T2 and the SIR Reverb plug issues.

[PierreG]

Greetings,

My system: Dell D600 Laptop, 512 MB RAM, 1 internal 30 GB hard drive, XP Pro (SP1), LaCie FW card (running at 400), Fireface 800 (with latest drivers
and firmware), Mackie Tracktion 2.0.

I have just discovered that if I have the SIR plug inserted in the master buss, I will get terrible performance (hangs & audio glitches), PC lockups and or blue screen crashes when using multiple outputs on my RME Fireface via T2.

It (SIR) seems to be OK if I am doing mixes to a default stereo pair of tracks, and not going to individual outs on the FF. I downloaded the latest version of SIR (1.0.10) and it is still non- functional in this scenario. SIR causes these issues when it is inserted and disabled, which I find strange. It has to be deleted from the master buss in order to regain system stability.

Someone on the RME newsgroup mentioned an issue with Final Mix that may be related to master buss issues in Tracktion regarding certain plugs, which Mackie has addressed with a new beta version of Final Mix.

I believe this issue is present in T1 as well.

Any feedback ..? Any other plugs cause this kind of behavior in Tracktion?

Thanks,
Philip

[Lunch Money]

Certainly not a known issue.

The Final Mix issue you are thinking of was fixed, so that's no longer a concern.

You are aware that SIR is a high-latency, CPU-sucking plug-in, though, I assume? HOWEVER, you have already noted that the issues are present even when the plug is disabled, so it shouldn't matter.

Let me fire up an edit to see what it does. Can't remember the last time I used SIR on the master bus, but I HAVE done it before, and it was never an issue in T1.

BRB...

[Lunch Money]

D'oh.

I didn't notice until I printed this out and re-read it that you're doing something multi-out-related.

So... I can't really be of any help, not having a multi-out audio interface. I can tell you that SIR works perfectly with a plain old stereo output, though.

Thanks for the heads-up on 1.010. Didn't know it was out.

[ThereIsNoLimitEr]

I've had problems with SIR 1010 and Tracktion as well. Two different projects have acted strange for me and earlier this week I found out it was because of SIR. The problems don't occur right away but happen after a while.

In the first project I worked on a couple of weeks ago, sound starts to stutter for a short moment, then comes strange GUI behaviour with buttons disappearing and finally it hangs or crashes. I could not figure out what was doing this except that I suspected it was a plug-in. I use some other freeware plug-ins in this project and I first thought it was because of the JCM900 plug-in.

However, in my second project the culprit was clear. After a while it simply crashes with an error message reporting a problem with SIR. If clicking OK in the message it is simply being shown again and again until clicking Cancel, which shuts down Tracktion.

I replaced my instances of SIR with UAD Realverb and now I've spent the better part of the weekend with this second project and Tracktion has worked flawlessly for hours on end. So there definitely is a problem with SIR and Tracktion.

Regards,
Carl

[Lunch Money]

Thanks for confirming, Carl. I certainly didn't use SIR for an 'extended' period of time. My convolution needs are being met by Convo Boy these days, and 1.010 wasn't out when I was using SIR heavily.

An error box would seem to indicate that a flawed build of SIR is causing the error, rather than Tracktion itself, but sorting out "known issues" are just as important as hunting for Tracktion bugs when people are having problems!

Greg

[ThereIsNoLimitEr]

Yes, I'm not saying it's one or the other that's at fault and causing this. It could just be incompability problems between the two applications. It does look like it's SIR that's causing it and who knows, perhaps there is a third factor involved. I simply work around this by choosing another reverb plug-in...

[valley]

From what you are describing, it sounds like the latest build of SIR is corrupting memory that does not belong to it. That'll tend to make other applications behave strangely, or even crash.

If that is the case, keep your eye out for a fixed SIR release, and continue using the last stable build.

[IIRs]

I've been using 1008 lots with no problems, if that helps at all. (I hadn't noticed the update actually..)

[ThereIsNoLimitEr]

OK, thanks for the suggestion. I'll give 1008 a try.

[Bill @ Irie Lab]

Hi all,

This is my 1st post.

Dell, Win 2000, T1, Creative PCI (16 bit)and Live 24.

Love Tracktion and the whole system sounds great (I do have some nice outboard stuff, too, which helps).

My SIR (latest build) will not load impulse files of any bit depth; error: does not recognize this file type - anyone else have this problem?

SIR is my secret weapon for surround mixes. Thanks

[IIRs]

Try V.1008 ..?

I have some guitar amp impulses which give that error (or something similar anyway) whenever I try to load them initially, but I find if I load up a different impulse first it can then open them fine.. the only difference I can see is bit-depth: these amp impulses are 16-bit while most of my favorite reverb impulses are 24.

[Lunch Money]

Bill,

If you don't mind dropping a bit of cash, I've really enjoyed the switch to Convo Boy, which is somewhere less than $20 US or so. The KvR entry (found HERE) lists it at $12.95, but you'll want to check his website for the most recent price. That might well be accurate, though! It's been stable, and new instances will still remember the last folder you used (unlike SIR, from which it seems you need to start from scratch) and good stuff like that. I like the 'scroll' and 'IR length' functions for "re-arranging" the impulse as well.

It's well worth the price for the extra options it includes over SIR. A few things are different in it, but I've never personally missed any features from SIR.

Sorry for the 'advertising'-- I'm not associated with Elevayta in any way, but I thought you might like knowing that there's an option other than 'expensive'.

Voxengo offers a good inexpensive convolution engine, too. Might want to check out Voxengo.com.

Greg

[PierreG]

Thanks everyone for your feedback... :O)

This may have not been so obvious, but for the record, I started out with SIR 1.0.0.8, and updating to 1.0.0.10 did not resolve the issue.

Greg, thanks for the suggestion for an inexpensive alternative to SIR, I will check out Convo Boy.

Any other opinions out there regarding your favorite impulse reverbs...?

After reading these responses, I am wondering if this issue is present in a slighter form while doing 2 track mixes (no extra outputs enabled). I have been hounding Mackie support about the 150 mb cache buffer limit in Tracktion because I have encountered audio dropouts when I get over 8 tracks of 88.2 / 24 bit with a lot of wave edits (splits and pitch corrections), and noticed that I can reproduce those issues very quickly with fewer tracks by reducing the cache to lower than the 150 mb limit. It seems to me that this setting limit should follow how much RAM you have (I.E - more RAM should increase the buffer limit), but it does not.

I now wonder if having the SIR plug inserted into the master bus, yet disabled, has reduced Tracktion performance enough to cause this dropout effect earlier than normal. I will now REMOVE the SIR plug and see if the track dropouts go away. If they do, I can apologize to Mackie, whom I have given up on regarding the cache limit issue...

Philip

[IIRs]

Could you also try bussing all the tracks that are currently routed to the main outs to another track instead, and insert SIR on the sub-group instead of the master section..

<edit> the sub-group should be routed to the main outs though of course

[Lunch Money]

Philip,

Just for clarity-- are you saying you had the issues already with 1.008? In this and another thread somewhere someone mentioned that 1.010 might actually make matters worse and that 1.008 might be the better of the two to work with for now.

Greg