Long time user, but newbie at audio tech... little problem here!

[SkyberrySquirrel]

Hi everyone! I'm Ben, a music hobbyist with a love of film and video game soundtracks and scoring.

I've been using Garritan libraries ever since I was... younger x3 I've always used GPO as a plugin for FL Studio, which is my DAW of choice, has always been and will always be :3

It has always worked flawlessly, even in high demand scenarios where I had the entire orchestra loaded playing at high polyphony with low latency. Notably, it worked well on a 2005 budget laptop with no hyperthreading, no multi-core processing, and no special sound card of any kind.

Recently I purchased a new computer with a faster processor and more, faster memory than I'd ever owned in the past. Accordingly, I finally purchased GPO4 to go along with it.

It still plays fine, and the sounds are wonderful as ever. I especially love the Stereo Stage effect and built in Reverb. But I can only load so many instruments in this new version before problems start to arise. For example, say I build a full strings environment with enough sections and solos to fill the entire 16 outputs on the ARIA Multi player. Now I want to add a brass section. But now I find that some notes on the newly loaded brass instruments aren't playing. Some will make a little buzzing sound. Some notes will play for a half-second before cutting out.

What's curious about this effect is that it is constant. I had a French Horn solo that would play flawlessly on the upper register but crackle and stop on the lower octave or so. The SAME notes were effected, so it wasn't a random strain on resources.

It's BOGGLING my mind! Just tears me apart that I can't have the whole thing playing together.

Any help from the tech wizards here would be helpful. I know this computer is more than capable of playing the samples.

Kudos to the Garritan team. They've created something truly special here. Just wish I could use it ):

[Steve Johnson]

Hi everyone! I'm Ben, a music hobbyist with a love of film and video game soundtracks and scoring.

I've been using Garritan libraries ever since I was... younger x3 I've always used GPO as a plugin for FL Studio, which is my DAW of choice, has always been and will always be :3

It has always worked flawlessly, even in high demand scenarios where I had the entire orchestra loaded playing at high polyphony with low latency. Notably, it worked well on a 2005 budget laptop with no hyperthreading, no multi-core processing, and no special sound card of any kind.

Recently I purchased a new computer with a faster processor and more, faster memory than I'd ever owned in the past. Accordingly, I finally purchased GPO4 to go along with it.

It still plays fine, and the sounds are wonderful as ever. I especially love the Stereo Stage effect and built in Reverb. But I can only load so many instruments in this new version before problems start to arise. For example, say I build a full strings environment with enough sections and solos to fill the entire 16 outputs on the ARIA Multi player. Now I want to add a brass section. But now I find that some notes on the newly loaded brass instruments aren't playing. Some will make a little buzzing sound. Some notes will play for a half-second before cutting out.

What's curious about this effect is that it is constant. I had a French Horn solo that would play flawlessly on the upper register but crackle and stop on the lower octave or so. The SAME notes were effected, so it wasn't a random strain on resources.

It's BOGGLING my mind! Just tears me apart that I can't have the whole thing playing together.

Any help from the tech wizards here would be helpful. I know this computer is more than capable of playing the samples.

Kudos to the Garritan team. They've created something truly special here. Just wish I could use it ):

Hello, SkyberrySquirrel, and welcome to the forum!

I'll take a crack at this and say that it could be a problem with your audio hardware. Are you using your computer's onboard audio, or do you have a PCI/PCIe sound card? Let me know, and we'll see if I can help you.

Steve

[SkyberrySquirrel]

Yo Steve,

This PC's all integrated. Bought it at Best Buy.

The weird thing is, the audio set up is literally the same (down to the speaker manufacturer) as the last two computers I've owned, on which the library worked fine... and from a hardware standpoint this is a much more powerful machine. I mean, let's not mince words, it's a turd pile compared to a PC that's actually BUILT for sound design, but it's been able to get me through so far. It's actually one reason that I've stuck with Garritan and not EastWest (which, by the way, doesn't work at all on any of my computers) or others, because GPO is so light and efficient

It may not be that way anymore. 'Tis a shame.

P.S. This laptop has the standard issue Realtek driver system that comes with Toshiba Satellites, in case that's important.

[Steve Johnson]

Yo Steve,

This PC's all integrated. Bought it at Best Buy.

The weird thing is, the audio set up is literally the same (down to the speaker manufacturer) as the last two computers I've owned, on which the library worked fine... and from a hardware standpoint this is a much more powerful machine. I mean, let's not mince words, it's a turd pile compared to a PC that's actually BUILT for sound design, but it's been able to get me through so far. It's actually one reason that I've stuck with Garritan and not EastWest (which, by the way, doesn't work at all on any of my computers) or others, because GPO is so light and efficient

It may not be that way anymore. 'Tis a shame.

P.S. This laptop has the standard issue Realtek driver system that comes with Toshiba Satellites, in case that's important.

