Rapid System Degredation...

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 3:10 am

I haven't yet tried getting to the bottom of the problem which started happening last night, but here are the symptoms:

Start SFP & Cubase, all is fine.

After a minute's use or so (e.g. playing a track), the UI starts getting very slow to respond and glitchy. Then the audio & MIDI go bananas (extremely jerky playback, stuttering, no sound...), then the system becomes pretty much entirely unresponsive.

Warm reboot - same symptoms. Cold boot - same symptoms. Other applications run fine on the system.

I have a nasty feeling this is H/W related, but as I mentioned, it was late, I was tired and I just couldn't be bothered with the hassle last night. Just wondering if anybody's experienced this or a similar problem (but I can't remember reading such a thing here)?

Royston

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 7:52 am

Did you change anything about your PC lately - anything! What you may considder not an isue may be the isue - and the reason, why it wasn't obvious to yourself.

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 7:57 am

Hi Immanuel

Very little, the only thing is that I reinstalled Shogun Total War - I'll certainly try uninstalling that. I don't think the installation process changed the DirectX version though...can't think of many other possible effects installing a game might have had.

Royston

ChrisWerner · Post by **ChrisWerner** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 8:13 am

Just a guess.
Maybe your harddisk needs a defrag or more free space. It could be that the system cache, audio tracks and all that are a bit unsorted on your HD.
Do you use different HDs for win/cache and your audio stuff?
I got similar probs when my HD was to full and long time not defraged.
Hope my guess helps you.

EDIT: Shogun is a very nice game. hehe
cheers

[ This Message was edited by: ChrisWerner on 2004-03-30 08:13 ]

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 8:21 am

Hi Chris

Yeah...one effect I did notice was that un-monitoring a guitar track (switching from playing 'live' to hearing the previous noodling) did appear to suddenly cause the symptoms.

I did at one point try starting up a new project, bashing out a few quick MIDI & audio tracks and that worked OK.

The long slooow grind of the defrag task awaits...

Royston

Spirit · Post by **Spirit** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 8:29 am

Sounds a little like a memory leak problem ? Perhaps your system running out of resources ? But that is really just a wild stab.

What I really wanted to say was: I'm a Total war fan too ! I had Shogun, but have now switched to Medieval which is even better

It's the only game I have.

I hear a Rome version is coming soon which should be a lot of fun - my favourite period.

Anyone play online ? I've never played it against a human...

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 8:35 am

Spirit wrote:

Sounds a little like a memory leak problem ? Perhaps your system running out of resources ? But that is really just a wild stab.

As good as any at this point, really. My very first impression was display drivers, as the UI starts grinding first. Lots of things to try tonight!

What I really wanted to say was: I'm a Total war fan too ! I had Shogun, but have now switched to Medieval which is even better It's the only game I have.

I hear a Rome version is coming soon which should be a lot of fun - my favourite period.

Anyone play online ? I've never played it against a human...

I'm not online at home anymore, but I've played some LAN games round a friend's house - cracking fun.

It's the only game I play on my PC!

Royston

ChrisWerner · Post by **ChrisWerner** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 9:29 am

Anyone play online ? I've never played it against a human...

Not with Shogun, I played it some times ago only.
Frequently I play Clusterball, clusterball.com and Halo for some minutes to free my mind.

Good luck Royston!

Post by **Neil B** » Tue Mar 30, 2004 10:01 am

I've always tried to keep my music pc for music applications only. I once installed the "Who wants to be a millionaire" game and had similar results that you're experiencing (with the game too!)
Best bet may be to uninstall the game - reboot - test the music software.
If that works, I'd still take the advice of others - defrag.
I suppose after the defrag you could then install the game again, just to prove something.

Good luck with it all

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 3:09 am

Well, I tracked the problem down!

It was to do with having a certain type of reverb selected ('warm room' IIRC) in Sonic Timework's ReverbX (trying out the demo at the moment).

Their web site says:

"Recommended: Dual Pentium III 1 GHz, 64 MB RAM, Windows 2000. Certain algorithms might not run real-time on all chips"

I'm running a 2.6 GHz P4. The P4 has (amnongst several others) a couple of notable shortcomings:

Lousy floating point arithmetic capabilities (esp. compared to an Athlon)
Normalisation problems (calculating very tiny values...)

