Pan & Ambience Problems

[Polar]

Hello, I just purchased GPO4, and am having trouble sorting a few issues with the pan controls, and Ambience reverb.

I am using ARIA 1.111, and GPO 4.02 with Snow Leopard 10.6.8, and the Stand-Alone ARIA player, as well as GarageBand '11 (v6.04).

I had initially encountered both issues on OSX Lion, but still have them on Snow Leopard, having re-installed both the player and sounds twice on Snow Leopard to test.

The problems are:

1. The pan controls do not work, for any instrument, in either the plug-in version, or the stand-alone player. I have made sure the sounds and player are both on the system drive (as the online help suggested) as well as tried the pan controls with only the built in ARIA keyboard active. As an aside, Stereo stage seems to have little or no effect on the pan effectiveness (or at all, for that matter). After trying two different OSX versions and multiple installs, and I have no clue where to go with this one, and wondering if anyone has any suggestions.

2. The Ambience controls do not work in either the plug-in version, or the stand alone player. The control knobs on the effects pane do not make any differences to the sound, and when exiting and reloading an instrument via the plug-in in GarageBand, the on/off state of ambience is always reset to 'ON'. Selecting the presets in either the plug-in or stand-alone player, do not alter the knobs on the right side of the effects pane, and make no difference to the sound. The only thing that seems to be working is the 'send' knob in the mixer. I can notice a difference in the sound when altering the 'send' knob, but even when an instrument fully 'sent' to the effects plug-in, the ambience settings have no further effect.

Thanks in advance for anyone who's able to help me troubleshoot. I am new at the DAW/VST/AU stuff, and have had limited success searching the forum or online help for a solution. At the moment, I cannot say if the problem is more widespread, as I am not familiar enough with the software to say if the additional controls are having the proper or any effect.

[EricP]

Hi Polar, welcome to the Garritan forums!

If I read you correctly, everything in GPO stays mono all the time
Do the pan knob(s) stay centered when you load different instruments (ex: Harps should be at 9 o'clock - Basses at around 3 o'clock)?

Do you use an external soundcard, or the internal phones output?
If you use monitor speakers, could you confirm that the problem persists with headphones?

[Polar]

Eric, thanks for replying.

Inside of the ARIA player (stand-alone or plugin), everything in GPO stays mono all the time.

The pan knobs do turn. They pre-load correctly for different instruments, and I am able to adjust the knobs manually as well.

The problem is that it has absolutely zero effect on the sound. The same problem goes for the ambience settings, and seemingly the stereo stage settings as well.

The buttons mentioned work in the application, but have no effect on the sound. In the case of the ambience settings, the presets do not change the various settings, and when invoked as a plugin I am not even able to keep the ambience set to 'off', it always turns itself back on. (Even though it doesn't affect the sound.)

The 'send' dial appears to work somewhat on the mixer, as instruments get louder when I send them to the effects, but I have no control over the effects. What's strange is that even though the send knob affects the sound, turning on and off the ambience plugin doesn't make any change even to a fully 'sent' instrument. Even if ambience is turned off, the send knob makes a small difference to the volume of the loaded instruments.

I use external speakers connected to my audio out jack on my iMac. Headphones do not make any difference, and if I use the pan or reverb controls in my DAW, everything on that end works fine. It's only in ARIA I am having problems making modifications to the sounds via the built in tools.

Thanks again. I'm thrilled with the sound set - but I'd sure like to have everything working!

[EricP]

The 'send' dial appears to work somewhat on the mixer, as instruments get louder when I send them to the effects, but I have no control over the effects. What's strange is that even though the send knob affects the sound, turning on and off the ambience plugin doesn't make any change even to a fully 'sent' instrument. Even if ambience is turned off, the send knob makes a small difference to the volume of the loaded instruments.

This is strange, as it doesn't correspond to ARIA's internal architecture...

PM'd you with a techy/geeky possible solution... If it works, I may put it as a new entry on the ariaengine.com FAQ ...