Topic by Acon

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  • Acon
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  • Registered: 10-11-2025
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Topic: Pianoteq 2 sound sudden disappearance

Hi all,

I just purchased Pianoteq 2 Standard this Black Friday and am now experiencing a strange issue.

My machine is an Intel i7 14900K + 96G RAM PC with Windows 11 Pro. I believe it's a relatively new and powerful setup with lots of love and care I put into. My audio interface is a Yamaha Steinberg UR-RT2 with the latest ASIO driver installed. I use my digital piano with the MIDI-USB connected to my PC. Pianoteq 2 runs well on my PC and I enjoy much playing my selected piano sounds.

The problem is that every now and then, the sound disappears suddenly for a short period of time (when you press the keys and no sound comes out). Sometimes for half a second and sometimes for 3-4 seconds before it comes back. It's super annoying when it happens. It feels like the MIDI signal connection has a hiccup or something.

After observing the frequency and time of this occurrence, I've narrowed down the possible culprit to my disk folder backup software. It's called AOMEI Backupper Professional. It runs hourly and takes about 15 minutes to check and back up the folders I assigned to an external RAID disk. So it looks like there is some chemistry between these two when the backup software fires up so Pianoteq 2 gets interrupted and stops working for a few seconds. This happens even if I don't connect my external RAID disk because the software will still try to backup the files (and fail).

Has anyone experienced something like this? If yes, what software triggered your Pianoteq hiccup and how did you solve it? I'm trying to find the root cause of this interruption and possible solutions.

Any input is appreciated.

Reply by Coises

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  • Coises
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  • Registered: 06-12-2019
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Re: Pianoteq 2 sound sudden disappearance

Acon wrote:

Has anyone experienced something like this?

For me it was simply having an external drive attached, even with no software using it. It took me a while to figure it out. It seems the drives I have (I don’t know if all external drives are like this) somehow “wake up” at intervals. Whether they commandeered the processor or the USB pathways (I have a USB audio interface) for too long when they did that, I don’t know. These were only brief glitches, a fraction of a second. Windows 10.

I just learned not to have an external drive connected when playing (or else expect occasional drop-outs).

It feels like the MIDI signal connection has a hiccup or something.

It’s probably not the MIDI input but the audio output. Audio output falters whenever the processor or output path (usually USB) can’t keep up. That’s where buffer size and latency come in: with a larger buffer, the system has more time to “catch up” if something preempts audio processing for a moment, but there is more delay between hitting a key and hearing the sound. It’s possible that increasing the buffer size would help, if you have it low enough now that you can increase it without making the latency unacceptable.

There might be no solution other than to stop your backup software while you are trying to play. Most likely the interference isn’t specifically with Pianoteq, but with your audio driver. If AOMEI has forums you could search there to see if anyone else has interference with audio processing.

Reply by Acon

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Re: Pianoteq 2 sound sudden disappearance

Hi Coises,

Thanks so much for the hints and possible solution. I'll increase the buffer size and see how it affects everything. I'll try to report this issue to the AOMEI developer too.