Topic by culasheka

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Topic: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

Hi all!

First of all I have to say that I was very impressed the first time I heard pianoteq and I love it.

That´s why I bought the play version. I also bought a new notebook, an acer extensa 5635z (intel pentium T4400), and a m-audio fast track usb audio device. I run Windows 7 64 bit and my pc gets an performance-index of 21; I guess that´s enough power to handle most of the work.

Even though sometimes still noise (crackles and pops) occur during playing having increased the latency to 512 or up to 4048 samples.

Does anyone have the same problem with fast track pro and know how to solve it?

many thx in advance
culasheka

Last edited by culasheka (24-09-2010 12:36)

Reply by iaoranaemaeva

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

Hi culasheka!

culasheka wrote:

I also bought a new notebook, an acer extensa 5635z (intel pentium T4400), and a m-audio fast track usb audio device. I run Windows 7 64 bit and my pc gets an performance-index of 21

Do you mean a Windows performance index ? Probably a typo: 2.1 instead?

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Reply by John Krajewski

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

Hi Culasheka!

I had exactly the same problem with my M-Audio Delta 2496.
Pops and clicks which I thought was due to latency but  finally tracked the problem down to power management.

With any power management (CPU throttling) enabled, inactivity of your mouse or keyboard may be signalling your CPU to enter various levels of sleep state, to prevent this disable all power management from your BIOS.

While you are still in BIOS if your MOBO has a sound card installed disable that in your BIOS too.

From Windows, open Control Panel  > Hardware and Sound > Device Manager, Expand Sound Video and Game Controllers, if you see your MOBO's sound card listed and its still enabled click on the Driver tab and disable it (you can still leave the driver installed in case you need it later).

Select your Fast Track from the list of devices and click the Resources tab, check that there are no IRQ conflicts with other devices, if there are conflicts you may be able to move the conflicting device to another IRQ or use an alternate port for your Fast Track.

Other things to try :

Mute the Windows System Sounds via the loudspeaker icon in your sytem tray.

Turn off graphics acceleration.

If your antivirus software supports gaming mode add Pianoteq and VST host to your gaming profiles, this will prevent AV scans from starting because your AV software thinks your computer is idle while you are playing your piano.

Disconnect your computer's Wifi or LAN to your Network/Internet, there's nothing worse than a notification telling you your printer is running out of ink or some piece of obscure software needs updating while you are concentrating on a performance.

GOOD LUCK!

Reply by culasheka

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

Many thanks for your help John.

The only problem is that I don´t have the possibility to change any power management adjustments in the BIOS; the notebook simply does not provide that just as well that I can´t disable the onboard sound. the bios adjustment possibilities are somewhat rudimentary.

Without any progress in getting rid of the annoying noise I tested pianoteq with the m-audio fast track pro on my wife´s notebook, a Sony vaio, running an Intel core i3 350M processor with 2 GB ram and Win 7 64-bit. the performance-index of this notebook was 41-41 (@iaoranaemaeva: it is 40-41 and it was 21; no typing error; it´s the index that pianoteq is calculating during your play;-).

The occurrence of noise became better but it still clicked and poped especially playing legato using the sustain pedal (audio buffer size at 512 and 1024!). Heeding your advice, John, in Windows I disabled the onboard sound and turned on the high performance mode (the Sony notebook doesn´t provide any power management adjustments in the BIOS as well)

So I tested the m-audio fast track on another pc, my desktop pc, an Intel core i5 750 @2.6 GHz, 6 GB ram, Win 7 64-bit. The result: No noise, nothing, only the pure piano sound of pianoteq. Even though the performance index is 37-40 and the cpu frequency is not stable!

So it seems that my notebook, the Acer, is not fast enough. I sent I back to the store an ordered another one, an lenovo Intel core i5 450; I hope this one works! I will inform you when I tested it.

Anyway. Again many thanks for your help!

ps: Please excuse my English. I'm afraid it is a bit rusty.

Reply by skip

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

I suggest ensuring that the processor is locked at the maximum speed it is capable of.  On my laptop, this can be achieved by selecting the "Always On" power profile.  (My "Maximum Performance" profile does NOT lock the processor speed, which is a bit strange!).

You can use a command line utility to make sure the processor is in the right mode. Open a command window by selecting Start | Run  and then entering "CMD". Once the command window is open, enter the following command:

POWERCFG /Q

Look for the Processor Throttle (AC) and Processor Throttle (DC) lines. They should both have a Value of "NONE".

Note that I'm on Windows XP - I'm not sure how applicable all this is on Windows 7. 

