Tracktion goes buggy ! (edit: not anymore, problem solved)

[MelodyMan]

I'm not someone who is negative about Tracktion. I've used it from the beginning and was always baffled at the user-friendliness and stability.

Well, Tracktion wasn't stable for me anymore. After lots of troubleshooting i discovered that at least the last two versions have something in their code that drives my system nuts. As a last resort i've just installed version 1.5.0.254 (a version from 9 februari 2004) and ALL my problems have gone !

That means no more stuttering, crashing when rendering and plugins that go nuts. Thank God i've kept some older versions so i could reinstall them. I'm now back at 1.5.0.254 again and a happy camper, but something is definitely going wrong.

I hope you can do something about it, Jules. By the way, i'm on a fresh AMD64 3200+, 512MB RAM with Windows XP (Servicepack 2).

[simondsouza]

You know, I just got my new DAW running nicely with XP home SP1 and SP2 came out. I thought - I really don't want to install SP2 cos everything (including latest release of T) is running like a dream.

Has anyone else got any experience of SP2 with DAWs?

Is this a brand new system, Melodyman? What is different from your old one?

Simon

[jtxx000]

Don't get SP2, its evil...

[rich_h]

I've just done a clean install of XP with the latest CD which includes SP2 - no problems.

[jtxx000]

Half the time when you try to download something, it blocks the download. I've turned this off. Half the time you try to run something it asks you if you want to run it. I haven't gotten around to or fgured out how to turn this off yet. SP2 is extremely anoying.

[Id Lab]

One of the computers at my work automatically downloaded SP2 and asked if I wanted to install it. I clicked yes, it went ahead, reset, and didn't start again. Completely screwed. The tech guy had to put a whole new hard drive in.

So make sure you back up everything beforehand.

At home, I backed up everything, then did a fresh install of XP and immediately upgraded to SP2. No problems at all, it works better than the old system. If you've got a day to spare, I recommend this approach.

However, most of the improvements are security. If your PC isn't online, it may be pointless.

[valley]

At home, I backed up everything, then did a fresh install of XP and immediately upgraded to SP2. No problems at all, it works better than the old system. If you've got a day to spare, I recommend this approach.

agreed.

However, most of the improvements are security. If your PC isn't online, it may be pointless.

agreed.

For those who want to take Id Lab's advice of doing a clean install, Toms Hardware had an article on how to make an XP install CD that installs SP2 as part of the standard install. Worth checking out.

[rich_h]

Half the time when you try to download something, it blocks the download. I've turned this off. Half the time you try to run something it asks you if you want to run it. I haven't gotten around to or fgured out how to turn this off yet. SP2 is extremely anoying.

I had a similar problem with the new windows firewall blocking FTP. Turn off the Windows firewall and use ZoneAlarm or BlackIce or whatever.

[jules]

Would love to be able to do something about this, MelodyMan, but I'd need more to go on than just the fact that it's buggy... there's a quarter of a millions lines of code in there, and this could be any one of them!

What soundcard are you using? If the new versions were having trouble with a particular card, that'd narrow it down a bit.

[MelodyMan]

He, Jules thanks for stopping by.

If you saw my other thread (DoubleDawg saved my life) you would know that i'm saved. It turned out to be related to PCI-latency issues. My graphics-card (a nVidia Geforce MX400 64 MB) had a latency of 248, where my soundcard had a latency of 32.

I changed those settings to 64 and 80 respectively and all crackles, pops, renderingproblems are gone.

Thanks anyway .

[jules]

Thank god for that!

So when you reverted to an older tracktion version, was that a red-herring?

[MelodyMan]

I had less crackles in that older version, and i could render normally. Unfortunately did that version have some midi-bugs (audio stopped at the beginning of a certain clip), so i couldn't use it either. Those bugs are non-existent in the latest version.

I think the latest version 1.6.01 is a bit more demanding on the system (just guessing), so the PCI-latency thing became apparent. Now, however, no more problems and everything runs practically glitch-free.