[Tal]

in reply to: Kontakt Purge feature #50458

OK, post some pictures when you do that

Thanks a lot, Sebastian.

[Tal]

in reply to: Kontakt Purge feature #50456

Thank you Sebastian, for forcing me to triple-check what was going on here. I’m both embarrassed and amazed.

Embarrassed because I had only purged one out of the five Kontakt LASS instances!

Amazed because with all LASS samples purged, when I start playing a melody on a patch I can see the memory used (as reported by Kontakt on the patch display) growing steadily as I add more notes, but I get no clicks, audio delays or glitches of any kind. The articulations just load as I play them, with not a single hiccup! I’ve tried Violins 1 FC Legato, Violins 1 A Legato and Violins FC 1 Pizzicato. This is even better than what’s happening with VSL libraries, where the “Enable Cell on MIDI Activity” works just fine but has a slight audio glitch while the samples load. What kind of magic is going on here? Both VSL & LASS are on the same SSD (and inside the same VEP metaframe) so it’s not a drive read/seek issue.

To answer your question, there was no difference in RAM usage when loading the template after reboot. But, after making sure everything was purged, it looks much better.

[attachment=0:2olmegot]Screen Shot 2015-03-04 at 07.32.39.png[/attachment:2olmegot]

[Tal]

in reply to: Kontakt Purge feature #50453

Bump. Anyone?

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45512

I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you on this one… I’m just applying the CC list on page 8 in the manual: the “Tuning Tools” setting is turned on from inside the tiny MIDI part used to reset each instrument, by sending CC90 at 127. I then set CC3 to 0, so as to use normal tuning and set the tuning table’s influence to zero. It’s more of a future-minded setting: although I’d love to, I’m not really using any special tunings unfortunately, because of what I reported in this thread a few weeks ago

Apart from setting CC112 as I’ve described in my previous post, I haven’t messed with any of the patches once loaded in Kontakt.

BTW every minute the thread’s title is getting less and less in touch with the subject matter…

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45510

I think I have an interesting lead here. In the piece I was referring to yesterday (previous post) there was one keyswitch per part, both happening at the exact same moment (the part was originally duplicated then only the notes were modified). I thought the simultaneity might be the source for the trouble, so I shifted one of the keyswitches further in time (blue lines in the following screenshot). Now I got two clicks, one for each keyswitch.

Lost in confusion, I finally looked at the tiny MIDI parts you see at the start of each track. I use them (in my Cubase template) to reset my VEP template to its original “neutral” state (both for LASS and VSL). This way whenever I start afresh I don’t need to worry about changes I might have done to tuning, volume, legato speed etc in earlier sessions. All these tiny parts are shared copies (instances in Logic-Speak).

[attachment=1:2d4ekcy3]clicks4.jpg[/attachment:2d4ekcy3]

Believe it or not, muting these parts made the clicks, which were happening many seconds later, disappear. So I went back inside the part, muted all the CC messages and started unmuting them one by one. When I unmuted CC3 (tuning), the clicks came back.

[attachment=0:2d4ekcy3]clicks5.jpg[/attachment:2d4ekcy3]

To confirm this, I converted one of the shared copies to a real copy, unmuted CC3 in only one of the tracks, and as expected got only one click.

At least now I got rid of them. I leave it to you to see what could be causing them

As to your questions: the clicks are just like any audio click you might have heard before when the audio clock isn’t properly working (or synced). It isn’t especially loud, but it’s certainly audible. It’s the kind of thing that looks like a tiny mess with sharp, pointy teeth when zoomed in at the sample level…

I’ll try it with a brand new session with only LASS as soon as I can get to it. And since I wouldn’t know where the preload buffer size is adjusted, I don’t think I’ve altered it Is it a Kontakt setting?

NOTE: You might surprised to see CC112 in the second screenshot. It’s the only thing I customized in the LASS instances, because of its shared use with CC111. I posted about it here a while back: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2616

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45508

Further confirmation, this time on a completely different piece. Not orchestral work per se, so I wasn’t using LASS at all. Everything’s mostly Omnisphere, Maschine & Damage (we *do* have to make a living…)

No clicks whatsoever until I added two very small celli & violas staccatos at the beginning, single notes, nothing fancy. I got clicks the moment the staccato articulations are sent to VEP, Kontakt and LASS. Scroll the screenshot down to see the added LASS parts.

[attachment=0:3jrj8h0n]CLICK3.jpg[/attachment:3jrj8h0n]

I hope you can quickly figure out what could be causing this.

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45506

OK, some more info here. It’s definitely related to keyswitching. I followed your suggestion and removed all articulation changes from the basses that were giving me the most trouble (these are the two brown lines in the attached screenshot, that’s Cbs A & Cbs B — everything brownish is LASS, all the rest is VSL). Then I created two empty parts a little bit earlier in the piece, with nothing in them except for a pizzicato keyswitch (one for each of the two instrument sections). I played the whole piece from the beginning, and without fault, I got a click where the two new parts were (there was never a click at that section before), and the clicks I was hearing on the “real” part (further down the sequence) weren’t heard anymore.

[attachment=0:2rclpoqc]click2.jpg[/attachment:2rclpoqc]

So:

1. It’s obviously related to keyswitching.
2. It can’t be related to Cubase’s Expression Maps because I’m not getting this with VSL instruments, which are hosted in the same environment (VEP) as LASS.
3. It’s therefore logical that it’s either a LASS or a Kontakt issue.
4. Since I never had this before upgrading to ARC 1.2, it *might* be an ARC problem. Or, of course, a problem introduced with Kontakt 5.0.3…

I don’t have other Kontakt libraries with complex keyswitching so I can’t take it any further from here…

UPDATE: Conclusions above are reinforced by a very simple test: muting all of the LASS parts results in a clickless playback — important considering the fact that all 5 LASS Kontakt instances are hosted on the same VEP instance (on different MIDI ports).

