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Audio Breaking Up on '15 MBP i7/16/SSD

Superior Drummer 3 Help
Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 30 total)
  • Replied October 29, 2018 at 08:08 #2113062
    Brad
    Participant

    Just for clarification, you’re running a USB2 interface and a USB SSD? Are they connect to the MBP or through a hub? I run sound libraries exclusively from external SSDs, the difference perhaps that they are connected via Thunderbolt, although I am running an Antelope Zen interface which is USB. Intriguing.

    Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
    DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
    DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
    OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
    Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
    Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
    2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

    • The post has been modified 2 times, last modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Brad.
    Replied October 29, 2018 at 09:44 #2113127
    Mark King
    Participant

    Where the library is should make no difference. SD3 loads samples into RAM. the only thing the that it does impact is load times of the kits. This would not impact latency either.

    SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

    Replied October 29, 2018 at 15:39 #2113432
    wphall
    Participant

    Hello- I agree that in theory, this doesn’t make any sense. What Brad brought up above is one possible contributing factor: The external SSD was connected to a USB3 hub. For troubleshooting purposes, I isolated it to this so the AI wasn’t connected.

    Now, as for the theory and reality of this whole thing, I am not completely on board with the idea that just because the sound libraries are loaded into memory means this shouldn’t happen. OS X makes constant and frequent calls to the I/O systems for things like Time Machine, Spotlight indexing, etc… And Apple seems to find never ending reasons to continue to do this (ex: iCloud disk “Optimization”). But yes, in theory, I agree that SD3 is in memory and shouldn’t do this. I can only report that it was and stopped once I was off an external drive. Finally, there is no way I can 100% report with any certainty that something else wasn’t changed I the process. But I tried to keep the steps as isolated as possible but in reality, even this is flawed because it could be a few steps in combination that unbroke the camels back.

    Thanks!

    2015 MacBook Pro: 16/512ssd, EZ2, SD2, SD3

    Replied October 29, 2018 at 17:22 #2113588
    Brad
    Participant
    wphall wrote:

    Hello- I agree that in theory, this doesn’t make any sense. What Brad brought up above is one possible contributing factor: The external SSD was connected to a USB3 hub. For troubleshooting purposes, I isolated it to this so the AI wasn’t connected.

    Now, as for the theory and reality of this whole thing, I am not completely on board with the idea that just because the sound libraries are loaded into memory means this shouldn’t happen. OS X makes constant and frequent calls to the I/O systems for things like Time Machine, Spotlight indexing, etc… And Apple seems to find never ending reasons to continue to do this (ex: iCloud disk “Optimization”). 

    That was my initial thought, although the library is off the USB bus, OS X still has some I/O out to the device and with the interface and USB drive running essentially on the same USB bus in v2 protocol, perhaps (in theory of course) this could be causing some disruption. The main thing at this point is you have resolved the audio breakup issue.

    Mac Studio M1 Max, RAM 64 GB, 1TB Drive, OSX 12.x/13.x and Windows 10 (VM)
    DAW: Studio One Pro (always up to date)
    DTX Express III (Extreme triggers), Nektar LX88
    OWC Thunderbay Mini (4 X 1TB Sata SSD), Express 4M2 (4 X 2TB M.2 SSD), Envoy Express (1TB M.2 SSD)
    Presonus Quantum, Faderport & Faderport 8
    Black Lion Sparrow Mk2 A/D, FMR-RNP-RNC, MIDI Xpress 128, BM5A, KRK VXT4, Equator D5
    2020 Macbook Pro 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Audio(mobile rig)

    Replied October 29, 2018 at 18:05 #2113639
    wphall
    Participant

    Yes, exactly. The other reality of this whole thing is that Apple likes to do what is best for Apple and they are doing a lot of changes to their file system and IO bus systems these days so who know. But ya, it works and I’m happy.

    Thanks again!

    2015 MacBook Pro: 16/512ssd, EZ2, SD2, SD3

    Replied November 30, 2018 at 10:38 #2211793
    phaine
    Participant

    I also just bought SD3 and am suffering the same issue.  (

    Regarding the USB traffic theory… it’s a good theory but it’s not working for me.  SD3 is kind enough to let me unmount the external SSD drive once the samples are loaded.  But the audio artifacts still happen.

    https://www.toontrack.com/forums/topic/distorted-sounds-in-sd3-but-not-ezd/

    The fact that this does NOT happen with EZ Drummer leads me to believe that it’s more an SD3 issue than anything else.

