RK2 troubleshooting guide Mac/PC

[Philipp @ NI]

Hi everybody,

Because some of you had some hassle setting up Guitar Rig with Rig Kontrol 2, here comes a "General Troubleshooting and Getting Started Guide" for both Mac and PC. This should help you to find out why your setup does not work properly at the moment. Beside this guide, you also should have the Guitar Rig 2 / Rig Kontrol 2 manual next to you when you start troubleshooting your system:

At first - of course - you need to run the installer for both Guitar Rig 2 and the NI USB device "Rig Kontrol 2".

The following steps refer to both operating systems Windows XP and Mac OS X:

1. Before starting the sofware and connecting RK2 to your computer, please verify that you have installed the latest driver and the latest software update.

Here is the link to your Personal Update Manager:

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?id=updates_us

2. If so, please connect Rig Kontrol 2 to a USB II port - please notice that especially older Mac Powerbooks (Titanium Serie) do not provide USB II. If this is the case please try to solve the problem by using a PCMCIA - USB II card.

- On PC it can be that you will be asked to install the RK2 driver if you connect the device to a USBII port which has not been used with RK2 before. You may need to manually install the driver for every USBII port on your machine.

3. Start Guitar Rig standalone and open the Audio and MIDI settings (preferences).

4. Please check if you have selected Rig Kontrol 2 as audio in - and output device.
- Tab: Soundcard

5. Please verify that you've connected both in - and outputs with Rig Kontrol 2.
- Tab: Routing

6. If you currently use another soundcard / interface beside RK2, please disconnect it and maybe uninstall the appropriate ASIO/Core Audio drivers.

7. Disconnect additional hardware (printers, scanners...).

- Also please disconnect any additional guitar hardware (whawha, foot pedals, distortion...) which you might want to use with Guitar Rig in combination.
- The signal path should be as clean and slim as possible.

8. Please check different USBII ports on your machine and verify that the USB cable is in good shape and not too long - it should not exceed a length of 3m!

9. If the problem persists: please change the USB cable

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I hear crackles - what am I supposed to do:

1. If you get crackles / audio dropouts while playing with Guitar Rig 2 using RK2, please check the Audio settings once again:

- Which buffer size do you use?

- What is the current CPU usage within GR (OS X Activity Monitor, Win XP Task Manager)?

- Which samplerate do you use?
>Higher samplerate means higher CPU usage!
>Uncheck the "High Res" button within Guitar Rig 2!


2. For getting started you should try the following buffer size / latency settings:

PC: 4ms

Please notice that on PC you only have one Control Panel to which you get access to directly from Guitar Rig's Audio and MIDI preferences dialogue.

Mac:

On Mac you have two (!) panels: One is located in OS X System Preferences (NI USB); the other is also the general Audio and MIDI preferences within Guitar Rig 2.
In the NI USB Control Panel you should start with the default setting of 512 samples - in Guitar Rig you should try the following settings:

With a mobile/laptop setup you should start with 11-16 ms (Guitar Rig) / 512 samples (NI USB Control Panel) to verify that no crackles are heard.
If you've done this, you could decrease the latency to around 10 ms which should work for most of the up to date Powerbooks.

G5 desktops achieve better performance with 7-10 ms / 256 samples.

It depends on your machine and the current CPU usage which setting work best for you. The intention should be to find a setting where you don't get crackles / dropouts or artifacts and where you can play your guitar without annoying latency.

Due to our experience these settings should work hassle and crackle free on every Mac/PC which pass the general System Requirements for Guitar Rig 2 and Rig Kontrol 2:

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/inde...=guitarrig2_us

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Finally I want to add a few steps which only refer to the specific operating systems wether you use a Mac or a PC - and which need to be check if you have trouble with GR and RK2:

PC:

- Did you check if Service Pack 2 is installed?

- Did you optimize the PC for Audio?

One important thing is to optimize/change the processor performance to background services.
This can be done in the Windows Control Panel>System>Advanced>Performa nce.

