When I load up most of the simple VST instruments that I find online (either free ones or even some that I paid a little bit for), the audio gets all distorted. I can still hear the loaded instrument, but it has a very bad static fuzz in it. I have found that I can easily eliminate the distortion by just opening the "Audio Engine Options" and then clicking OK (no changes needed, just the reset from opening that window). But that is obviously not real solution. Any ideas what might be causing it and, most importantly, how I can fix it?
I am using Cantabile Performer 2.0 (32 bit). Still in the trial period, but if I can get this issue resolved I will definitely be buying it, because it seems to do exactly what I need for live use. For hardware I am using a Windows laptop with a mid-range I5 cpu, so it has decent processing power (not cpu-bound). I am using an M-Audio M-Track audio interface (USB) connected to a MIDI keyboard.
I have played with the buffer settings, but that didn't seem to have had any noticeable effect. Even with a large buffer I was getting the issue. I saw a post that suggested turning off the multi-processor support, so I did that. No change. I have tried everything I could think of. I even removed all of the simple plugins (left Kontakt 5 Free and SampleTank Free installed) and then reinstalling just a single one of the simpler ones (Serenity Pro from HG Fortune). Serenity Pro immediately "fuzzed" when I tried to use it.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Distorted audio when loading some plug-ins
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- KVRist
- 197 posts since 7 Dec, 2005
do you have any other hosts that run your plugins cleanly?
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- KVRer
- Topic Starter
- 2 posts since 17 Jan, 2014
Thanks for the suggestion. I installed Reaper, and had the same issues. So it's not a Cantabile-specific issue. I have found that it definitely seems to be a cpu-spike issue. That is, it happens when my cpu usage spikes momentarily while loading the plug-ins.
I've done a bunch more testing/experimenting and find that I can also trigger the fuzz by taxing the system with "stuff" while playing with parameters, loading presets, etc. I can generally avoid the issue in my live set (simulating live performance) by loading up the set list, stepping through all of the sessions (I am organizing it as 1 song = 1 session), then fixing the fuzz (load audio setting popup and then close), if it happens. I can then step through all sessions as needed without issue - usually.
Bottom line, it seems to be a cpu-performance issue. Something I did not expect, given numerous posts where people report using much "weaker" systems with no issue (I am using I5 cpu with 4G ram). I thought I had kept this laptop pretty clean, but I will be tweaking performance settings, making sure everything is optimized, and see where that gets me.
Thanks again for the suggestion to try another host.
I've done a bunch more testing/experimenting and find that I can also trigger the fuzz by taxing the system with "stuff" while playing with parameters, loading presets, etc. I can generally avoid the issue in my live set (simulating live performance) by loading up the set list, stepping through all of the sessions (I am organizing it as 1 song = 1 session), then fixing the fuzz (load audio setting popup and then close), if it happens. I can then step through all sessions as needed without issue - usually.
Bottom line, it seems to be a cpu-performance issue. Something I did not expect, given numerous posts where people report using much "weaker" systems with no issue (I am using I5 cpu with 4G ram). I thought I had kept this laptop pretty clean, but I will be tweaking performance settings, making sure everything is optimized, and see where that gets me.
Thanks again for the suggestion to try another host.
