated this experiment and got full cancellation, which means that, at least in my setup, V-Racks have impeccable timing, just as Instrument Tracks inside the Sequence do; see this thread for a more detailed explanation.

<small>[ July 10, 2005, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: Kubi ]</small>

[Splinter]

Well, I've used 4.6 some more with no real problems. Audio is smooth, operation is smooth, but I'm getting the same spikes people are discussing here. I'm using 10.3.9 and the BGP is set to "wait." The BGP does seem problematic though as others have noted serious spiking issues. That said, if I don't watch the CPU meter it doesn't bother me and there are no crashes or drop outs, except if BGP is running. With this problem, it kind of defeats the point of having BGP now doesn't it.

Big Daddy, you should note that your computer is below the minimum system requirements (500MHz G4), so you will probably have issues regardless of whatever fixes come down the pike. Sorry, bro, time for an upgrade. Make your present machine your Reason machine and get an ADAT card to link your audio to DP.

[Christian]

My experience over the weekend:

Stats: Small project (15-20 tracks) with UAD-1 plugs only; OSX3.9; latest UAD version (3.9), clean update of DP 4.6, repaired permissions, de-frag'd drives, rebuilt directories. I was mixing only - so MIDI and VI performance not part of the analysis.

Performance:
- multiple plugs (PSP, UAD, Waves, TC, Blue Tubes) resulted in crashing within the first 5 minutes of usage. Pulling plugs out seemed to help - UAD was the most stable. Strange performance with the wiper and UAD plugs... couldn't drag the wiper backwards! It would get stuck and not pull backward (even after stopping playback). I-beam selecting the sequence allowed the playback wiper to go backwards again.

No freezing or clicks, but definite shut downs during playback - pretty random at times and never at the same point in the sequence.

Pitch correction worked occassionally and then would stop working - would quit out of app and restart, after which pitch correction would again start working.

Lots of cool features in 4.6, but still some performance issues. 4.52 is still running, so for legacy projects, I'll be working in that until I can figure out why issues are occurring on my system.

[TOD]

4.6 and 10.41 running very well. Today I ran Mach V, Mx-4, iDrum and LIVE concurrently with several UAD and Poco plugs. I'm at 15 stereo and 10 mono plus the VI's, (about 8 MIDI tracks). Pitch correction is working and I've had zero crashes or audio drop-outs.

Loving it so far!

[Splinter]

I should add I've been working on a 40 track project which can tax any version I've had so far with 60 to 80 plugins.

[bigdaddy]

Originally posted by Splinter:
Big Daddy, you should note that your computer is below the minimum system requirements (500MHz G4), so you will probably have issues regardless of whatever fixes come down the pike. Sorry, bro, time for an upgrade. Make your present machine your Reason machine and get an ADAT card to link your audio to DP.

Actually, it's not. If you read the pdf it says "The recommended system required for Digital Performer 4.6 is a dual-processor G4 with 1GB of RAM or more." Mine is a dual 450 w/1.25 GB of ram.

I believe the minimum 500Mhz G4 they are referring to is a single CPU machine. Man, I would hate to try and run DP 4.6 on that system with some of my projects - Painful.

[sdfalk]

Large (ish) projects 40 tracks or more VI's and fx with no dropouts
or audio problems of any kind..(yet)
Does appear to consume a bit more CPU though.
Not enough to be of any difference to me in a session though.

[bradswan]

Hey qo,

i just purchased the rosetta 800 with the firewire-X card. What issues have you come across regarding DP 4.6 and what are the fixes?

mush abliged.

[qo]

Originally posted by bradswan:
Hey qo,

i just purchased the rosetta 800 with the firewire-X card. What issues have you come across regarding DP 4.6 and what are the fixes?

mush abliged.

The main issue (for me) is that the current version of FireMix console appears to be written for the Rosetta 800, so lucky you Though, either Apogee/Apple/MOTU need to work out an issue I'm experiencing where there's crackling audio after a period of playing a live input. This normally happens with either an external MIDI synth or VI played live with a MIDI controller. After a minute or two, the audio starts to crackle. You can fix it by going into DP's Hardware Setup, changing the buffer setting to something other than what it's currently set to, and clicking OK. Once it starts to crackle again, change the buffer setting back to the original value and you're fine again for a minute or two.

But, even with this, the audio that's recorded is free of crackles. This sorta implies the problem is on the DA side. I'm not sure who's at fault here, or perhaps it's an inter-dependency and lies with two parties? All I know is it's frustrating.

<small>[ July 10, 2005, 11:08 PM: Message edited by: qo ]</small>

[bradswan]

Thanks for the reply--this should be interesting.

[Archer]

Qo,

you've got one of the best converters in the business. I wouldn't like to make it core audio dependent and prone to upgrade (and firmware upgrade) illnesses...Try to find a digital interface for interconnection...Just my tip.

Greetings