Classic synths won't play back and RANT!

First the rant. I'm sick of this. I'm sick of troubleshooting this damn program. I've been screwing around with it for 30 days now, and I have yet to produce ONE SINGLE PIECE! Instead, what I've done is screw around with this program ENDLESSLY trying to get it to work. I'm about to take this program disk and sail it into the lake by which I live. I've always been able to use Reason 3.0, that program has given me virtually no problems, and the rare times tha it has, tech support has bent over backwards to help . This program, however, has given nothing BUT problems! It's not that I don't know what a formant oscillator is, it's not that I don't know about granular synthesis. It's that I CAN'T GET IT TO WORK, and Native Instruments ignores my pleas for help. You all seem to be nice people, can you help me GET THIS TO WORK? Yesterday, I actually thought that I had ironed everything out in this thing. Silly me. Instead, what occurs is that I try to do a piece using a classic synth and I find that it won't play back, not unless each time I play it, I re-initialize the patch. Oh, by the way, that only WORKS ONCE! They are ALL like that! Not the new additions though, they work fine, which proves that this is a REAKTOR problem.

So what does this mean, that the only usable synths for me are one's made with Reaktor 5? That kind of cuts out a lot of the User Library, which is why I bought this thing to start with. And as we know, Native Instruments has NO SUPPORT!

Look, I'm sorry about this, (no actually I'm NOT), but when I spend well nigh 400 dollars, I expect something to work. When I literally set fire to 4 one hundred dollar bills, I get angry. And that's what this is starting to look like. A BONFIRE!

Could someone tell me how to get this working? Could someone tell me a DAW that it is ACTUALLY COMPATIBLE WITH? It's clearly incompatable with Sonar Home Studio. And please don't say anything unles you are SURE. I can't keep lighting money on fire. I'm physically very sick and my financial resources are drained.

 

Sorry you're having troubles, I have a couple of rants running too but my issues aren't performance-related.

Have you tried updating your sound card drivers?

 

Oh, another thing... if you have a pro-audio card try un-checking in your sound card manager "Lock Rates", if applicable. Also go into your hardware profiles and see if your sound card is sharing an IRQ with an important resource.

After you get your sound issues fixed, it sounds like we're at about the same point -- new to the software, transitioning from Reason, not dumb but a lot left to learn. Maybe we could somehow coordinate our workload so that we can show each other stuff and learn this crap in less time. Let me know, and good luck!

 

Nice to hear from another ranter. Yes I have. I've gotta tell ya, I've NEVER had this much trouble out of Reason. I've never had this much trouble out of freeware VST's!

 

I'm OK on those points. As far as sharing the workload, I'm cool with that. The problem is that I keep finding strange little compatibility issues. I spend a few hours, find a workaround, and move on, but it really is starting to get rediculous. I actually went to a coffee shop yesterday to buy a five dollar cup of chai to celebrate finally beating all the issues. Imagine my consternation today! Truthfully, I've already got a couple of synth designs going. Fortunately, I knew about the learning curve before purchasing, so I was ready for that. What I wasn't ready for was all the odd little bugs. Things like the dxi version's audio dying if there's an audio clock being used. The samplerate doubling every time I save a project and reopen it. I've found workarounds and fixes for all of them, but I just can't get any work done. I spend all of my time trying to fix problems. The only music I've been aable to compose has been "test music". I keep telling myself, "How many problems can their be?" It's starting to look like the answer is "Endless......"

 

ok, sorry to read that you are having more troubles. but you need to give more details.

you say "classic synth" but which classic synth(s) is this? is it part of the library that comes with R5 or did you get it from the user library? is the patch a pre-set that was provided by the builder or your preset.

please give us the exact steps you went through, including how you save it and what happens when you load Reaktor.

thanks

sowari

 

OK, here's the update. The synth in question is one of Reaktor's library, (junatik), not user created. I found out what was going on with other ones. It turns out that Sonar defaults to an audio clock on it's metronome, and there is a bug in Reaktor's DXi plugin where audio dies when Sonar's metronome uses an audio clock , so I mistakenly thought that all of the classicals had the same problem. Now that I'm reseting the metronome clock on every track,(buckets!), I've got the rest running, leaving Junatik non-functional,(shame, it's my favorite classical synth). Essentially what happens is that when I midi record a track using Junatik, I can hear it, but when I play it back, the volume is 1/100 of it's previous level.
If I reinitialize the patch, I get normal volume, until I play it again, when it again loses all of it's volume. I've tried replacing the pitch and gate modules with new ones, to no effect. If you can tell me what to fix, I'd be very appreciative, I would love to use it in my work. At least now that I know how to get the others running, losing one synth isn't so upsetting, but it would be nice to get it working.

