Robot voice when minimized

Cantabile
1

I have been using Voicemeeter with Cantabile for a long time and everything was working fine. I finally decided to update to latest both programs and since then I’ve been having problems.

Everything works fine on Cantabile when the program is on the foreground, but as soon as I minimize it, my voice turns into a robot in about 5 seconds.

I’m using a buffer size of 128 and a sample rate of 48000. Every settings seems to be matching everywhere.

2

HI and welcome along!
Many of us have had experience with Voicemeeter, which is a great program but certainly not bullet proof. What you’ve described is something we have all experienced at one time or another.
A few months back I took a look at another VB Audio product, Matrix, which I think is more stable, extremely comprehensive in terms of patching between apps, and I found it significantly more stable.
Check out this topic:

3

Oh, one suggestion for the robot voice is to flip Cantabile’s power button in the top right. Aha, you’re thinking, I’ve minimized it! No access.
MIDI to the rescue. Just make a binding from a switch on your midi controller.

4

Flipping the power button fixes it for a bit then it comes back as long as it’s minimized. I’ll take a look at Matrix, but I doubt the issue is coming from Voicemeeter since everything is working without Cantabile.

5

This seems to be the same problem/behaviour that I get when I use multiple desktops on windows 11 (on a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Gen10).

I have a Media Player reproducing a track and I also play a VST instrument at the same time.
The audio stutters and slows down when I select a desktop different from the one where Cantabile is opened. I have just checked that the same happens when I minimize Cantabile. A few more info:

  1. the problem does not manifest itself if only the Media Player is producing audio; I have to also play the VST instrument for the problem to happen
  2. there’s a few seconds delay between the desktop-change or window-minimizing action and the stuttering onset; there is also a delay of a few seconds after going back to the Cantabile desktop (or restoring Cantabile window) before the audio turns back to normal

Though I use VoiceMeeter as the OP, I do not think it is a VM problem, because in that case it would also happen (I guess) when only the Media Player is producing audio.

Maybe some interaction with the OS? Maybe @brad could sheld some light.

I will check what happens when using Asio4All instead of VM as ASIO driver and I will report about it.

Gabriel

6

Sounds like the common voice meeter robotic sound issue:

Cantabile and VoiceMeeter - Cantabile - Software for Performing Musicians (cantabilesoftware.com)

But if it’s only happening when minimized or when desktops are switched in could be related to Windows de-prioritizing the audio thread. Do you see spikes in Cantabile’s profiler (View menu → Profiler) when the problem is happening?

7

Well, I can’t see the profiler when cantabile is minimized and I’m unsure if it continues to sample performance when minimized, but I don’t see any spikes.

I’m pretty sure it’s a windows prioritizing problem. I tried changing the priority of the process in task manager and it didn’t help.

8

I don’t even have to mess with the cantabile power button, it comes back on its own when the application is back on the foreground. Just have to wait around 5 seconds.

9

The profile always runs in the background and keeps the last few minutes history - so you should be able to reproduce the problem, then bring up the profiler and take a look.

That suggest this is external to Cantabile then. VoiceMeeter sync issue most likely.

As mentioned, it might be external to Cantabile - you might have to tweak VoiceMeeter settings.

Do you know if other apps connected to VoiceMeeter have the same issue when minimized?

10

I remade my setup using VB Matrix and everything seems to be working well now. Pretty surprised to be honest. Thanks for the help everyone.

2 Likes
11

Hi @brad, i’ve used Cantabile and Voicemeter extensively during my last year and this issue seems happening only when Cantabile (or other VST hosts like Kushview Element, Light Host) are minimized. I’ve tried everything, from disabling multi-thread processing, to enabling real-time priority to it or dedicating a single core, still happens to be affecting the quality of sound and glitching…

This is a profiler screenshot, minimization happened from 16:10:40 and started glitching around 16:10:45, as you can see no spikes are detected.

image
image1920×751 126 KB

I know you and Voicemeter team were looking into this issue as i read a lot of forum posts and both teams guides about this issure regarding the software sync stuff happening, hope this can help understand this issue better.

I now solved keeping Cantabile open on one of my screens while doing stuff on the other one, but hope you can come up with a solution soon.

Thanks for all your hard work!

13

Hi @sawdust_26

As far as I’m aware the VoiceMeeter robotic sound is a synchronization issue rather than a performance issue. I’ve made all the changes suggested by the VoiceMeeter devs to try any reduce the chances of this happening. I’m not sure what else Cantabile can do about it.

See this page, and report to VoiceMeeter if you can’t find a working setup.

Brad