Sawstudio, levelizer and stylus bug?

[Bert]

Hi

I encountered a strange behaviour today: while playback was looping I inserted the leveliser in a track that had already loaded Spectrasonics' Stylus RMX as a Softsynth. After I tweaked a little with the levelizers' compressor settings (not the 'limiting' stuff) the playhead suddenly left the loop region and wouldn't stop. It simply didn't react to pressing stop, hitting spacebar whatsoever. The only thing I could do was shut down Saw and get the XP error message.

Now I wasn't sure in the beginning if Stylus RMX would even work in Saw since it didn't work 100% in other sequencer software in the beginning either. But here the error occured while changing settings in the levelizer. So would this be a Stylus bug or does this happen with other plugins, too?

Best regards

[Dave Labrecque]

Bert,

This is a known bug with the Levelizer. If you're tweaking parameters while playback is at the loop point, this can happen. Most of SAW (and other plugs) are pretty solid here, but, for some reason, the Levelizer gets thrown for a loop. It's a pain, but I've learned to work around it by making the loop section longer and doing my tweaks to the Levelizer only after the start of the loop and not toward or at the end, where this snag can get you.

[Bob L]

There is still some thread complications when the loop point gets reached and control threads are active while adjusting controls in some instances... not one that is easy to duplicate... especially on different systems.

But, anytime the engine is locked, you can force a shutdown of all engine threads without needing to error out... simply press the Break key (Pause on some keyboards) and that should cause a forced engine shutdown and reset all threads within a few seconds.

There should be no problems with Stylus or any of the other Spectrasonics plugs... I use them all the time.

Bob L

[UpTilDawn]

BobL said:

But, anytime the engine is locked, you can force a shutdown of all engine threads without needing to error out... simply press the Break key (Pause on some keyboards) and that should cause a forced engine shutdown and reset all threads within a few seconds.

Excuse me if I butt in here for a moment to ask a question... :o

Bob, will this fix (the break key) work in a situation where the computer freezes? There have been times when I am trying to record midi playback from one program (say Sonar) into Saw and the thing just freezes in place.... no mouse movement, nothing...

DanT

[Bob L]

I would definitely try the Break key before I would give up and end the task.

Whether it works or not all depends on exactly how the computer is locked up.

The Break key is trapped by SAWStudio and attempts to cleanly stop the dozen or more threads that control the engine... shutting them down systematically in sequence... if it succeeds... the crash is restored... if not... oh well.

Bob L

[Bert]

There should be no problems with Stylus or any of the other Spectrasonics plugs... I use them all the time.

Bob L

Thanks, that sounds good!


when I am trying to record midi playback from one program (say Sonar) into Saw

Dan, I'm just curious. How do you do that? Do you record the other sequencers output via the audio interface? I wonder if there is way around this when the sequencer and Saw are on the same machine. Of course Rewire would be perfect here.

Bert

[UpTilDawn]

Posted by Bert
Dan, I'm just curious. How do you do that? Do you record the other sequencers output via the audio interface?

Thru the soundcard, internally? Yeah... Works easily and always in the studio at home, but not on the computers at school. I simply arm and start record in Saw, then start playback in the sequencer... I often do the same thing (at home) with Sound Forge, recording playback from a media player or sequencing program with no issues.....



Of course Rewire would be perfect here.


I've thought about this, but I really don't get why there's a problem playing midi in one program and recording it at the same time into another program.
And yes, these are on the same machine.
DanT

p.s. Thanks Bob. I'll try that first next time the computer freezes.

[Bert]

Dan, what I like about rewire is that the two apps run in perfect sync (at least on my machine). You can start, stop, rewind, select regions and change tempo in either app and the other will automatically synch with no delay, even during playback. In rewire version 2 you can even have the midi data in your rewire host and play synth and samplers in the client. That's what I do with Reason, I sometimes use it as drum machine and also a great sample based Rhodes that comes with Reason. On the other hand I have all my midi data in cubase, because I prefer editing midi there and have all the data visually together in one app. Works great.

Bert

[Dave Labrecque]

Bob,

Thanks for the reminder about the Break key. Pretty handy. If I remember to use it. :)

[MMP]

If it ain't break, then don't fix it.

I mean broke....http://www.sawstudiouser.net/forums/images/icons/icon12.gif


MM

[UpTilDawn]

Bert,
Thanks for the insight. I'll have to put Reason higher on my list of things to try.

DanT