Spektral delay, snaps, crackles and pops

I'm having a problem using Spektral Delay (v1.5.2) under Sonic Foundry's Acid 4.0... I have finally got this working using the VST version of SD inside Cakewalk's (formerly FXpansion's) VST-DX wrapper.

Now, the thing is that there are all sorts of ticks, clicks, buzzes etc. when I try and use SD. When I tried this with version 1.0, I got a dialog box popping up saying something about varying buffer sizes (? I can check this again, but I'll have to uninstall 1.5.2/reinstall 1.0).

Using the same setup under another program (Vegas Audio 2.0 LE, again in the VST wrapper) everything works perfectly...

Other VST plugins work fine in Acid (using the wrapper).

Any suggestions? Any secret registry tweaks ?

One thing I did notice under Acid is that the number of bands in SD is something like 985 - not the 1024 I would expect... I don't know how I might be able to change this (I guess it's a function of Acid??)

Thanks,

john..

[system:
[ P4 2.4GHz,
[ Win98SE,
[ 256MB RAM,
[ Radeon 7000 dual-head gfx,
[ maxistudio ISIS soundcard
[

 

I think it should help to change the number of bands, this seems to reinitialze something that cause the clicks.

 

Reducing the number of bands makes the problem worse (higher frequency of pops - more like a buzz), but then reverting the number of bands to the higher number does improve things for a short time (less than 5 seconds) when the clicks return...

john..

 

You may already be doing this, but make sure you have no other unneccessary apps or processes running in the background. I find SD crackles if I have my mail program running in the background for example.

 

Yep, nothing else running; Trouble is that I don't really know which app is to 'blame' - Acid, SD, or the VST-DX wrapper. I have seen references to an option in the wrapper to use 'fixed buffer sizes' but unfortunately, I can't find the option on my version...

Never mind, I'll have to do my SD-processing in another app

john..

 

If you run SD as a stand alone does it still crackle?

I just noticed you said earlier that you have 985 audio bands.
The SD manual recomends that due to the way SD uses the audio buffer you should set the buffer size to a number divisible by two to get the best performance (ie 256,512,1024...).
I have 768 bands available in SD and I run and audio buffer of 384 samples. If you have 985 audio bands I am thinking that your audio buffer may not divisible by two.

 

Yeah, I noticed that... unfortunately I don't know how to change that when using SD as a plugin - if I run it standalone, I get 1024/512/256 bands; I guess that there are some weird internal buffer sizes in play when in plugin-mode..?

john..

 

It sounds like there is something that Acid does to the buffer that SD is using which is causing problems.
I can successfully SD as a DXI instument in Cakewalk Sonar without needing the VST-wrapper. Can you use DXI instruments in Acid?

 

Nope,only DX effects.
ew

 

Well, Sonic Foundry released Acid v4.0c today - I'll see if the problems have been fixed (there is mention of being able to change buffer sizes now). There's the vague possibility that Acid will be able to recognise SD as a DirectX plugin now (but that hasn't been mentioned, so I expect not)

I'll try it later (when I get home from work!)

john..

 

Well, whatever the problem was, it seems to have gone away with Acod 4.0c - I now have up to 512 bands available, and the pops/clicks etc. have gone.

I wonder what the problem was ?

john..

 

Hooray. I love happy endings.