SOUND ISSUES WITH SPECIFIC SOFTWARE PLUGINS

[Robert L. Bryant]

I am experiencing a great deal of "snap crackle & pops" using specific plugins purchased from Spectrasonics. I am wondering if anyone can give me some advice on how I can  alleviate this issue in Cakewalk by BandLab? I am using Windows 10 64 Bit operating system, Creative SoundBlaster XFi-Titanium HD sound card (ASIO), and of course Cakewalk.

I have ruled out any type of virus issue on my computer because all of the other plugins work perfectly, and I have had technical assistance recently scan for any virus, and none were found. 

The only plugins I seem to have issues with is the Spectrasonics plugins. I have Garritan Jazz & Big Band as well as Personal Orchestra loaded, Dimension Pro, Rapture as well as other Cakewalk Sonar products and not having any issues with any of them.

I spoke to the staff at Creative and they asked if I was having any other issues such as website audio, and Windows Media player and I am not. I realize that this issue should be directed towards Spectrasonics, but I am trying to cover all of the bases before getting them on the phone again. I may be overlooking a setting in Cakewalk that will help resolve this issue.  Could use some help! Thank you

 

[msmcleod]

Spectrasonics plugins are particularly CPU intensive, due to the complexity of their synthesis engine. I've certainly found Omnisphere to be one of the most CPU demanding plugins out of all of the ones I use. 

The other plugins you mention are largely sample based, so this is probably why they're not having any issues.

It may just be that you have your ASIO buffer size set too low.

A higher ASIO buffer size should reduce the load on the CPU, although this will increase latency.

You could also consider freezing your Spectrasonics tracks - this will drastically reduce the CPU load for those tracks, and you can always unfreeze them if you need to edit them again.

[Robert L. Bryant]

Thanks Mark! I have increased the size of my buffer in ASIO and hope that it will do the trick. I will test it shortly and let you know what happens here.

[Leighton Cooper]

Have you tried using the MME drivers.  Asio stops my sequencer from reacting with my streaming  music study  and the tutorials I work with to learn the program.  I own Omnisphere and have had no problems with it in Cakewalk.   Now Reason Propellerheads is a different story.  I can't get it to run 2.5 or 2.6.  But I'm having so much success with  Cake that I just can't stop using it. 

[Robert L. Bryant]

Thanks for the advice Leighton, but so far since I have not had any additional issues with Omnisphere in tandem with ASIO drivers. I recently increased the buffers in the ASIO drives and downloaded the software updates and installed them into Cakewalk, and I am happy to say that I am not having anymore issues. I have used Cakewalk products for over 10 years now and would not use any other DAW for my production work.

[Leighton Cooper]

Thanks I actually fixed my problem with the Omni PlugIn in reason today.  I have to load it through FL modular host to get to work.  Directly trying to load it as a plug in keeps it at the version 2.0 level.  But using that it loaded pefectly the 2.6 version.

[msmcleod]

On 10/14/2019 at 3:23 AM, Leighton Cooper said:

Thanks I actually fixed my problem with the Omni PlugIn in reason today.  I have to load it through FL modular host to get to work.  Directly trying to load it as a plug in keeps it at the version 2.0 level.  But using that it loaded pefectly the 2.6 version.

It sounds to me like your Omnisphere upgrade from 2.0 to 2.6 hasn't been done properly - i.e. it's left your 2.0 DLL in a different location to 2.6, either that, or you may have manually copied your Omnisphere DLL elsewhere in the past.

Having two copies of the same plugin can cause these sorts of issues. I'd recommend searching for Omnisphere.dll in all your VST search paths, and then again on your whole system. If I'm right, you'll find more than one. Just rename the old one to Omnisphere.dll.bak, and make sure the location of the newer one is in Cakewalk's VST search path.

[Leighton Cooper]

Thanks I kind of have that as an idea too, but since Omni is so large.  I didn't want to thrash about and lose my version that works.  But now it's time to correct that. I'll look through the folders it might be in.  I seem to be getting this a lot.  Cobalt VST plugIn wouldn't read the sequence so I went in to the PI and just checked off a few buttons and then back on and now it seems to work.  So I'm figuring things out.   Thanks