hey folks,
i've got a simple question. Which kind of Audio- Interface do you use with Pianoteq?
Till now I'm using the M-Audio Transit USB Interface but I've got a lil problem with it. I've got a kind of a gentle hissing when I'm using live with a PA.
What could that be?
thanks for your answers.
cheers
Stefan
I use an EMU 1820M.
Very happy with it, but note that it's no longer manufactured.
http://www.emu.com/products/welcome.asp?category=505
I use an Edirol UA-25.
It has ASIO driver and I have no audible latency.
A Presonus FireBox (Firewire 400) and a Tascam US-122 (USB 1.0), both using the ASIO4ALL driver. No problems with latency.
RME DSP Multiface II. Love it. Rock solid drivers and never an issue with latency.
I'm using an M-audio Profire 610.
Regarding hiss ... perhaps you should lift your power supply from the ground ... (on pc/sound card/amp)
-- Eran
Is it a Hum? I use a Behringer Hum Destroyer - works a treat - gets rid of all those horrible compuer sounds and ground loops!
p.s. My soundcard is an E-MU 0202 USB and I'm very happy with it.
I'm actually using the "High Definition Audio Device" that came pre-installed in my Dell Studio notebook. It is completely hiss-free and with the wireless adapter disabled it's click and pop free. AND I can crank it all the way up to 192k without a problem.
An M-Audio as well as a Lexicon USB interface both fell miserably on this Vista machine leaving me pleasantly surprised with the results of the stock audio card. Hey, if it ain't broke....
Curt
Curt,
When you say "fail miserably", in what way(s)? (just curious)
EDIT: I assume just too much hiss - yes?
RE: the base post (hiss) - it's possible that the PA system is expecting a higher signal level than the soundcard is producing. (does the hiss go away when you unplug it from the PA?)
Greg.
p.s I have an M-Audio Delta 66 connected to a hi-fi amp and the system is hiss free.
Win XP on 3 machines (2 laptops), various interfaces:
- a big Soundscape/SSL system: pure joy!
- Presonus FireStudio: very nice but reliability problems with some Firewire chipsets.
- ESI Quatafire: no problem.
- Yamaha MLan on 01V96: unusable (don't know why...)
- integrated soud card on the laptops: OK with "ASIO4All" but you have to cut the ground from the PSU to eliminate interferences. Even better using the S/PDIF optical out connected to my hifi amp.
Curt,
When you say "fail miserably", in what way(s)? (just curious)
EDIT: I assume just too much hiss - yes?
I had the strangest result with the Lexicon - when I first installed it to my notebook PC I thought it was gonna be perfect; sounded nice and quiet (kinda) and had all the right I/O for my needs. So I connected the line outs of my RD700GX to the Lexicon box and started to enjoy the internal sounds straight from my piano. Then I noticed that my notebook was running on battery so I connected its power supply and THAT'S when the problem started. Very loud noise that I can only equate to FM noise. Not the kind of white noise you hear when you are in between stations but that swirly kind of sound that you can hear in the background even when the station is tuned in. Except this wasn't in the background at all... it hit -6 on my faders!! L-O-U-D! Unplug the power supply from my notebook and the noise would go away. Plug my notebook back in and then unplug the line-ins from my piano and the noise would go away as well. Strange. Some kind of grounding issue between the PC and the piano.
I could never get the M-Audio configured properly. I don't know if it was horrible drivers or Vista or a combination but the clicking/popping problem was unsolvable.
The stock card in this DELL machine is freakin me out with how quiet and reliable it is!!!
Hi Curt -
If you say it's quiet when you're running on batteries, then it does sound like a grounding issue. I had the same problem with my (different) setup - what i did is prepare a power extension cord where the ground is disconnected inside the female connector. Hook your PC to that and give it a try.
All the best
Eran
Try typing "ground loop hum" into Google and you'll get plenty of hits. This is a very common problem with music and computers. It's been discussed for years on music sites.
Glenn
No need... both interfaces have been returned and I'm now quite satisfied with the internal card in my notebook.
M-Audio Delta 66. I've used it for at least 5 years in three computers. Very clean.
Mitch I.
I use a pretty ancient Terratec EWX 2496 sound card on an XP system. My vst host is Plogue Bidule. Everything runs on an AMD 3.0 ghz Dual-core system with 4 GB ram.
I can run a single instance of Pianoteq fine with a 128 sample @ 2.9ms fine, playing a very intense classical midi file. While most of the time when I am running other vsts I set at 256 samples @ 5.8ms for guaranteed operation.
