Bounce Tracks issue (EastWest)

[Steve Dunn]

Recently I've encountered an issue where a bounced track will be very different than the original MIDI track. Specifically, a sustained note (which plays that way consistently in a MIDI track through the PLAY plugin) will result in a very short note in the audio track. This has happened with orchestral instruments, keyboards and guitars so far. I'm checking event lists, making sure I don't have recording layers inadvertently ending notes, and all so far without success. I've used Sonar with EastWest sounds for a decade or so and have never encountered this until the last month or so. Ideas and suggestions are most welcome!

[Matthew Sorrels]

There are a few threads on Play's issue with fast bouncing.  Starting with Play 5.0 they changed how Play streams data which can result in release tails not playing depending on how much of the samples are in memory and how fast the storage device is.  EastWest support are pretty much determined to ignore this major failure and will run you in circles with blaming your computer/your hard drive/your DAW when it's really their software.

You may be able to work around it by loading the samples fully into ram, placing the samples on a very fast SSD and not fast bouncing any tracks.  But even in the best conditions it is still broken and can and will manifest.  There is no 100% reliable solution really, no matter what other users may claim.  Recent versions of Play 6 using the VST3 version only seems to work slightly better for me but it is still possible to get it to fail.  If you have the ram try turning off "Stream from Disk" in the Play menu.  You may also be able to adjust the cache settings for your drive in preferences/streaming (though there are bugs there also, for example on my computers that option lists no drives you might have more luck).  All that and using a slow bounce/render can usually get you a viable recording.  Rolling back to a 4.x version of Play can also work but cuts you off from all the other features added to Play 5 and 6.

[Steve Dunn]

I did find that turning off "Fast Bounce" seems to fix the problem - though it certainly slows everything down considerably. (I shudder to think about future full orchestra+ pieces that require multiple dozens of tracks. Gonna be drinking more tea than usual.)

Grateful for the input. Thanks!

[gustabo]

I've found that changing Play to stream from ram rather than disc fixes this.

[Byron Dickens]

Good to know. 

[Robert Bone]

I randomly experienced this issue about a year ago, never resolved it, using EastWest Gypsy Violin.  It would play back perfectly when the project was first loaded, and then after that, it was hit or miss on whether or not the notes would be super abbreviated.  No key switches were used, it would just decide to lop off almost the entire note's duration, for the whole track.

Bob Bone

 

[Noel Borthwick]

On 8/3/2019 at 9:08 AM, gustabo said:

I've found that changing Play to stream from ram rather than disc fixes this.

If so this typically indicates a problem or race condition with the disk streaming code in the synth. There is no reason why a disk streaming synth should miss audio samples irrespective of how fast the bounce is. The synth should throttle the streaming until it has all the audio it needs. When bouncing there is no time limit since unlike playback there is no risk of a dropout. There have been various occurrences of similar issues with disk streaming synths in the past.

[Robert Bone]

4 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

If so this typically indicates a problem or race condition with the disk streaming code in the synth. There is no reason why a disk streaming synth should miss audio samples irrespective of how fast the bounce is. The synth should throttle the streaming until it has all the audio it needs. When bouncing there is no time limit since unlike playback there is no risk of a dropout. There have been various occurrences of similar issues with disk streaming synths in the past.

Thanks!  Good to know.

Bob Bone