    Toontrack, can I help you diagnose this issue?

    – Philip

    Replied November 30, 2018 at 10:44 #2211803
    Henrik Ekblom
    Participant
    phaine wrote:

    Toontrack, can I help you diagnose this issue?

    Do you run a Mac or PC?

    If PC, are you using ASIO drivers?

    Can you run some metering software that shows the activities of the CPU, to see if you have CPU spikes when the audio glitches?

    Does it help if you increase the Buffer Size?

    Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
    Toontrack

    Replied December 1, 2018 at 07:05 #2214157
    phaine
    Participant

    Thanks, Henrik —

    Please see my original post at https://www.toontrack.com/forums/topic/audio-breaking-up-on-15-mbp-i7-16-ssd/page/2/#post-2211803

    The short answers are: I’m running a Mac, CPU graph doesn’t get much above 55% even if I’m wailing away (with the dropouts / distortions happening), and buffer size reduces but doesn’t eliminate the problem.  And if the buffer size is big I have too much latency for live drumming, defeating the purpose.

    What next?  I do think that I and a couple of other Mac users have a distinct issue.  The fact that EZ Drummer does NOT have this issue, only SD3, suggests to me that there’s an issue with the SD3.  I really want to be able to use this thing and am willing to put in time to help your engineers fix the issue.  So please let me know how I can help for our mutual benefit.

    Warm regards,

    Philip

    Replied December 1, 2018 at 16:02 #2214630
    wphall
    Participant

    Hi Again- I’m the original poster of this.

    I hate to say it, I agree with Phillip. I have completely wiped my MBP and only use this for EZDrummer and SD3. I have added an audio interface, etc… I still get this problem intermittently. Also have to admit that I didn’t come back here and report it because most led me to believe it was a problem with me and my setup. It still may be, and I’m open to this, but I have a pristinely clean system and am getting audio distortion intermittently.

    Happy to help Toontrack in anyway, but there is most definitely something going south here.

    Thanks!

    2015 MacBook Pro: 16/512ssd, EZ2, SD2, SD3

    Replied December 1, 2018 at 19:17 #2214939
    phaine
    Participant

    wphall, can you please confirm that this issue does not happen for you with EZ Drummer or SD2?

    Replied December 1, 2018 at 23:22 #2215329
    wphall
    Participant

    Last time I had EZ loaded, it did not breakup like SD3. I haven’t loaded SD2 since upgrading to 3 so I can’t comment on that.

    Over the weekend, I’ll try to reload EZ and do a comparison again. Its been awhile.

    2015 MacBook Pro: 16/512ssd, EZ2, SD2, SD3

    1

    Thanked by: phaine
    Replied December 9, 2018 at 08:01 #2226191
    phaine
    Participant

    @Henrik, any further word on this?

    Can you connect me with the engineers to diagnose the issue with the software?

    Philip

    Replied December 10, 2018 at 10:40 #2227783
    Henrik Ekblom
    Participant

    @Phaine and @wphall, can you try different Numbers of CPUs in Settings of SD3? Setting this to 1 has made it better for some Mac users, when using Logic, so there may be some differences for you guys too.

    Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
    Toontrack

    Replied December 12, 2018 at 08:16 #2230737
    phaine
    Participant

    Thanks, @Henrik — I tried 1 CPU and it did not improve matters.

    What would you recommend next?

    Philip

    Replied January 17, 2019 at 20:58 #2313842
    wphall
    Participant

    Hey Everyone- Sorry I disappeared… Holidays and work.

    Ok, here’s where everything stands now. I did a complete wipe of my MBP and reloaded high Sierra. The only added software is SD3 and EZD2 with all updates and the drivers for my Steinberg interface.

    The pops or crackles are gone. I attribute this to possibly no external USB drives connected and I have not loaded any virtual disk software such as Google Drive or Dropbox. The reason I mention this is that its very well known that these load I/O drivers and in the case of google drive, always indexing your disks.

    So, there you go. I fixed it by basically running it as loaded and on a very very clean system.

    2015 MacBook Pro: 16/512ssd, EZ2, SD2, SD3

    1

    Thanked by: Henrik Ekblom
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