Best Service

malcolmb · Post by **malcolmb** » Thu Mar 07, 2013 10:34 am

I have had exactly the same problem as Maddcow. I raised this with Support and this was the reply:

"this issue occours on some machines and we're currently try to find out where it comes from with our development team. In the meanwhile you can switch to RF-RAM instead of RF-HDD (changeable in the left pane where the instrument can be loaded). This should solve this issue. You can also close the gui (which causes this issue) and assign midi controls to change volume/expression while playing."

I tried their suggestion of switching one instrument within Engine 2 from RF-HDD to RF-RAM and this immediately crashed my whole system! As for Midi Controls, yes, I could do this, but surely it is not unreasonable of me to expect to be able to tweak instrument settings within the GUI as the music is playing? I do this without any problem in a number of other soft synths I use.

I am now beginning to wonder if the problem arises from a particular instrument within Engine 2. In my case, it may be the Kiowa Native American Flute from Forest Kingdom II. My system crash yesterday happened when I tried to change the RF setting on the Kiowa Flute. This morning, I tried to change the RF setting on another instrument and it changed without any difficulty. I then tried to change the setting on the Flute and immediately my system crashed! Perhaps my repeated Dropouts also arise from some issue between the flute and Engine 2? If so, this is a bit unfortunate as the flute was a major reason why I bought this library and Engine 2 (and I must say I love the sound of it and it was definitely worth the money)! Can anyone who may have had similar problems offer any advice or a work-around?

faun2500 · Post by **faun2500** » Tue Apr 16, 2013 4:48 pm

This problem is not with Nitron is it? How is that working in Kontakt?

NoSoniX · Post by **NoSoniX** » Wed Apr 17, 2013 6:47 am

faun2500 wrote:This problem is not with Nitron is it? How is that working in Kontakt?

Only Engine powered libraries are affected.

paterrob · Post by **paterrob** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 10:59 am

NoSoniX wrote:
faun2500 wrote:This problem is not with Nitron is it? How is that working in Kontakt?
Only Engine powered libraries are affected.

Just to chime in here.... I bought Epic World yesterday and installed the latest "Engine" player (2.1.1). I'm using an iMac i7 with 3.4ghz and 16g RAM / Lion 10.8.2 (Cubase 6.5.3). Everything is in 64bit. Horrible.

I am having a problem with every sound I load popping and a continual static/noise in the sound (like digital distortion)

I don't see any CPU spike and have even tried playing back a sound at an extremely low volume (db) but the static and pops continue.

I run Kontakt 5 (FV), MachFive 3, Omnipshere, Stylus RMX, Zebra, Alchemy, Iris and a host of others and have never experienced the slightest problem with any of these so I'm guessing it's this BS Engine that is making Epic World unplayable.

I have tried numerous configurations of the engine but can't make this go away.

The library is virtually unusable for all the pops and static I can hear. I have just contacted BS.

Has anyone been able to fix this using a similar setup to what I have?

faun2500 · Post by **faun2500** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 11:07 am

Interested stuff. Thanks.

malcolmb · Post by **malcolmb** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 1:20 pm

paterrob wrote:I am having a problem with every sound I load popping and a continual static/noise in the sound (like digital distortion)

I had similar problems (and still do). Although not a complete solution, I found that increasing the Buffer size helped.

On a separate but possibly related issue, I am having a lot of problems with the various flutes in Forest Kingdom 2 playing what I can best describe as "phantom" notes. I write all my music by notation in Sonar (Home Studio 7XL) Staff View. The piece I am writing at the moment is predominately Kiowa Flute. When I play the piece, it starts fine. But about half way through, the flute suddenly starts playing notes that aren't there! It really is very odd - and very annoying! To produce a .wav of the piece, I have to split the piece into small sections, produce .wav's of each section and then stitch them together.

I use VSL a lot and have never had any problems with that resource-hungry software. So I must ask why I am having such problems with Engine 2?

paterrob · Post by **paterrob** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 1:47 pm

malcolmb wrote:
paterrob wrote:I am having a problem with every sound I load popping and a continual static/noise in the sound (like digital distortion)
I had similar problems (and still do). Although not a complete solution, I found that increasing the Buffer size helped.

On a separate but possibly related issue, I am having a lot of problems with the various flutes in Forest Kingdom 2 playing what I can best describe as "phantom" notes. I write all my music by notation in Sonar (Home Studio 7XL) Staff View. The piece I am writing at the moment is predominately Kiowa Flute. When I play the piece, it starts fine. But about half way through, the flute suddenly starts playing notes that aren't there! It really is very odd - and very annoying! To produce a .wav of the piece, I have to split the piece into small sections, produce .wav's of each section and then stitch them together.

