Bug in 6.3 or hardware issue?

Can't say I've experienced that - could you describe the noise though sandalholme? (pretty hard to describe these things)

Things I'm not sure that I'm understanding, and some ideas:
a)
Does the noise happen by itself regarding recently played facility, or is it some noise you set up somehow to play to alert you?
b)
When it's the pedal responsible for the noise, are you releasing or depressing a pedal, or holding it down?
c)
Does it only happen with one piano or preset?
d)
When it happens during a crotchet rest, is it while your pedal is up, down or moving?

Hoping that leads to a clue - but my first thought without knowing what the noise is, is that it sounds like hardware.

If the sound is Pianoteq's pedal noise being triggered inappropriately, maybe a switch/contact/spring or cable issue. A pedal contact can go haywire (plenty of that over the years).

If you've rebooted everything fresh, unplugged everything and replugged in does it still happen? Sometimes a version of the old "turn it off and back on again" is overlooked - but also, sometimes unplugging from the power altogether for long enough for static charges to dissipate can be the thing. I'm finding this a little more with more recent consumer gear (most recently a TV rebooting in a loop - fixed by unplugging for 30 seconds - just turning it off with remote did nothing by comparison - it needed to drop charge completely to kill whatever it was happening).

Thanks for the responses. Not much time yet to experiment but

The sound is like that when you switch off an amplifier. Not loud, a small 'thud' but with some mid-range overtones.  It happens - always has - after I've finished playing and that doesn't worry me. In my limited testing today it is also apparent when loading a new preset. Tried Petrof, Steinways D and B, Steingraeber. Again, this doesn't worry me. The sound - coming midway between the speakers - in short rests seems to have disappeared today, just the final one a few seconds after ceasing playing. However, I tested the pedals and it looks like hardware. Not consistently, but all 3 pedals - nothing being played - sometimes created the same sound but not always. Immediately on depressing the pedal, then a second time as it was depressed further and the 2 sounds again when the pedal was released. It shouldn't be due to writing to disk as I have an SSD.

Any expertise on curing pedal noises? Not physical ones like squeaks that I took the graphite to on acoustics, but the result I think of a signal or signals being sent via the midi link. If you have ever tried to edit wav files in Audacity and get a noise at the join, the sound is like that but deeper in tone and slightly louder.

This could also be a power saving option on your sound card or amp.
Lot of sound ic's auto mute when no audio I played. When this is not properly implemented in software or hardware you could also hear pops and other noises.

Zounds, thanks to MrRoland! (Excellent point, absolutely check power settings). Maybe there's a system audio element you can turn off. Firehose of ideas follows.

Since nobody else has chimed in to say they have this issue, it may be fairly safe to rule out a bug in 6.3

In my Win OS, the main audio mixer detects onboard and external audio when plugged in there can be occasional drama when something 'sticks' for some reason or other. My ASIO4All driver interface is handy (quick, light, instant) displays both as active.. I can turn on/off either one in its interface - and the Windows mixer might also have things left behind which can be zapped or muted by deselecting it in the OS mixer.

I also would make sure to turn off things like Mic and Cam and any voice input or communications functions. Maybe some settings relating to "accessibility" could be active (like "listen for voice commands" type things - which may be interfering).

I haven't dealt with some old settings for decades, but some old device issues I remember made for some weird problems - like moving the mouse causing audio glitching - a change to old school startup and other .bat files and bouncing the drivers around limited IRQ? slots - glad to forget this - not to say it's all less complex today - maybe often more user friendly on the face of it but equally Kafkaesque at times.

Your last comment sandalholme, these points make a good case for something system side, rather than pedals etc.

Something like "Use hardware" or "Always Resample 41.1kHz<->48kHz", "Pull Mode", "Latency compensate", "Force Driver to 16 Bit" - mostly things we might not see or deal with ever but if things like this exist in your audio driver settings, maybe something on or off, up or down here could work.

I'm wondering if you've also checked the other 2 curves, "Note Off" and "Aftertouch" - esp. if it now looks like key presses also set off the strange noise.

All things in perspective, it does seem like maybe something to do with your system's DAC (digital audio conversion) is worth considering. If something is struggling there, it could mean that packets are being translated from one sample rate to another in chunks, leading to glitches like loop point clicks. (TV to stereo system has this prob currently, little click per second or so, noticed when bass is heavy) - the output signal might contain extraneous data (like surround data) which the stereo system drops and resamples on the fly with a quick and dirty output - probably fixable but it's only noticed in some Movies and broadcasts, otherwise I can live with it. Exactly what decoding problem it is, will remain a mystery but maybe something like this is your gremlin.

I didn't ask, because originally thinking about physical pedals but maybe if none of these things help, you might want to list some specs (like machine, keyboard, what sound drivers, using any external audio device or what onboard sound drivers you use and other such things, powered speakers, headphone amp or just system headphone jack etc).

