Please Help - Akoustik Piano crackles!

Hi there!

I have just recently purchased Akoustik Piano, having listened to the demos on the NI website it all sounded fantastic.

Unfortunately, I am having problems with annoying crackling noises accompanied with the occasional warble, when using the software.

My PC spec is: Athlon XP 2800, 1Gb corsair RAM, 3 x HDD (All Maxtor - 1 IDE 133 for Windows, 1 SATA for Samples and 1 SATA for Audio recording), M-Audio Delta 66 soundcard.

My HDD are defragged. I have tried re-formatting and resinstalling to the 'Sample' HDD to ensure that akoustik piano samples occupy the first part of the HDD as this is supposed to reduce seek time. I've optimized the registry on the off chance this might help with speed. My soundcard is not sharing an IRQ and Window has been tweaked as per the musicXP.net website. I've tried various buffer sizes on the sound card. I've tried both 24 and 16 bit samples. Also, used the economy mode and modified settings within AP as suggested by NI for performance. Last but not least all my drivers are the latest available. I've checked the memory and the processor and neither is running low or spiking.

I cannot think what else to try in order to eliminate this awful crackling noise. Please - if you can help I would be very grateful.

All the best

Andrew

 

Hi Andrew,
sorry to here of your problems,
it seems that your computer is nowhere near powerful enough to run A.P.
I fell into the same trap myself and had to upgrade my computer processer.
What N.I. put on the packaging for A.I. was a lie and there is no way that a computer running at 1.4 GHz would cope with this program.
I upgraded my computer to an Athlon 3000+ and I still have problems.
I have since learnt my lesson.
Dont believe anything you read in the music press or advertising and just come to forums like these before you buy any software and check out the users experiences.
jonny

 

Just for reference, I'm using a 2700+ Athlon XP w/ 1.5 gig memory, M-Audio 2496, 16 bit samples on a second 300 gig Maxtor 16mb buffer drive. Akoustik is used as VST with Brainspawns Forte' as the host. I am using a 64 sample buffer with no crackles. When I use it in standalone I have to back off to a 128 sample ASIO buffer.

Also, I upgraded to 1.5 gig of memory, system worked ok with 512 megs. I did have to turn off Forte's "% of CPU" meter to get down that low.

Ernie

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'm still not too sure what the problem is. It seems though that the one thing both these replies share in common is that the 16 bit samples are being used. So maybe I'll start there.

I suspect (I hope!) that maybe it's an issue that can be resolved with the right combination of settings. So I'll continue to play around and see if I come across the right combination - if there is one.

Regarding my processor not being powerful enough. I've run checks on this and even when running AP with all the features enabled it doesnt appear to be struggling at all - so a 3Ghz should have no trouble. Also the "!" shown in the interface doesnt appear to light up, which is supposed to be an indication of when the processor struggles.

Thanks again!

 

The first thing I would do is increase the size of the buffer. Ignore the fact that the latency will be too big for you play live, what you are trying to do is get a handle on the problem. If you have crackles at >256 sample buffer, you've got a gross problem, as in using mme drivers.

I presume, as you have indicated, that the samples are on their own, non-os disk.

Make sure to do the various DAW optimizations that you'll find on the net. The trick is to stop unneeded services and background processes, especially the ones that might access the disk at inopportune times. DO NOT follow the suggestion given on one site to set to automatic all services, use the computer for awhile and then set to "on" anything that has been started up automatically. Not all services are kind enough to start just because you happen to need them <g>.

How far do you have to take the buffer out before the crackles go away?

Ernie

 

Another thing you need to tell us: what drivers are you using with your audio card and also what is your audio card? My card is an M-Audio Audiophile 192 with ASIO drivers, my latency is 5.8ms and my buffers are set at 2-256 mb. My processor is an AMD 64 3500+ running in 32 bit mode. I have no crackling or other type problems. Are you running AK as a stand-alone app or as a VST plugin from a host sequencer program? (AK does not work well as a DXi plugin.) Tell us these things and it will help us help you more.

 

Thanks once again for the replies. To anwser some of the questions:

1. The crackling never goes away regardless of buffer settings.

2. My sounds card is an M-Audio Delta 66 (driver ver 5.10.0.51 - which is the latest).

3. The samples are on their own disk (Maxtor SATA 8mb cache 80Gb capcity).

4. AMD XP 2800 processor.

5. 1 GB Corsair low latency RAM.

6. Crackling occurs when using AP both as stand alone and as VST to Cubase SX 2.2.

Thanks again everyone for the help - I appreciate it.

 

ASIO or WDM drivers?

 

If you can take the buffer out to some ridiculous value like 512 samples and you still get crackling then some process, like indexing, is accessing the disk.

Have you done the DAW optimizations?

Ernie

 

I am using ASIO drivers.

WRT indexing - I've performed the XP optimizations and the indexing service has been uninstalled.

 

Something is grossly wrong. To your credit, it sounds like you've done all the right things.

Just for grins go into the sample directory and double click on a few low note WAVs to see if they will play out without crackles. Double check to make sure that DMA is on.

Ernie

 

Do you have antivirus software running?

 

Firstly, thank you everyone for your responses. I very much appreciate your time in thinking through this issue for me.

