SEMI-RESOLVED - not just u-he synths, so prolly a Cubase glitch

[Sendy]

Just a disclaimer - this is something I believe to be very rare and probably caused by a weird plugin clash - it's not a reflection of the plugins which have been rock solid their whole life.

Ok, so this is weird. I've never, EVER had anything like this happen before, let alone to u-he stuff. I've got a project where any instance of ACE and Zebra that I load, the plugins slowly start building up a weird metallic noise, like a single cycle noise loop.

The noise starts off nonexistent when the project loads, then builds up to a maximum over time. It's fairly quiet, but loud enough to easily be noticable in quiet passages.

I've tried muting every individual component in the plugins making the noise - oscillators, filters, FX units. The only way to get rid of the noise is to turn off the synth in question - in this case ACE and Zebra.

I've tried starting a new empty project and loading ACEs and Zebras with other synths and messing around, and as usual, eveything's fine. Which leads me to believe this is some weird rare interaction between these plugins and something else, either that or a very very rare bug or memory leak.

This isn't really a problem as I can reload the project and render the parts before the noise builds up, but it IS very weird. Has anyone else had anything like this?

[Urs]

Do you have a few seconds of that as a wav file for us?

Are there known incidents of paranormal activity in the house you live in?

[medienhexer]

Do you have a few seconds of that as a wav file for us?

Are there known incidents of paranormal activity in the house you live in?

hehe, file that under 'random occultance' in JIRA

[murnau]

Do you have a few seconds of that as a wav file for us?

Are there known incidents of paranormal activity in the house you live in?

[V0RT3X]

Are there known incidents of paranormal activity in the house you live in?

That's great.

[3ee]

Happens here also... when I turn on any u-he plugins (especially Zebra 2.7 latest version), I suddenly get some strange noises... it's almost like I suddenly have talent and inspiration, otherwise I simply have a memory leak

[aaron aardvark]

Sendy,
Is it possible you are getting feedback somehow? Maybe a buss or track in your DAW feeding back on itself? What if you mute every track except the one that is making that noise? Check your sends within your DAW?

[Sendy]

I've tried deleting everything (all plugins, tracks, busses, ect) except the main culprit (which is ACE at the moment, though before I brought ACE into the composition, the two Zebras were making the same noise). The noise still continues with this instance of the plugin in this project but like I've said, this is the only time I've come across this and I use these plugins in virtually all my projects!

DIVA seems immune to it.

Here's a downloadable wav file. First I have an instance of the noise, then it switches to the same noise 15 minutes later - to show how the sound evolves over time. Then I bring up the volume to 10% normalised so you can hear it a little better.

https://soundcloud.com/sendy/yukvk1cdmwhw

[Urs]

Sounds like your host doesn't clear the input buffer

Not sure how to interpret that

[Sendy]

Weird. Well, I doubt it will ever happen again, I just wondered if anyone else had had this problem. I guess it's a one-off glitch which could be caused by anything. I've had certain plugin combinations crash my machine before, so this is fairly benign

[Breeze]

It definitely sounds like a buffer in feedback. Does your sound hardware have it's own mixer? Maybe there's something feeding a hardware or DAW input at a very low level that only gets triggered if a signal feeding it is high enough. Considering the complexity of our audio paths, I'm surprised things like this don't happen more often.

[Sendy]

I've checked my hardware mixer, yes... No dice.

One major discovery - if I reset my ASIO driver by turning it off and on, the noise disappears. Then it slowly starts to build up again, at a rate of about 0.1db per half-hour (very rough guess). So at least I have a way of getting a relatively clean render. It builds regargless if I play notes or not.

I noticed the noise was getting louder when initially I put a gate on the channel, thinking it was typical background noise. Eventually I had to keep setting the gate higher and higher because the noise would slowly start popping through the gate. It was like noise whack-a-mole

Another thing - originally it was Zebra making the noise. Then when I brought in ACE, ACE took over and the Zebras went quiet. Then I tried Diva and some random plugins from other devs, and they didn't seem to produce noise.

Indeed we do have very complex audio paths. Sometimes it takes me a while to work out what's going on, I have group channels feeding busses, with various send effects also going into busses and sidechaining and feedback going on here and there. Then I have some tracks which are duplicates of others but with some cosmetic changes... Sometimes making a simple level adjustment can be like trying to debug a Rube Goldberg machine! And it amazes me that all my plugins work as well as they do. (and that I ever finish anything!)

[Sendy]

Just a quick update, I've just added a non u-he synth to this project (TAL Bassline) and it's making that same noise, only really loud this time. So the u-he connection was just coincidental it seems.

Probably some kind of rare glitch with Cubase's memory management or something.

[Urs]

Set your alarm clock to 3am. 3 times write ESABUC with tomato sauce on your computer monitor. Pray that it can't distinguish tomato sauce from real blood.

[Sendy]

Set your alarm clock to 3am

No need, that's the time my brain's decided to wake me up with ideas