I use VSL a lot and have never had any problems with that resource-hungry software. So I must ask why I am having such problems with Engine 2?

Thanks malcolmb,

I've tried increasing the buffer size but the problem still exists. I've tried rolling back to 32bit just to see it it worked and various other preference adjustments with no luck.

Sounds are still unusable. This is really too bad as the library sounds great.

I wish I could load the samples into MachFive 3 and just edit them myself but the files are some sort of proprietary file.

As I mentioned I'm using the latest 27'' iMac 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz) so I really don't think it's my Mac and the samples seem pristine so I can only imagine the BS Engine 2 does not play nice with current Mac's.

I post what BS replies to me.

malcolmb · Post by **malcolmb** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 6:47 pm

paterrob wrote:As I mentioned I'm using the latest 27'' iMac 3.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz) so I really don't think it's my Mac and the samples seem pristine so I can only imagine the BS Engine 2 does not play nice with current Mac's.

Hello paterrob - You computer spec is far better than my old XP system which is still well within the required spec for Forest Kingdom 2 and Engine 2. If Engine 2 doesn't work on your system then I do wonder what the problem is. From what I can gather from replies from Best Service, I am sure the problem is not Mac-related but affects Window-based systems as well.

It seemed to me that Engine 2 was a variant of the Yellow Tools Independence GUI (I may be wrong, but they do look very similar). So I tried downloading the free version of that to see if I could get Forest Kingdom instruments to work on it. No luck, as the Forest Kingdom instruments are specific to Engine 2. So it looks like we shall just have to wait for an Engine 2 upgrade. I hope it will be soon!

NoSoniX · Post by **NoSoniX** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 8:27 pm

Hey Guys,

sorry for all the inconveniences you have. We're working really hard on the issues and hope that we adress them all in the near future. The last update 2.1.1 has fixed the crashes with DP8 when loading layers and the GUI problem with VE PRO. Some other minor fixes were included as well.

I can only recommend you to do in the meanwhile:

1. Use 2.1.1
2. Change to RF-RAM in Standalone mode... save the patch and try it again in your DAW.
3. Raise the buffer size
4. For Epic world use RF-RAM/RF-HDD instead of EF-RAM

Thanks for your patience and let us know if we can assist you in any way.

All the best

Martin

paterrob · Post by **paterrob** » Sat Jun 01, 2013 8:35 pm

NoSoniX wrote:Hey Guys,

sorry for all the inconveniences you have. We're working really hard on the issues and hope that we adress them all in the near future. The last update 2.1.1 has fixed the crashes with DP8 when loading layers and the GUI problem with VE PRO. Some other minor fixes were included as well.

I can only recommend you to do in the meanwhile:

1. Use 2.1.1
2. Change to RF-RAM in Standalone mode... save the patch and try it again in your DAW.
3. Raise the buffer size
4. For Epic world use RF-RAM/RF-HDD instead of EF-RAM

Thanks for your patience and let us know if we can assist you in any way.

All the best

Martin

I appreciate you looking into this but considering I contacted BS about this player before I bought Epic World and received a reply back about it being 64bit in Mac now etc it would have been nice to have been told about the problem right from BS before I spent $200 after receiving their email.

At this point I'd prefer a credit and buy something that uses Kontakt etc and runs proficiently with my set up.

Thank,
Robert

JavaJ · Post by **JavaJ** » Wed Aug 07, 2013 4:24 pm

Staying away!

murnau · Post by **murnau** » Wed Aug 07, 2013 5:33 pm

have a few libraries from BS, the engine works fine here.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 8:42 am

Hi there,

This is my first post here. I've been doing some research over the last week or two on Best Service instruments, and I have to say I am disappointed about what I've read regarding the Engine player in Macs. I am running a quad-core i7 2 ghz Mac-Mini with 8 gigs of RAM, and though I tried the demo of Desert Winds, I immediately got the one core spike and crackliness in both Logic 9 and 10.

This is unfortunate because the sounds of ERA and Forest Kingdom are beautiful, and I'd love to be able to use them. My wife is a singer specializing in Renaissance music, and even she was impressed with some of the sounds. So, I guess that I will have to wait until this issue is ironed out. I could live without the reverb on every patch (Logic has some nice convolution reverb), but I do like to be able to tweak as I play, so leaving the GUI closed is definitely a non-starter for me.

On the other hand, I'll probably buy Ehno 5 at some point this year.

Cheers,

Bombadil

Best Service

KVR Audio

Incredibly poor Engine performance