Since I'm not OSX savvy, there would be others more likely to find (or know about) specific things to do with your OS.

Speaking of hardware, maybe it's possible that your keyboard is sending weird note data? Maybe it only happens with specific notes?

Sorry we can't be there in real time to see all the variables.

If you're using onboard sound or an external audio unit, maybe drivers for these can be updated but my experience is that this is often very typical given customer support advice which while good advice, might be glossing over something else and I rarely find this to be the answer.

Suggesting some other things to consider within Pianoteq, in case they help:

Edit/Preferences/Devices tab:

- check that the correct audio device is active (sometimes using another audio app when not plugged into my external sound gear can require some manual re-set at both ends of a session). Maybe updated drivers are available, or a roll-back?

- increase the "Audio buffer size" (higher latency but more stable).

- "Sample rate" lower - or matching any outboard gear or DAW settings - 41KHz or 48KHz is truly OK unless some particular preference/reasons apply for higher specs. If you sample rate is too high, it may be that the DAC issue resides here.

Edit/Preferences/Perf tab:

- match your Internal sample rate to the same as Host sample rate - or try other numbers in the drop down menu there. Maybe a mismatch or certain number combos here may create some strange DAC artefacts like you describe. (this feels a good chance)

- check polyphony. Choosing lower numbers might really not be noticeable.

- check box Multicore rendering if applicable.

Other things coming to mind, sometimes, you might find some setting for CPU which is a little more specific than "High power" vs. "Balanced" type check-boxes in settings. I haven't a clue about OSX, but there might be some power users who improve things with a few command lines - with all caveats inferred here.

Odd chance that you have an old version of Pianoteq installed, are they set the same? I think they should be independent and not interfere with each other but may depend on other things - like, if one was installed for all, or just current user.

One example of other system settings, maybe there's a choice to favour system processes above program processes - I've found favouring programs is better for my machine even though others report the opposite. Only one of my DAWs seems to run better when favouring system processes - maybe it's hard-coded to be 'nicer' than other DAWs (haven't checked why but goes to show that no single thing is standard for all).

Probably exhausted things I'd suggest for now - but hoping something here works out for you sandalholme - it's always good to finally eradicate the things which take us away from the experience!

Wow, interesting clues again sandalholme. Sometimes, finding and fixing rare glitches can seem a little like making the first working lightbulb

Looking at equipment, one obvious further to-do item would be to check the Arcam settings in case it's doing some overly heroic DAC converting to 192kH or suchlike.

But - that clue re the break in auto midi archive not happening as expected between playing.. on first thoughts, I'm still getting the sense of a hardware item - like the pedal firing "down" (or a keypress registering as not "off" yet) during that break, so Pianoteq thinks you're still playing.. when you returned it carried on as if the pedal was down or a note was held? Could be something else - but that's just first to mind. You might try opening that archived midi in a DAW (something other than Pianoteq) and listen to just before the break and hear what happens, and look for pedal markers or notes held at the start of that silent section. That will pretty clearly set the case for "yes" or "no" - this pedal or key press idea is or isn't the prob.

To rule in or out the archiving system itself, maybe go into Piantoeq's setting for the archive (right click where "Blues Demo" is on startup).

With auto-archiving "Off" does the noise still happen?

If so - maybe we're back to MrRoland's suggestions re your computer's Power settings.

If the disk chosen for midi archiving is powered "Off" until woken and it's kind of waking and sleeping every few seconds (associated current or some artefact creating the click) or on some other signal it listens for. If anything it could be some other power setting to do with sleep, hibernation and some other buzzwords to do with similar constructs.

In that case, maybe you could set the system to "always awake" (at least while using Pianoteq). Modern operating systems seem to stick these settings all over the supposed control "center" so you might also have to open all sorts of "advanced tab" or find further reading about OSX features on related forums.

I set my PCs to never sleep - no screen savers etc. Max power setting, not too many things working in background - kind of a lot of things like "Do not run tasks when using computer". Prob with this is, certain system items may only listen for key press and mouse movement etc.. maybe some running programs (without user input passing to sys to measure for) can be confusing.

Other idea, headphones - does it happen the same way using these? It may be more than one issue of course (because this wouldn't solve the silent section of midi) but if there's no click in cans, then it may be something about powering the speakers, either in isolation or tandem with something else.

Last idea coming to mind, more for jest - blame the phone! or with some level of possibility, a wireless connectivity issue could also be present - in the case of having bluetooth maybe kicking in every time your disk writes (in case you also want to automatically share! via bluetooth with your social network) or wifi hovering/checking if it can sync up with cloud accounts. So many things can be going on, poking around with disk read/writes happening in background - sometimes we remember de-fanging all these things, only to find them re-set to "on" by an OS update.

Good to see it narrowed down - here's hoping it's soon to be a thing in the past