Concrete Sound Feedbacks

Hi All,

I would like to start this thread to use it as a feedback for NI and tell them which insturments in BS are useless, why and how should they be. Maybe some sound examples would also be very good.

I make a start:

Sound 1: Revers Cymb. - The sound is to short. It should fade out longer....

 

Hi all,

good call - that would help me to work in an efficient way with the rest of the Bandstand team.

please be as specific as the first post below and tell us exactly what is wrong and what you would change.

our sound designers already spent months to listen to various sound modules and MIDI songs but obviously this is a huge undertaking and will always leave room for improvement!


Best,
Markus

 

I am uploading a .mid file that Bandstand has trouble playing back. It has severe instrument drop outs while playing back.
I have a Toshiba P35-609s laptop with 1.5 gig ram, windows xp home sp2.

Smooth Samba style.zip

 

Here is another .mid file with playback problems in Bandstand.

B4 u accuse me.zip

 

Hi Steelrain,

just checking your two songs. they look good on my Athlon 1.67 GHz desktop. let me check on my laptop at home - it has a similar spec like yours.

what max values do you see for the following parameters when you click on Edit in the nmaster volume section?

* CPU
* Hard Disc
* Voices

Do things improve if you mute the pianos in both songs?


Best,
Markus

 

The CPU varies from 10% 35%
The disc goes from 0 to 30%
The voices however seem to increase gradually and once they go over the 75 setting, instruments start to drop out.
Can I increase the number of voices?

 

Raising the number of voices solved the dropout problem. I had to go over 110 voices for the samba .mid file

 

Hi Steelrain,

actually I spent most of this evening to get down to the underlying problem of the too many voices. I get the same on my laptop here at home!

I believe this is related to DFD problems due to the slow laptop hard drive. there seem to be small hard disk spikes that cause the voice count to go up and up.

finally I found the problem with the registry setting disableOSDiskCache. this cache was disabled but enabling it normalizes the voice load (i.e. the correct setting is '0').

on your PC, please download the attached file, unpack it and double-click on the Reg file to patch your registry. this should dramatically reduce the number of current voice for you.

for the Mac, one has to patch the the above setting in the user plist file - I am not quite sure how to do this in a similar fashion. will check with the Mac experts at work tomorrow.


Best,
Markus

 

Nice work Marcus! That absolutely takes care of the problem.

 

Hello
Just driven by curiosity, I tried out smooth samba on my desktop ... No single problem!! (Athon Sempron 3000+, 1Gig em, HD WD Raptor (S-ATA, 10.000 rpm).

Kind reg

 

Hi Markus

(1) The zipped registry fix file you posted for Steelrain - is that something we should all install, or is it for a specfic PC/laptop? I'm very nervous about changing anything in my registry EVER!

(2) Does it only amend a Bandstand registry entry (so safe?)

(3) It would be very useful if you could you please explain the voices technology a little. I notice when a song is playing the number in use flickers - should I try and observe what the biggest figure is and then change the maximum box below to that?

(4) Should Bandstand then remember what I changed the max voices to (a) for that song or (b) all future sessions?

(5) DFD buffer size. The manual does not give any hints as to setting, and will depend on my PC. But can you give me some direction? e.g. I have AMD Athlon 2.2GHz Intel Pentium, 2Gb RAM, and plenty of disk space. Should I have higher or lower settings?

Many thanks for your great support Markus!
John

 

Hi John,

here are my answers inline.

(1) The zipped registry fix file you posted for Steelrain - is that something we should all install, or is it for a specfic PC/laptop? I'm very nervous about changing anything in my registry EVER!

[mk] we still have to test this on several systems here! it is safe for sure but I do not know, yet, if the change is needed on all systems. in general, I would only apply it if you do see unreasonable voice numbers. if this turns out to be a good fix for all systems, we will include it in the 1.0.1 update and call it 1.0.1b.

(2) Does it only amend a Bandstand registry entry (so safe?)

[mk] yes, this only changes one entry in the Bandstand registry, thus being safe!

(3) It would be very useful if you could you please explain the voices technology a little. I notice when a song is playing the number in use flickers - should I try and observe what the biggest figure is and then change the maximum box below to that?

[mk] this is what I do! when I run over the max voices, I set the number higher. keep in mind that once you found the right setting it is a good idea to restart Bandstand, so that it can reserve more DFD channels. otherwise, you might have enough Kontakt voices but run out of DFD voice channels. i.e. DFD will not be able to catch up.

(4) Should Bandstand then remember what I changed the max voices to (a) for that song or (b) all future sessions?

[mk] the max voice setting is saved in the registry upon exit and will thus be remembered for all future sessions. the DFD chanel setting is also adjusted upon exit like mentioned above.

(5) DFD buffer size. The manual does not give any hints as to setting, and will depend on my PC. But can you give me some direction? e.g. I have AMD Athlon 2.2GHz Intel Pentium, 2Gb RAM, and plenty of disk space. Should I have higher or lower settings?

[mk] DFD settings are really an art not a science and depend on the actual hard drive and system. you might want to check out the thread below for some user tips. otherwise, I would try to set the buffer to say 50 kB less and compare and then to 50 kB more and compare etc. it's a good idea to restart right after changing this setting.

http://www.native-instruments.de/site/forum_us/showthread.php?t=31063


Best,
Markus

 

Markus,

Do you have any further news about point 1? Should we all install this patch?

Kind regards
Luc
BE

 

Hi Luc,

please install the registry fix. we tested it here on PC and Mac and it turned out that it was doing no harm and vastly improved PC performance on some systems.

on the Mac it did not show a big difference in performance.

we did include this fix in the latest DVD version (1.0.1 R2) and I am trying to get this version also posted as a replacement of the current 1.0.1 update online.


Best,
Markus

 

Forgive my apparent ignorance, but I am only aware of a registry fix for this problem and to the best of my knowledge, the Mac has never had a Windows registry. Is there a Mac version of this fix that modifies a plist file?

 

Hi Steelrain,

the fix only applies to PC.

the Mac did not show any difference in used voices with either value of the setting in question.


Best,
Markus

 

Hi Zeus31_ng

good idea,

my suggestion:
sound nr. 75 -recorder- is terrible. What should it be? soprano oder alto recorder. Soprano starts whith c2 , alto with f1. This one starts with a sound like a harmonica and sounds perhaps beginning at a2 a little bit like a recorder. NI has taken samples from Big Fish,- they have good samples, how about "renaissance flutes"

Best,
Bernard