I have a Core 2 Duo (P8600) laptop running at 2.4GHz, and I use a USB audio/MIDI interface with a buffer size of 128. It works flawlessly.

Btw, I see that your T4400 (running at 2.2GHz, yes?) has only a slightly lower Passmark score than my P8600. I have a feeling that something was wrong with your config - it should have worked better than that.

Greg.

Last edited by skip (25-09-2010 09:10)

Reply by iaoranaemaeva

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

culasheka wrote:

@iaoranaemaeva: it is 40-41 and it was 21; no typing error; it´s the index that pianoteq is calculating during your play;-).

Ah OK, it's Pianoteq's index, not Windows index: my apologies culasheka!

My Dell Latitude XT2 tablet-PC also exhibits a Pianoteq Performance Index = 21 (Core 2 duo 1.6 GHz); it plays Pianoteq perfectly with 96 max polyphony  256 samples buffer @ 44100 Hz, either on the built in sound chip (IDT HDA Codec) + ASIO4ALL or an external sound module M-Audio FireWire Audiophile.

Last edited by iaoranaemaeva (25-09-2010 19:32)

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Reply by culasheka

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

Again, many thx for your help!

Currently I´m testing Pianoteq on my wifes laptop, the Sony one.

Still I can hear those annoying noises (clicks) during play, although less frequently. I have done as John and skip told me to do - as far as I was able to adjust the aforementioned settings - but still sometimes there are those clicks.

Could it be a defective audio-device? I don´t think so, because it runs perfectly on my desktop. So, you have got me at a loss.

Maybe the new notebook will do better. It has to.

Last edited by culasheka (27-09-2010 15:30)

Reply by Michael H

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

John and skip's advice is very good. To verify that your processor is running at full power always, you can click on 'Options' in Pianoteq, then 'Perf' and make sure that the CPU frequency is always the same, and at the speed of your processor. For example, if you've got a 2Ghz processor, the CPU frequency should be 1997-2000Mhz, etc. If this is not the case, you're settings are still wrong.

A desktop computer usually runs at a constant speed, so you wouldn't see this type of problem usually, unlike a laptop which defaults to various power saving measures unless you set it differently.

Reply by skip

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

Michael,
The Pianoteq CPU frequency display is certainly useful, but it doesn't actually report the configuration of the processor.  This is why I like the POWERCFG utility - it directly reports whether throttling is enabled or not.  Just as an example,  if I run an application in the background, with speed throttling enabled,  and inspect the frequency in Pianoteq, it reports that the processor is fixed at the maximum frequency, even though it is not. If I then stop the background process, Pianoteq then displays two disparate frequencies - one much lower than the maximum.  (so it gets it "right" only when I stop the background process)   I suppose it would be nice if Pianoteq could also report the speed throttling mode of the processor.

Just by the way, POWERCFG can also be used to enable/disable speed throttling, and even create new power profiles, etc etc.

There is also at least one more user friendly utility that I am aware of that can report and change the processor mode - it is called SpeedstepXP. (I haven't looked for a Windows 7 version)

I realise we have discussed all this in the past in other threads.

Greg.

Reply by Voltara

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

I've used Pianoteq with three different Dell laptops, all with the same M-Audio Fast Track Pro interface.  The oldest (D620) and newest (E6510) worked wonderfully, without any trouble.  The E6500, which I had only for a few weeks before replacing it with the E6510, had problems with crackling and popping.  Increasing the buffers helped somewhat, but I was never able to fully eliminate the problem without replacing the laptop with a different model.  When viewing at 'Audio load' graph in Pianoteq, the graph levels looked great, except for the regular "spikes" which corresponded to the popping noises.

(I used the same Ubuntu Linux operating system on all of them; 32-bit on the D620, and 64-bit on the E6500 and E6510.)

It's possible that it's just a hardware issue with your notebook.

Reply by skip

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

Just FYI, I actually have the E6500 and all is fine. I use the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra, but I run Windows XP - not Linux. 

I use a buffer size of 128 (the minimum my interface supports on this laptop), and my overall processor load is 50 to 60% at full (256 voice) polyphony.

Greg.

Reply by culasheka

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Re: m-audio fast track pro noise with middle (and high) latency

I also think that´s still a hardware issue with the notebook. But the performance problems with the Sony vaio notebook let me be in doubt about that again. At least it has an Intel Core i3 350M processor, not the fastest processor but still better than some others mentioned here which do not have any problems at all.

Again, I´ll have to wait for the new notebook and see if the Core i5 will do better.