Thanks Curt. I've actually got a laptop on order and I never would have dreamt of using it's on-board audio. But, I see that it too has "high definition audio" so I'll give it a go. If that works well all I'd need then would be a MIDI interface.
Greg.
TO ANYONE GETTING NOISES THROUGH SPEAKERS WHEN POWER CONNECTED TO COMPUTER
I have just ordered another behringer hum destroyer from djstore. This is what you need to get rid of all those horrible computer sounds that come from your computer when it's plugged in. Cheaper groundloop isolators are not as good. The behringer gets rid of ALL the hiss etc. I recommend strongly that you get one of these!
If that works well all I'd need then would be a MIDI interface.
Greg.
Or you could forgo that and just connect using USB? I mean if all you are connecting is a single keyboard that has a USB port. It's been the greatest thing for me to connect to my PC with a single USB cable. My last setup (4 years ago?) had cables galore and now I have a single cable connecting my piano to my PC and a power cable for the PC.
Nice!
P.S. Oh, plus my headphone and reference monitor cables!
Yep I'm aware of USB - I don't have it on my keyboard. (it was released just a couple of years after USB was invented, it seems ;^)
I'm using a Metric Halo 2882/ULN-2 combo.
They are excellent sounding interfaces, and a joy to use.
For the "humming" and other computer noise problems, you may find very good results from a high-quality stereo DI box. It would need to be passive. I use a Radial Pro D2 for a specific electric guitar rig, and it tamed a problem that had been *very* difficult to tackle.
Skip--Your keyboard will work. The keyboard doesn't have to have a usb connection, just a midi connection. M-Audio and others make a cable that makes the usb port register the midi signal. In other words, one end of the cable is midi and the other end is a usb plug. About $35-40 US. Here's the one I use:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Uno.html
One caveat--a bad batch of these was released early this year and had to be recalled. Guitar Center was sent a notice by the company, according to one of their sales people I spoke with. If you buy this product, be sure to get one that has black cardboard as a backing to the plastic bubble shell. The ones with blue cardboard, I kid you not, are the early ones, and you sometimes still see them. (Some of these may be fine--I know someone who bought one over a year ago, and it was fine.)
But the newest make works very well. Very straightforward operation. The connection shows up in the PianoTeq Options\Midi pane as "USB midi device." Never had a problem with it. So you have a keyboard that will work, so long as it has midi out and a good action.
I should add that some systems require that you load the m-audio software driver that comes with it--it may not be just plug and play.
Jake,
I understand that - all I meant was that I can't connect my keyboard to my laptop *directly* with USB - I still need to buy something other than a USB cable, and I call that a "MIDI interface". (maybe we can all it a MIDI to USB converter) I'm not ruling out Express Port/PC Card products though.
Thanks for the info though - appreciated.
Regards,
Greg.
I installed a soundcard analyzer program ( http://download.cnet.com/Sound-Card-Ana...60675.html ) and tested the "IDT High Definition Audio" interface on my Dell E6500 laptop. The results for the individual tests range from poor to good, with the overall result being "average". It seems that the output can't be configured to be a true line-out, because I have to set the output levels WAY down so that it doesn't overload the input (the input CAN be configured as a line-in, and I have done that). This maybe the main problem.
I ran the same software with the M-Audio Delta 66 PCI card, and the results range from good to excellent, with the overall result being "very good".
For my laptop I'll be getting a combined MIDI/Audio interface such as the Edirol UA25 or similar.
Greg.
I find that the levels don't change when I change the input type from line-in to MIC, so I think there's a driver problem. (the input is fixed in the MIC mode) So, I connected up the laptop's output to the input of the Delta 66, and found that the laptop IS outputting a very good line level signal when the sliders are all on max. (it is just saturating the Delta when it's set to the home hi-fi input level: -10dBV)
It would be interesting to try and repeat the tests with it connected up like this (I don't think this utility supports it, though), but I decided to just listen to some music, and it sounded excellent, with no hiss whatsoever. Also, the frequency response test was very good anyway - I was mainly worried about low frequency response, but that was fine. Most of the test was invalid anyway, because the output was set very low.
So I'm going to just get a MIDI interface and see how I go. Mind you, I don't think we'll ever see Elton John using the pissy little 3.5mm jack on a laptop. ;^)
Greg.