Okay, you said the magic word -- laptop. The problem you'll have running GPO4 is that ASIO driver support with your sound card is essential for proper operation of GPO4 and ARIA. This rules out pretty much every consumer-grade sound card, including your laptop's onboard audio. There are, however, a few work-arounds I can suggest:

1. There's a free ASIO driver you can download called ASIO4ALL. It's supposed to work with most (and I emphaisze the word "most") non-ASIO cards. For the download and some online documentation, go here. There's no way of knowing for sure if it'll work on your system until you try it, but if ASIO4ALL doesn't do the job, at least it will do no harm. Also, the developer is rather proactive about working with users on functional issues, so be sure to read the FAQ/Troubleshooting page when you visit the ASIO4ALL website. Now, if ASIO4ALL does work on your computer, you should notice that the audio problems you're having with GPO4 will go away, at least for the most part.

2. You may be able to find an external USB sound card that supports ASIO. Unfortunately, I have no use for laptops, so being exclusive to desktop systems, I don't know what (if anything) may be available along the lines of what I'm suggesting. If there are other forum members using laptops who see this post, maybe they can recommend what to look for.

3. Consider buying a desktop PC. Contrary to what you might believe, you don't need a super-powerful high end system to run your music software. Back in September I purchased a Dell with the following specs:

Inspiron 570 mini-tower desktop
CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 240 Processor 2.80 GHz
Memory: 4 GB RAM (expandable to 8 GB)
Hard drive: WDC 500 GB
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

The above cost me about $450 plus another $200 for a Dell P2010H 20" flat panel monitor, which I chose because it rotates from landscape to portrait orientation (which I needed for my score work in Finale). The system resources I have are more than enough to run GPO4, ARIA, Sonar (and soon to be added) Altiverb, plus all of my normal apps. Dell makes great computers, so if you are considering a desktop, I recommend them highly. Add an ASIO sound card for another $100-$200, and a screaming fast, powerful system with everything you need should cost you around $700-$800 (less if you already have a monitor).

Since your laptop was a recent purchase, I realize that you probably won't want to run out and buy yet another computer tomorrow. I make my desktop recommendation only as something you may want to consider for the near future. My point is (and yes, there is one in there somewhere! ) that you don't need to be afraid that it would be a budget-busting proposition. I'd say for now try ASIO4ALL first. Then if you want to step up to an ASIO USB sound card, do some research and see what's out there.

Hope this helps!

Steve

[SkyberrySquirrel]

Thanks Steve :3

Yeah, ASIO4ALL comes with new versions of FL Studio, and it works to resolve clicks and pops, as well as giving lower latency, but no fix for the loading issue compared to Direct Sound.

Oh well. I guess I'm going minimalist for the next several months. :3

I'll look in to USB sound cards, but I remain very suspicious of their practical use. USB is slow slow SLOW for stuff like this

Thanks again!
Ben

[Steve Johnson]

Thanks Steve :3

Yeah, ASIO4ALL comes with new versions of FL Studio, and it works to resolve clicks and pops, as well as giving lower latency, but no fix for the loading issue compared to Direct Sound.

Oh well. I guess I'm going minimalist for the next several months. :3

I'll look in to USB sound cards, but I remain very suspicious of their practical use. USB is slow slow SLOW for stuff like this

Thanks again!
Ben

Yeah, you raise a good point about the limitations of USB sound cards, so probably not a good idea for our kind of work. There's one more thing you might want to try.

When I bought my new computer, I also bought the latest Turtle Beach PCI sound card not realizing that TB had gotten out of the pro audio market some years ago. ASIO4ALL works for me sometimes, but not in Sonar. There I've found that the WDM driver seems to work best. If FL Studio's audio configuration allows you to select different audio drivers (which I think it should), see if WDM is on the list. If it is, give it a try.

Steve

[Reegs]

Hi guys, I disagree.

Today's USB2.0 sound cards are sufficient to do the job just fine. Just buy one that is billed as an 'audio interface.'

For $150 the Presonus Audiobox is a decent buy. Another very popular and successful brand of units is the Fast Track series: Pro ($200) or USB ($150). Tascam, Edirol, and Akai also make good products in that price range.

Focusrite recently came out with a Saffire unit priced at $199 on USB. I haven't used that one personally, but I like Focusrite gear.

Reegs

[Haydn]

Most newer USB interfaces using USB2 will work fine. Most onboard audio devices just aren't designed for DAW use.

We were doing demos of the Garritan Authorized Steinway at NAMM using an RME USB interface. This card was getting .5ms latency! So USB can be up to the task.

Jim

[fred Holmes]

I run a Dell dual core laptop using the Roland/cakewalk UA1g outboard audio adapter with all the Garritan Aria programs - works flawlessly. Around $90.00

Fred