KVR Audio

maudioradium · Post by **maudioradium** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:21 pm

Just a moment ago I was happily making my track when suddenly a blown-out scream erupts from ableton live (using triangle II), I panic and slam off my headphones and I'm left partially deafened and a minute later a tinnitus hiss comes in like being on the beaches of Normandy.

Whilst comical to a person who hasn't experienced this, I can assure you it's quite terrifying and I am hoping someone has some advice to prevent this happening in the future.

In my efforts, I put on George Yohngs W1 Limiter on the master, but this doesn't seem to do much (I tested it by using some gains on a particular track and checked how loud it could get with my laptop on medium volume, it was still very loud).

My setup is very basic - headphones in laptop using ableton live.

Hope someone can help, thanks.

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:26 pm

Use less headroom between the level and the maximum limiter's range.

maudioradium · Post by **maudioradium** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:30 pm

RunBeerRun wrote:Use less headroom between the level and the maximum limiter's range.

Right so I've got:
Threshold: 0dB
ceiling: -9.1
release: 5000ms

what do I need to change?

Thanks.

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:35 pm

I never used that limiter, so I can't verify it's catching everything past a certain point, but if it was, turn the main volume down and individual tracks up.

DILF · Post by **DILF** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 3:41 pm

I group the limiter with the synth in a rack when toying with a it.You can always disable it in the rack if you have a limiter on the master after getting the sound you want.

do_androids_dream · Post by **do_androids_dream** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 4:16 pm

of course, you can use a limiter to try to prevent these nasty situations, but i would personally stop using the synth that caused it. Over the years i have deleted quite a few synths due to sudden loud bursts of noise - usually some kind of distortion or feedback loop caused by a bug i'm guessing. z3ta was the worst offender i encountered and it still happens with bigtick rhino CM from time to time - very frustrating because i can't narrow it down to any one situation or particular part of the synth. I use reaper and you can set the audio to be muted if it reaches a certain dB level - perhaps this can be done in ableton too?

ntom · Post by **ntom** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 5:52 pm

I know how that is, sadly one of my favorite synths does it when my computer gets to about 80% cpu usage. Of course it always happens at random, so it might be working fine and then BAAAAAAAM
It's not fun at all. I never found a way to prevent this, but as per do_androids's response, sometimes these synths that also explode are worth keeping in. I have deleted many synths that do that, but there is one I use all too often to just delete.

maudioradium · Post by **maudioradium** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:14 pm

Isn't there some plugin I can use that mutes the volume out right if it gets to a certain limit? Surely someone's programmed a VST that does this.

kx.001 · Post by **kx.001** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:31 pm

PC or Mac?

maudioradium · Post by **maudioradium** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:04 pm

PC.

Thanks.

kx.001 · Post by **kx.001** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:09 pm

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... highlight=

Try that - I'm not much of a programmer but it worked for highkoo and I tested it in Ableton so fingers crossed. If you put the look ahead one onto the master it's set to look out for volumes over a certain level and then average the next few milliseconds before cutting out and staying cut out.

Hopefulyl it'll work, but no guarentees

maudioradium · Post by **maudioradium** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:42 pm

Wow that works great. I fiddled with the settings and it turns out its's probably best just to use the default settings only with the sensitivity on the lowest you can get. That way, I found, it'll cut off above any normal dB an mp3 track will have.

Thanks again.

edit - which one is the look-ahead version?
VCut0.dll
VCutLat.dll

kx.001 · Post by **kx.001** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:44 pm

Glad its of use to you. At some point I may go back to it, but I've got so much college work at the moment I haven't been able to even look at my programming stuff..

kx.001 · Post by **kx.001** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:46 pm

VCutLat.dll

DILF · Post by **DILF** » Sat Dec 24, 2011 8:24 pm

Nice.I missed this one.Gonna give it a try next time I'm twiddling with Nitro

What do I need to download to prevent loud vst errors?