I've devised a way to run the soundcard analyzer utility and not have to use the silly mic input of the laptop. I connected the output of the laptop to the input of the desktop PC (Delta 66 soundcard), and the output of the desktop to the mic input of the laptop. I then started the test on BOTH machines simultaneously, and of course only used the results from the desktop PC (which is measuring the output of the laptop, which is what we're interested in).
The results are actually pretty good:
Dell E6500 "IDT High Definition Audio" output jack/M-Audio Delta 66 loopback test:
Freq. response: -1.69, +0.12 dB (the -1.69dB seems to be at about 19.8kHz - at 20Hz it's less than 0.5dB down)
Interference and noise: -90.5dB
Dynamic range: 85.8dB
THD+noise: 0.014%
Stereo crosstalk: -88.5dB
I'm satisfied with this - I'm not after golden ears fidelity for my tin ears.
Greg.
I forgot to state the soundcard settings I used - I only used CD quality settings (44.1kHz, 16 bits). The results may have been a little bit better if I had used the maximum possible settings. (the laptop can go to 96kHz/32 bits). The high frequency response would have been a lot better I assume.
Greg.
The output of the laptop is actually higher than I at first thought, and I had to move the output slider down to just higher than 50% so as not to overload the input of the Delta when I ran the tests. I decided to repeat the tests with the Delta's input set to "consumer"(*), and in this configuration the laptop at 100% was about 3dB down. Here are the new results. (I also upped the sample rate to 96kHz, but I retained 16 bits resolution because it the utility reported that the hardware couldn't support full duplex for 24 or 32 bits) I also used better quality cables to connect the laptop's output to the Delta this time, too.
Freq response: -0.26, +0.16 dB 20Hz to 20kHz (-3dB at about 45kHz)
Interference and noise: -94.9dB
Dynamic range: 87.4dB
THD+noise: 0.018%
Stereo crosstalk: -90.1dB
It's pretty impressive for real world conditions I think, with a CRT monitor nearby etc etc.
Greg.
(*) The Delta's "consumer" level is not to be confused with the home line-level setting. It's very confusing - the home hi-fi level is called "-10dB", and the "consumer" level is, I think, really meant to mean "semi professional". The consumer level is 6dB higher than the -10dB home hi-fi level.
After still further testing, I've found that switching the E6500's input between line and mic does make a difference. It seems that it's line-in is much more sensitive than the Delta 66 though. I'm also wondering whether the output is actually fixed in headphone mode. (I've been reading up on headphone outputs - seems that most typical headphone outputs make entirely satisfactory substitutions for line level outputs - the levels aren't that different. The quality of a proper line-out might be a bit better though)
Sorry for the rathole.
Greg.
I use an Echo Gina3G.
I now use a Focusrite Saffire PRO 24
http://www.focusrite.com/news/the_saffire_pro_24/
And I now use an M-Audio Fast Track Ultra for both audio and MIDI, despite the fact that I had stated that I was going to use the laptop's output. (for a number of reasons)
The F.T.U is working well for basic Pianoteq playing on my Core2 Duo-based laptop - I have the audio buffer size at the minimum (128 for this device), and I have polyphony set to the max (256), and I can do what I want - no glitches at all and the response is very crisp. The headphone outputs have insufficient volume with high impedance headphones though. (and I'm not the first to report this)
It's actually NOT working very well on my older Pentium 4 desktop, despite tweaking polyphony and the audio buffer size. On this same machine the M-Audio Delta 66 (a PCI soundcard) works well, in conjunction with the integrated motherboard MIDI input.
Greg.
Greg:
Offering what little I know about soundcards and computers, the one thing I have learned is that some combinations of motherboards, etc and soundcards do not get along well together.
This site may even delve into your particular chipset/mobo/soundcard combination. I found it very useful when I first installed my SC.
http://www.productionforums.com/index.php
The other most common problem I learned about at that site is to ensure that the soundcard is on its own IRQ (most of know this already).
Glenn
Thanks Glenn. Something I did try was to move it to a different USB port (which I think is on a different hub, but I can't be 100% sure yet). but that didn't fix it. It's academic anyway - I'm retiring the P4 from real time audio processing duties.
Greg.
anyone experienceing pops/clicks check out this
http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/...php?id=288
and here
http://www.focusrite.com/answerbase/en/...php?id=265
and finally, here
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951
hope this helps someone
I use the famous M-Audio Delta 1010 (PCI). No clicks or pops, just fast and good sound.