- Some software - for instance Virus Scan Software or Firewalls - can affect the computer performance in general. You could check how many applications are running in the background at the same time and can - if necessary - manually disable / enable these via the msconfig file.

- Turn off Power Management o the USB hubs. Win XP turns it on by default, and NI instruments are VERY sensitive to any drop in power to the hubs if they're being used for controlling the instrument or as audio interfaces. Go into device manager and right click each USB hub to bring up the properties. Under the power management tab, UNCHECK everything.
Repeat for each hub and reboot.

- If you use a laptop:

Does it support the "Shared Memory" system (not recommended!!!)?
Shared Memory laptops do not provide an extra RAM amount for graphical exposition. That means that audio processing and graphic presentation share the same physical RAM amount over the same bus.
In practice: Everytime the graphic is updated, it slows down the audio stream which is important to provide a crackle-free performance.

- If you use a desktop:

Please check in the Windows Device Manager>View>Resources by type if some IRQs are engaged twice.
If this is the case, then the first step would be to connect RK2 to another available USB II port.
It can cause audio dropouts and artifacts if - for instance - the graphic card and the audio interface share one IRQ. If so, please put the graphic card to another PCI port / change the USBII port.

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Mac:

- Did you install the latest RK2 driver for Mac OS X (Panther and Tiger)?

- Did you repair OS X disk permissions using the Disk Utility tool "First Aid" (utilities folder)? Sometimes this can be very helpful!


For further tips and tricks please notice our Mac OS X Tutorial on our website:

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/inde...id=niosxtut_us

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One last general thing:

Keep your system clean. The best thing would be if the PC/Mac is only being use for audio applications.

For example: An application enhancer or other system hacks (OS X), virus scan software, games...;-)...should not be running simultaneously while audio is being processed.

Also, sometimes unwanted artifacts can occur if too many different soundcard drivers are installed and too many different audio devices are connected to the same machine.

Please keep this in mind.

If you still cannot figure out how to get it up and running, please feel free to contact our Support team:

http://www.nativeinstruments.de/inde...id=suppform_us

USA:
Available:
Monday – Thursday 9am - 5pm pacific
Friday: 9am – 4pm pacific
Phone: +1.323.467 2693

Europe:
Available Monday to Friday, 10am - 6:30pm CET
Tel.: +49.30.61 10 35-1400
Fax: +49.30.61 10 35-2400



Have fun making music.

all the best,

[globalhiccup]

Thanks Philipp, for the above post, which will be useful to some. However, most of us have already tried all these suggestions - and many, many more - to no avail.

Could you please confirm that NI actually acknowledges a problem with RK2 and is working to remedy it? And that instead of us 'troubleshooting our systems', it is NI that needs to troubleshoot!

Or otherwise, please explain why the company is still selling a faulty product?

These questions are, of course, rhetorical, because I don't really expect to have any reply from moderators or company!

[darc]

Thanks for the post. Good information presented very concisely. I haven't really put GR2 through its paces since the patch was released, but armed with these suggestions, I will do so this weekend and report back.

Beyond the technical content, I really hope this marks the beginning of increased NI staff presence here on the forum!

[Pady]

<Mac: 11-16 ms (Guitar Rig) / 512 samples (NI USB Control Panel)>

You must be kidding. First, those kind of latencies are not acceptable - yes, I tried them. Second, I still get crackles, even with such high latencies.

[Meltdown s6]

Yes 11-16ms is totally unacceptable.
Thank god i didn't have to go with the RK2.
If i didn't use a different audio interface and midi controller already
i would have returned the whole mess in a heartbeat.

I also have to wonder if the RK2 problems on the mac can/will be resolved at all.
How long does it take to write a decent driver?
How long since the latest (not working) driver has it been already?
I have to comment all the mac users for being so patient with N.I.

[g4macdad]

What is wrong with you people? This is a professional audio application. You are not going to run a live setup on a 1.5 GHZ laptop without any issues. If you make a living playing music and want to use GR2 RK2 High Res low latency. You will have to invest in a top of the line high horsepower desktop. If you want to tinker with the software on a laptop you will have to deal with the issues.