Secondly, I've fixed it! The solution is, to my mind, very unusual. So if anyone has any thoughts on this solution, I'd appreciate feedback.

The only thing I could think of that I hadnt tried was to move the samples to a different hard disk. So I moved them to the disk with OS on it and guess what - works perfectly!

So I'm lead on to a new question which is causing me confusion. Why will it work on a ATA133 with the OS (the last place you'd think of putting it!) on it but not a SATA150 dedicated only to samples? Is it something to do with the method by which is streams the samples??? A SATA HDD configuration I'm unaware of? Any thoughts on this are more then welcome.

Thanks again for all the help. Despite NI's lack of response to a query I sent them 2 weeks ago, I am a reasonable happy but curious NI AkoustiK Piano user.

;o)

 

Thanks for following through on this, we will all learn from it.

Have you checked the disk drives properties out? I'd also Google the motherboard to see if anyone has had throughput problems with the SATA I/F. It would also be interesting to run SisSoft Sandra or some other program that checks the disks throughput. Sounds like it is abnormally low.

Ernie

 

Sorry for the delay in my reply - I've been away and havent been able to review this forum.

Ok. As advised by NI I have run tests on the HDD by using HD Tach. Here are the results:

Tests run on my SATA HDD:
1. Sequential Read - Starts above 50 MB/s and fluctuates down to 33 MB/s (as GB increase up to 80GB).
2. Burst Speed - 116 MB/s (as opposed to 150 which is where it should be).

Curiously I ran the same test on my normal ATA HDD which gave the following:
1. Sequential Read - Starts at 60 MB/s and fluctuates down to 32 MB/s (as GB increases up to 160GB)
2. Burst Speed - 120 MB/s

I've also uploaded the results as clarification to my explanation above.

As always your help is appreciated.

 

I have the same problem after I replaced my hard drive, motherboard, video card and updated to Windows XP 64.

Every other program works like a champ, but once I load up Akoustik Piano not only will there be cracks and pops inside of Akoustik Piano, but every other VST I use, even after I unload Akoustik Piano from my current Sonar session!

Now from the very start it seemed like a hard drive issue, but it just doesn't make any sense. The hard drive is a 500 gig Western Digital Hard Drive, SATA 2, 7,200RPM, and works great for every other program and the hard drive activity always seems low.

I can try putting the library on a different hard drive, but I'd rather not do that if there is another fix....kind of defeats the purpose of getting such a big hard drive...

 

I have advocated and used this setup, since these products came out. You're definitely using the right setup (i.e. HDD's)! It appears to me as though it might be either how you're associating the drive from within the NI product or it's driver related on your system side.

I would suggest testing out your system setup with something simple (e.g. any other software product), firstly. Something might not be right at the system level without your knowledge. If this checks, then move it up to a more involved setup (e.g. sequencer). If it all checks out, then your NI stuff should follow.

FYI: I have a problem with Kontakt not accepting the Libary existing on another HDD, but it will see all the files without being able to assign the base directory just the same. However, it sounds similar, and it's an NI thing.

It stands to reason that if your system is good to go for other products, the NI stuff should definitely work as well. It's important to check the assumptions that are made along the way, particularly when there are layers involved.

 

What a curiosity? I can run BIG pianos from within Kontakt on a 3200+ with 2G of RAM. Although I haven't installed AP, yet, I'm rather concerned about the prospect. It might have been easier to just grab the samples and used them through Kontakt. However, the NI interface and the rest was a bit to pass up, as AP appears to have it all. Well, hopefully, I can get this thingie up and running without having to start building a new box- yikes! (Ironically, the biggest problem that I would run into would be all the NI license issues- go figure!)

Let ya know...

 

I should have been a lot more specific.

My system is an AMD 64 3500+, 1gig of RAM, using a RME Fireface 800 with the latest drivers. The latest version of Sonar 6 with the latest version of Akoustik Piano.

Yeah it definitely doesn't make any sense why the problem would only be in Akoustik Piano, but that's definitely the case. I'm using Stylus RMX and Ultra Focus which both use huge libraries and I have no problems with either of those. I'll switch drives when I get home but I really want to avoid that.

 

Ummm, sorry, but that is rubbish as far as I am concerned.

I am running only a 1.38GHz Athlon with only 512MB RAM, a 7200rpm crappy IDE harddisk and slow cheap 333MHz RAM, and not only do I have absolutely no pops whatsoever, I can run the full impluse reverb and run 50 and above voices simultaneously within a host without a hitch - I find Akoustik Piano to be VERY VERY low on the resource usage, so HUGE creds go out to NI for making an extremely useable piece of software on low spec machines.

Not one pop at all with any combination of settings I need to use. It is awesome.

I would hazard more of a guess that the root of your issues is either soundcard related or something to do with your Windows settings or your host program ( if you are running it as a VST ).

Typically defragmenting your harddisk ( the one that is storing the samples ), or simply looking up one of the many tutorials about configuring the settings of your OS for real-time critical applications is the way to go in order to fix timing issues. Make sure you have an ASIO soundcard too, as in my experience anything that isn't does not have the latency it states on the box.

I wish you luck figuring out what the issue is, I guarantee you will be a happy customer at the end of your search.