 

I've fixed it. The problem is in the VCA, where the level control has midi in activated,(why?!). As far as what trigger it was receiving from Sonar, I have no idea. If you're wondering how I knew where to look, I've been screwing around with hardware synths for 25 years. None of them has given me as much trouble as this program has. That's why I got Reaktor, I'm not intimidated by synth guts.......... OK, this turned out well, now to make an appointment with my doctor for high blood pressure.

Look, to anyone here who's getting upset with my constantly fixing these things before someone helps, I do have knowledge. While I'm not an expert, I'm not exactly a newbie either. Problem is that I need to be able to stop troubleshooting, and start composing. I keep thinking that I have everything ironed out and then something happens. There comes a time when the steady stream of problems needs to slllllloooowww doooowwwwwnnn.

 

You need to realize that if something works in one synth and not another then the problem is most likely with the ensemble and not with Reaktor. While NI have tried to keep reaktor backwards-compatible with each release, as with all software, that's not always possible (for reasons like; "we've figured out a better way to do things with has no analogy in the previous release"). For that reason, many of the "classic synths" and older uploads to the user lib may be buggy in R5. Just to be clear, though, that's not really a reaktor bug so much as it's an instruments bug. WHile I think that all of the instruments that they include in the release should be updated to be compatible with R5, as you have discovered, that is not always the case! Regardless, if a user-lib instrument is not working properly NI's tech support really can't help you.

In the future though, you'll save a lot of time by just telling us exactly what you're doing, what instrument you're using, and what the problem is. Saying "I can't get this to work and it sucks!" might help to ease your frustration (and I can empathizewith that, believe me!) but it's just not that productive.

Note that pretty much all of the controls on Junatik have Midi-In activated, so be careful. I don't know why that was done either - seems to me like that should be the user's job. In defense of Jorge H. (the builder), many of them (like the master volume) are mapped to standard MIDI CC numbers (MIDI CC #1 is "volume" in the standard midi implementation).

- CList

 

you are correct, Volume is a standard MIDI implementation.

FWIW Z. deScathach, Junatik has quite a Reaktor history, there have been versions going back to Reaktor 2 days. the reason for the MIDI cc numbers is probably because the builder used external controllers to record real-time changes. some of these older synths are not always checked when new versions of Reaktor
are produced.

so, there is a vast Reaktor Library, amd some of them might have bugs. if you ask here giving detailed discriptions, we hope we can help.

sowari

 

Not that I am defending anything here, but I have used Junaktik tons of times in Sonar and it works fine for me. I guess I just must be lucky, but Reaktor (with the one exception of the huge CPU hog 2-os!) has been dead stable for me.
So I'm saying don't chuck it in the lake!
Good luck

 

Oh, don't worry, I won't chuck it in the lake, and I do realize that sooner or later, the problems will stop coming. One thing that needs to be realized I think, is that I'm running Sonar Home Studio4, which is a different animal than the full version. Somehow, I've got a feeling that if I had Sonar5 producer this wouldn't be as much of a problem.

 

Well, I agree, but please understand that I've been very patient. I've been ironing out problems for 30 days now. I think the problem was that I thought that I had finally gotten everything working, and was going to be able to be productive. Getting a problem immediately upon attempting caused me to finally snap with it. Truthfully, I think that any day now, I'll finally have ironed everything out..... I'm not going to set myself up though like last time...

 

That could be, I am running Sonar 4 studio edition, also running it in Project 5 V2, which I pretty much bought as my default host for Reaktor - very very nice in there, P5 is a bit of a CPU hog itself, but a great working environment. I will say though that I still finish all my songs in Sonar, since the mixdown and editing features are quite more advanced than in P5.
Again, stick with it, its kinda like Pandoras box but - usually! -in a good way.