Soft Pedal Strangeness (Bob L)

[Bob V]

Hi,

Have encountered a strange problem when using the new Garritan Steinway Grand (Pro) VST within SAW. (I have SSLite, but I imagine it would act the same within SS & SSB) The piano sounds great and all works fine until the soft pedal (#67) is depressed. Then, if I am holding a chord or series of notes down, they continue to sound. BUT any new notes do NOT sound while the soft pedal stays down. It silences all sound from the Garritan Steinway Grand as long as the soft pedal stays down. Once it is released, all sounds come through fine. So it's just a momentary, but truly bothersome, thing..

FWIW, the same thing occurs whether the VST is working with or without MidiWorkShop. I've tried it both ways; the result is the same.

I've written about this to the developer of the new ARIA engine/gui (plogue.com) and sent him some screenshots that I hope will lead to a solution. Just thought I'd ask here as well, since you guys might have some idea what would cause such odd behavior. My other Garritan libraries (which work within Kontakt Player 2) don't exhibit the same problem. When using the soft pedal with the Steinway piano in Garritan Personal Orchestra and with the Steinway included in the Jazz & Big Band library, it works exactly as it should. No sound is silenced while the pedal is activated. Yet the new Steinway Grand behaves as I've detailed above.

Any ideas that might help get this solved would surely be appreciated. Thanks.

Bob V

[Bob L]

Well... I am just sending the controller info as your keyboard plays it... there is no code translation on my part... so my first impression would be that it is a problem in the new player that is interpreting the midi data and creating the sound.

Bob L

[Bob V]

Thanks for the reply, Bob.

Thought it was worth a chance that it might have been something that you were already aware of. Apparently, I was the second person who reported this to the Garritan/Plogue/ARIA people, so there's at least one other SAW Studio user who has also run into this problem. Still, I'm pretty sure it'll get resolved soon enough.

Thanks again for all your fine work.

Bob V

[Tim Miskimon]

Bob V,
Have you tried the stand alone version to see if it happens there?
It sounds like either a controller issue or the Garritan Player.
I haven't noticed a soft pedal problem with Ivory Piano using Saw Studio Lite.

[Bob V]

Bob V,
Have you tried the stand alone version to see if it happens there?
It sounds like either a controller issue or the Garritan Player.
I haven't noticed a soft pedal problem with Ivory Piano using Saw Studio Lite.
Tim,
Yes, I've played it using the standalone, and that way there has been no problem with the soft pedal at all. Just happens in the VST. I imagine my controller (Kurzweil PC88) is sending out the same #67 messages in both instances. It's quite a puzzlement. The developer wrote and said that he's tested the VST in the SAW Studio demo, and it worked okay for him. Still, he's trying to get to the bottom of what's gone wrong here. Whatever it is, some setting or other, I'm sure it'll get sorted out eventually.
Glad to hear the Ivory is performing well for you in SSL.
Bob V

[Bob L]

Bob... do you have a dual cpu system... if so... try setting the process affinity in the task manager to cpu 0 only for SAWStudio after you start the program... see if that fixes the problem.

I have seen this dual stuck note thing in NI's B4 on dual processor systems... perhaps that has carried over to their other players.

Bob L

[Bob V]

Bob... do you have a dual cpu system... if so... try setting the process affinity in the task manager to cpu 0 only for SAWStudio after you start the program... see if that fixes the problem.

I have seen this dual stuck note thing in NI's B4 on dual processor systems... perhaps that has carried over to their other players.

Bob L

It's not quite a dual cpu system. It's actually a P4 3.0G HyperThreaded (currently running @ 3.3G without any other problems that I can detect.) About a week ago, I noticed while running the Steinway in standalone mode that, although Task Mgr showed a split screen when I was monitoring the processor(s) performance, only one of the screens (the right-most of the two) showed any activity while playing the Steinway. I figured I'd get better performance if I turned off Hyper-Threading entirely, not just in SAW Studio (where I had already forced a single cpu since a long time ago), but for all applications. So now Hyperthreading is completely turned off in the BIOS. (By the way, motherboard is an ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe w 1.5G RAM.)

This morning, I went back to see if the 'force single cpu' option was still checked in SAW, and I see it is greyed out and unchecked. So it must see it as a single processor.

But I discovered something I've overlooked. Recently, when I open a new SSL file, and I try to add the Steinway Grand to the pre-fx on track 1 (for ex), I get a WARNING notice: "Trouble creating or opening file for Write Operation. Check track label for Illegal File Name Characters. Make sure there is enough disk space for operation." When I close that, I get another WARNING: "Trouble writing audio file. Make sure path is valid and not write protected." It then goes ahead and brings up the plugin. Heretofore, I've just clicked past the warnings and blithely continued on. But I wonder now what all is going on. Could something have gotten corrupted, such that I should try to reinstall SSL?

Unh oh, just to check all possibilities, I went back to the same empty session and tried to open the Kontakt Player 2 plug in, and I see that I get the same WARNINGS, before it finally opens. And, most surprisingly of all, the same thing happens when I try to open the NATIVE SAW Studio Echo/Delay plugin! That sounds like something truly has happened re SSL.

Any help would really be appreciated.

Bob V

[Bob V]

Hi again,

Sorry to have gotten a bit panicky – I looked to see where the file path setup was, and it was in fact pointing to the wrong drive. I merely changed it from H: to E: and those Warning signs are gone.

However, the soft pedal problem remains.

Bob V

[Bob V]

Bob L,

Wanted to let you know that the Steinway Grand soft pedal problem has been fixed!!

David Viens sent me a newer VST plugin to try, and it works great. Despite his not being able to reproduce the silent soft pedal issue in the SAW Studio Demo, he was able to reproduce it in Samplitude10, then fixed it. Luckily, it was a similar issue. Thought you might be interested in what the technical hangup was. Here is our email back and forth:
'TIS SOLVED!! That did it. Thanks so much. I had actually posted a message yesterday on the SAW Studio forum to see if Bob Lentini had any ideas about it. Now that it's been fixed, I'd like to fill him in on what the initial problem was. Could I get that information from you so that I could pass it on to him? Like you, he's a very nice guy who strives to make his products work well for those who are using them.

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Good news indeed !
Its not really a fault in Saw studio, but something that I should have been more careful about.

For the tech details, you can just paste this verbatim to Bob Lentini:

"Saw Studio's Audio thread _controlfp settings were different than what my maths expected (_PC_64 vs _PC_53). I now backup whatever _controlfp received by the host, use mine, and put back what the host initially provided upon returning of the process call - so that it doesnt interfere with normal Saw Studio calculations"

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So there you have it. By the way, it sounds wonderful. I'm tickled that it all is functioning as it should now.

Bob Vigoda

[Bob L]

Good news.

Bob L