[jg_guitar]

I believe a lot of the latency issues and pops have a lot to do with the sound interface card/driver or the RK2.

G4macdad: I agree that a desktop machine will give you more horse power but I have to believe that carrying a desktop with you is simply not practical for most people that play live. GR should be able to run smoothly on a top of the line notebook/sound card combo. Let's not forget that a lot of the advertising that NI has done shows GR on a notebook. Most people are not going to accept that GR doesn't run well on a notebook.

[Meltdown s6]

G4Macdad,

It's got nothing to do with running on a notebook or not.
The driver is the issue, period.
I have used GR1 live on a notebook for more than a year now with no problems at all.
(some 90 gigs).
Now i use GR2 but i have to use it with another audio interface than the RK2.
You do the math.

[gwhiz2k]

GR2 + RK2 is working perfectly for me, but I have a 3.06 Ghz Dell Inspiron. I agree with g4macdad... You can't expect to run this thing full out on a 1.5 Ghz notebook. You're going to have to make some compromises with quality/latency if you're going to run it on an older, slower machine. Just because a computer meets the minumum requirements, doesn't mean it will run the program perfectly. This is a cutting-edge application, and it needs a cutting edge computer.

[Pady]

<What is wrong with you people? This is a professional audio application. You are not going to run a live setup on a 1.5 GHZ laptop without any issues. If you make a living playing music and want to use GR2 RK2 High Res low latency. You will have to invest in a top of the line high horsepower desktop. If you want to tinker with the software on a laptop you will have to deal with the issues.>

What utter bullshit. A 1.5 GHz laptop is well above the system requirements - it's above the recommended system even.
We're talking about one lousy instance of GR2 - CPU meter is never above 25% - and it crackles.
4ms PC and 11 to 16ms Mac - there's only one thing that these numbers mean: Mac driver are very bad. This can easily be proven - use the built-in audio and voilà no crackles. My PowerBook handles two instances of GR plus BFD without a hiccup - as long as I stay away from the RK2.
On my PC RK2 runs moderately well. I have to go to 6 ms when CPU usage goes higher than 50%, but for most projects I can stay at 4 ms.

So, there's only one thing to say: NI, fix that bloody Mac driver.

[WSperner]

Hi,
11-16ms for a Powerbook is definitly not the right way to go - this is simply not acceptable for a guitar specific product in 2006!
There are so many other interfaces which provide much better performance than RK2 - why did you try to reinvent the wheel another time - why not cooperate with companies, which have a good reputation for hardware and drivers (m-audio/Rme/Metric Halo....) and why USB2, which seems to give a lot of headache to many people - Firewire would have been a much better solution!
I´m still not able to work with this pedal in Logic 5.5.1 on PC, as soon as I touch the pedal get freezes for a second or two, and writing automation in Logic 7... on Mac doesn´t work without a workaround... did you not betatest this RK2 at all?
Will there be further improvements for the Mac drivers, and when? If not, will there be a possibility to return this RK2 to your company?? 300 Euro(update) is a lot of money for an interface, which is not working properly!

Best regards
Wolfgang Sperner

[ryan_c57]

Yes, GR2 is a software actually aimed at the professional users! No, it doesn't need a super high-end computer to run it smoothly! On the box, the recommended system requirements are really normal, most users should have that kind of system power in their machines. If it's really recommended to have more horsepower than humble folks can afford, why advertise with notebook? And why not state it that way on the box? Now, that would be super BS, which would freak me out to a point that I'd probabaly throw the RK2 out the window! I kid you not ...

NI moderators, if you're reading this, please, for future purposes, don't advertise your product with a product, that it actually isn't that compatible with. Yes, what I'm referring to is the ad with the RK2 and the guitar plugged into a Macintosh Powerbook G4 (Titaniuam). It's false advertising. And it will remain that until you fix the USB2 driver.