I wonder if either of those two factors are creating this problem? Do reverb algorithms usually involve a lot of floating point calculations? Most other ReverbX patches work OK, but a couple do not.

I seem to remember seeing a fix or patch to do with the P4 normalisation problem - I might look a little further into that.

My HDD is nicely defragged now, too!

Royston

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 5:04 am

This article describes the situation very well indeed:

http://www.cygnus-software.com/papers/x ... inity.html

Edit: This is the 'normaliser' that I was thinking of, but not the solution I would prefer:

http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.p ... &subItem=6

Royston

[ This Message was edited by: Counterparts on 2004-03-31 05:15 ]

Faybs · Post by **Faybs** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:24 am

I had the same system hanging problem with this DX plug-in : "Sonic Timework's ReverbX"
For certain presets like "auditorium", and I have a 2.5Ghz !!

I had to reboot my PC, several times before understanding it was this reverb plugin, I do not use it anymore now, I think it is only for export puposes (not realtime).

Faybs · Post by **Faybs** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 8:38 am

I read the article concerning the normalizer. Very interesting.
So if I have well understood, I should add the signal provided by this plugin with the sound I want to inject in the Sonic Timework's ReverbX to avoid system hanging ?

Am I right ?

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:04 am

Hmmm...two people with 2.5GHz P4s having problems with ReverbX.

IF the problems caused by denormal calculations then yes, put the 'Normaliser' in insert slot 1 of an audio track, followed by the ReverbX. Note that I don't think that you can use the reverb as a send effect if you want to use the Normaliser.

I'm going to ask Sonic timeworks about this - it would appear that they have knowledge of processors which cannot run some of the algorithms - they probably have a good idea as to whether it's a denormal problem or not too.

Royston

Edit: who much RAM do you have, by the way? That could also be a factor - even though I've got half a GB, lots of that is used up loading samples etc, and I'm pretty sure that reverb algorithms munch up a lot of memory too.

[ This Message was edited by: Counterparts on 2004-03-31 09:05 ]

Faybs · Post by **Faybs** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:11 am

My Ram = 1 Gig

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:13 am

Ah. Probably enough, then!

Royston

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 4:14 am

Is there anybody on this forum who is using ST's ReverbX, and managing to use all presets, all parameter settings? I'd be interested to know what kind of set-up is required.

I experimented a bit more last night - even apparently 'safe' patches can run into problems (on my system at least) by changing certain parameters. I haven't yet tried the Normaliser, but as the problems occur whilst there is a signal, it's unlikely to be denormal calculations which are causing the problem.

Royston

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Fri Apr 02, 2004 3:50 am

I finally got around to experimenting with the Normaliser yesterday evening.

The difference in 'CPU' & 'VST Performace' loads when the reverb unit is 'idle' is very obvious!

I was able to run one instance with the Rich Plate selected and another with the Bright Hall. I couldn't quite get the Large Room (the most intensive algorithm) to run, but perhaps if I just tried one instance, I could. Changing parameters in real-time (i.e. with the music playing) creates some horrible noises though, which is when you want to be able to tweak the sound.

ReverbX is a real resource eater - I think that it's been optimised for dual-processor machines, (i.e. dual PIIIs). It would appear that it hasn't been compiled to use the SSE2 or SSE3 Pentium 4 instructions (better floating point & denormal calculations).

I've asked Sonic Timeworks about this, no reply as yet...

Royston

p.s. the 4080L is far, far lighter on system resources, and sounds just as good, if not better, IMO.

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 6:21 am

Sonic Timeworks have got back to me about this problem - I have asked them today if they mind me posting their reply verbatim here on Planet Z.

Until I know the answer to that one, from what they said, it seems that the issue is more to do with the host application rather than the CPU. They also indicated that three of the devices' algorithms were not created for real-time use!

They cited 'samplitude' as being abe to manage the device well, as it gives you a large degree of control over buffers, which apparently are critical for the reverb's operation.

Has anybody demo-ed their Scope-specific reverb unit? Shame it's about $100 more than all the other ones

Royston

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 4:34 am

I have the scope version. And ofcoarse I have no problem using all the presets I want. I have a 1@1,3GHz Celeron Tualatin based PC.