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45504

I’m sorry, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. The clicks appear almost always at transition points in the sequence, when I’m changing articulations, but I can’t pinpoint the location. The clicks happen only once every 3-4 plays, always around the same moments, and very often after earlier articulations have happened already — this means I have to listen to the whole piece from the beginning every time in order to catch it. It doesn’t register on the level meters, I’ve been staring at both VEP’s and Cubase’s for an hour now.

I’ve played the following Bass A part soloed maybe fifty times:

[attachment=1:1ygg19iy]clicks.png[/attachment:1ygg19iy]

I got 4 or 5 clicks in the first dozen or two tries, always at the transition between the two first legato notes and at the end of the last spiccato note.

Then I tried switching the keyswitch input to Ch 13-16. The clicks seemed to have disappeared, so I unsoloed the part and restarted from the beginning of the piece. I got the clicks again, same place, and also somewhere else, where violins change articulations.

I’m at a loss here, I don’t know what’s going on but I’m pretty sure it’s LASS-related. I’m using the exact same combination of Expression Maps/VEP routing etc for my VSL stuff and I’m not getting any of these quirks.

BTW, changing the basses to 13-16 was easy, but if I have to go through it for the rest it’ll be an impossible (for now) template change, because I have 16 channels occupying one entire MIDI port. My current setup looks like the following (K is a Kontakt instance in VEP), and I can’t see how I can separate the keyswitch input channel from the patches short of distributing each kontakt instance to a separate VEP MIDI port. Please confirm I got this right…

[attachment=0:1ygg19iy]k.png[/attachment:1ygg19iy]

And please, if you have any idea what could be causing this. I’m in the middle of a project and I might be forced to glue bounces by hand piece by piece… Oh, the humanity.

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45502

It’s taking some time to track down the patch which triggers the click. You’re in the US, right? Probably morning on your end?

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45499

The instrument making the click is the one which sends the keyswitches, it’s not any single patch. If I mute it (in Cubase), I don’t get clicks. If I unmute the part and mute the notes only (in the Key Editor), so that only the keyswitch is sent, I get the click too. And it only happens when *other* LASS patches are simultaneously playing.

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45497

I’m not sure I understand the question. I have 5 multis, one for each section (Violins I, Violins II…) Each multi’s ARC has 4 sets, A thru D, for each for the subsections (FC, A, B, C). Each of the sets receives the keyswitch on a different MIDI channel, which is also where the actual patch receives it. Isn’t it the way it’s supposed to be done in order to have one MIDI track per instrument?

I’ve attached one of the five multis to this message if you want to take a look.

BTW, I worked for months and never had these issues, it only came up since I upgraded the ARC to 1.2 (and/or added the MIDI Reroute v2.0 multiscript, which I doubt is the reason).

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45495

Any comments on the update from yesterday (previous post in this thread)? I just had this happening again when sending a pizzicato keyswitch to Basses A & B: there’s an audible click when the patches are changed through the ARC.

[Tal]

in reply to: Advice on best way to utilize ONe new SSD Drive? #45312

I have a OWC Accelsior SSD drive split between the OS & my main sample libraries. Both partitions coexist peacefully and performance has gone through the roof. Applications load in seconds, polyphony seems to have tripled and the machine makes much less noise…

Just my 2c.

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45494

Another, very similar issue arose today. Took me an hour to realize what was happening.

Several MIDI tracks (2nd violins, violas, celli) were “preparing” for a certain bar start, setting keyswitches, expression and dynamics before the first note sounds. The 1st violins, on yet another track, were set to start long notes half a bar earlier (syncopating).

Now, a quarter note before the bar start, there were two distinct audio clicks. Only the 1st violins were playing (since it was happening during their syncopated notes), but when soloing them to make sure I couldn’t hear the clicks anymore.

Long story short, the clicks were caused by articulation keyswitches sent to the *other* instruments (2nd, violas, celli) which were hosted on completely separated Kontakt instances (within the same VEP viframe). This is very weird indeed. The articulations were sent on the quarter beat and moving them just a tad offbeat solved the problem.

Seems related to the earlier issue, but I wouldn’t know…

[Tal]

in reply to: Anti-A.M.G. #45519

Of course it helps. Silly of me. Thanks a lot

[Tal]

in reply to: Weird phasing issues in Violins 1 B Sordino #45493

Happens to the best of us. Good luck

[Tal]

in reply to: Wacom tablet users – favorite size? #45226

I agree, curves are the obvious benefit but zipping around the Project Window or the Key Editor while holding only the pen button has to be experienced to be believed… A major time saver, it’s really like drawing stuff on paper.

[Tal]

in reply to: Tuning preset files and the ARC #45453

BTW, the problem is even worse on the ARC, because even saving the preset into the preset you’re actually viewing still doesn’t save the keyswitch setting. At least it doesn’t on my end.

[Tal]

in reply to: The double role of CC 111 #45485

Thanks, I tried double-clicking the 111 on the Legato page and assumed that because nothing happened it wasn’t editable… All OK now.

[Tal]

in reply to: The double role of CC 111 #45483

Thanks Sebastian, I tried to find the custom CC page in a patch (not the ARC) and couldn’t find it. Is it customizable via the ARC only?

[Author]

Posts