i am using C3 Performer with (I think) a pretty basic setup. I don’t have the most powerful Laptop but i have gone through Brad’s Glitch Free tutorial and have everything set as best as I can. I am however having a reoccurring problem when I play notes from my Novation Impulse. I generally use this controller to play Addictive Keys Piano patches or Analog Lab 3 Synth patches. If the keyboard “sits” for a minute or so and I begin playing then often there is a delay (as if the keyboard has to “warm-up”) before the whole sound rings gloriously from the monitors. While playing them if i press the sustain pedal (again if I haven’t pressed the pedal in a while) then the whole thing “Glitches” for half a second and then performs normal. Maybe a better Laptop is in my future but until then… any similar experiences from the forum? Another thought as well… do you think I might get better performance if instead of using the USB connection (to the Laptop) for power and midi, if I used the Midi Connectors for Midi and the USB just for power. TIA
I have a somewhat similar issue with Blue3: when switching from slow to fast Leslie speed, I get glitches when performing that switch for the first time, but only for the first time. Feels like a page fault (having to load previously un-used code or samples).
Usually, I play through my main sounds once before a gig, so I’ve been safe so far, but of course it’s a bit worrying…
But overall it’s very helpful to play through everything once before getting into critical gig situations, so you make sure that any initialization issues are done…
Your delay and glitching issues feel like page faults to me - how is your RAM setup? Have you had a look at overal RAM utilization?
Hi Thorsten,
thanks for the reply. I haven’t thought to check the actual CPU usage so I will. Interesting thing though… While working a little bit yesterday (at my house not the rehearsal space) I didn’t have the sustain pedal hooked up and the Novation performed flawlessly. No glitches of hiccups. Maybe it’s my pedal. Us hobby musicians are not bottomless wells of cash and so I am actually using an old Ensoniq Pedal from the early 90’s. While i know it a simple On/Off pedal maybe this is causing some of my troubles.
Anyway I hope some other users comment as well and i will poke around inside the performance counters of my Laptop.
a pedal by itself should not create glitches - it is more what that pedal does to your instrument. When you hit your sustain pedal, your piano plugin needs to process more voices in parallel, since that is what sustain does - it keeps notes ringing while you play new notes. This puts additional strain on your CPU, plus it requires more samples to be read from RAM (or disk if the’ve been swapped) at the same time.
The only way a malfunctioning pedal coud create glitches would be if it erratically sent on/off messages all the time - this could confuse your instrument. But that’s easy to check - use Cantabile’s MIDI monitor on the route from your keyboard to the plugin.
Can you post the specs of your laptop (processor, speed, RAM, …) and audio interface? Overall it looks like there is a performance bottleneck somewhere; your symptoms make me suspect that your RAM is maxed out, so your piano plugin needs to pull the samples from disk, which is definitely slower than playing them from RAM.
Is it possible the USB port is powering down and needs to wake up when you play those first notes? I guess if you’re powering the keyboard via USB that wouldn’t be it. I always power controllers via an external USB wall wart and run my MIDI via MIDI to my interface- I hate USB, it’s glitchy under Windows. The only thing that remains USB is my interface. And look in the power options and make double sure those ports are all set to stay always on.
Hi. I don’t have that issue, and I have switched to using USB MIDI where I can in the live rig (OK so far) as it saved on the IO count on my rack (i.e. one USB port as opposed to two MIDI ports per device).
Brad’s Glitch Free Audio guide is a good resource to follow to ensure that USB devices remain powered as per Fred’s recommendation.