Best way to spend 100 ukp?

[foxysoft]

Hi all,

As you may have gathered from other threads I've posted here I have 2 major problems with my audio setup. (1) I get hiss when playing back soundfonts through my SB Live! card (2) I cannot convert any more soundfont tracks to audio without getting pops and crackles on the converted track. These have been very difficult to diagnose mainly because the CPU and memory indicators in Cubase and in task manager both show tons of spare capacity. However, when I had the pops and crackles once before, upgrading the processor solved the problem.

When my wife goes back to work next Easter I will probably be able to afford to splash out 1000ukp on a complete makeover of my system. In the meantime I've decided to spend about 100ukp to tide me over and allow me to continue working on my current song. So what is likely to give me the most bang for my buck?

(a) Add 256MB memory, upgrade the processor and use SFZ to playback my soundfonts
(b) Replace the Quattro with a second hand Delta 44 and replace the Live! card with an Audigy card to reduce hiss.
(c) Anything else you can think of?

Any advice much appreciated.

Simon.
_________________
Cubase Studio 4.5.2
Athlon 64 4000, GA-M56S-S3 mobo, ATA133, SATA150, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Dual Monitors on Radeon X600
2xUAD-1, M-Audio Delta 1010, Edirol UM-2
Outboard: SPL GoldMike, EH 12AY7, Roland JV-1010, Roland CM32L, Yamaha SY35, Korg Prophecy, Alesis MultiMix 12FX, Adam A7s, Rode NT1 & NT1-a, 2xRode M3, Shure SM57.

[dr.funk]

do you use preamps of any kind?
I found out my presonus and behringer are noisy as all heck in sx, using a delta 1010lt...

I have to make some adjustments though.

I would go with the delta. It would be quieter, but this also depends on how loud you listen to your mixes/music

[foxysoft]

[dr.funk]

hmmm

we need input from others on this because now after reading that, im thinking you should go with the audigy....
there has got to be websites and firums the deal strictly with soundfonts.....

perhaps google for soundfont forum?

[numnutz]

I'll say what I said in your other thread: lose the hissing card and stop relying on soundfonts. Use VST instruments instead.

[foxysoft]

[foxysoft]

Well, by playing around with the settings for the Quattro I managed to make the audio dropouts go away again... for now.... so I'm now convinced the problem is the Quattro and it has to go. A Delta 44 is the obvious replacement as it does basically the same as the Quattro and isn't too expensive. Is there anything else I should consider at a similar price? It must have a breakout box because I can't be crawling around under the desk to plug things in and unplug them.

Changing the Quattro should also allow me to run SFZ to play the soundfonts and just leave me without drums (as SFZ won't play my drum soundfont properly) so I might slightly overshoot my 100ukp budget and buy a drum VSTi if I can get one for a reasonable price. Any recommendations?

Thanks again,

Simon.
_________________
Cubase Studio 4.5.2
Athlon 64 4000, GA-M56S-S3 mobo, ATA133, SATA150, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Dual Monitors on Radeon X600
2xUAD-1, M-Audio Delta 1010, Edirol UM-2
Outboard: SPL GoldMike, EH 12AY7, Roland JV-1010, Roland CM32L, Yamaha SY35, Korg Prophecy, Alesis MultiMix 12FX, Adam A7s, Rode NT1 & NT1-a, 2xRode M3, Shure SM57.

[foxysoft]

[dr.funk]

for 100 you can get dr-008 from fxpansion.
sr202 from computer music is actually not too shabby either..free with magazine..

a little more expensive would be rmiv from linplug and battery from NI

but they all do more ore less the same...sr202 doesnt have the routing editing features but as a simple pad/drum player..its cool...

I prefer dr-008....but thats me

[foxysoft]

[foxysoft]

Well, I've bought myself a second-hand Audigy 2 ZS card on ebay. I'll put it in at the weekend and from what I hear I should expect a significant reduction in hiss. I will only need to use it for the snare drum anyway because all of my other soundfonts now play happily in SFZ. If there's still a small amount of hiss from the Audigy card (as I suspect there will be) then I can just record the snare drum parts to audio using the Audigy and then add a noise gate and all should be well.

For the moment the audio drop-outs have not come back (as I mentioned in another thread I changed the Quattro configuration from 4in, 2out to 2in, 4out and the problem went away) but I'll save the rest of my 100ukp budget to buy a second-hand Delta 44 if the problem comes back. If it doesn't come back then that money can go into the fund towards the UAD-1 I'm saving for

Thanks for the ideas everyone.

Simon.
_________________
Cubase Studio 4.5.2
Athlon 64 4000, GA-M56S-S3 mobo, ATA133, SATA150, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Dual Monitors on Radeon X600
2xUAD-1, M-Audio Delta 1010, Edirol UM-2
Outboard: SPL GoldMike, EH 12AY7, Roland JV-1010, Roland CM32L, Yamaha SY35, Korg Prophecy, Alesis MultiMix 12FX, Adam A7s, Rode NT1 & NT1-a, 2xRode M3, Shure SM57.

[foxysoft]

Well the new audigy 2 ZS card did reduce the hiss slightly but certainly not dramatically. Oh well, at least everything's working and I only need the audigy for one soundfont - dramatically cheaper than buying a decent VSTi drum kit!

Thanks again everyone.

Simon.
_________________
Cubase Studio 4.5.2
Athlon 64 4000, GA-M56S-S3 mobo, ATA133, SATA150, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Dual Monitors on Radeon X600
2xUAD-1, M-Audio Delta 1010, Edirol UM-2
Outboard: SPL GoldMike, EH 12AY7, Roland JV-1010, Roland CM32L, Yamaha SY35, Korg Prophecy, Alesis MultiMix 12FX, Adam A7s, Rode NT1 & NT1-a, 2xRode M3, Shure SM57.

[vinark]

Hi
I can´t help but think that there must be open something else in the audiy mixer besides the soundfont player. Make sure evrything is muted, inputs and outputs (mic, line cd´s etc)
_________________
C4 4.5.2 32bit with Jbridge
Asus P5Q @ 425FSB
Intel Q9550 @3.63GHz
8gb Corsair XMS2 800C4 @ 1066MhzC5
RME hdsp9652 with AEB4-O
2 uad1's + liquidmix
XP64pro

[foxysoft]

[s_j_e]

Frankly none of these problems sound like they are the "fault" of the USB bus or the SB card, per se. Pops, crackles or dropouts sounds driver-related - eg the latency of the ASIO driver being set too low, or something else like another app interfering with your audio driver (eg Hydravision from ATI caused me many problems before I banished it from my system). Or there's a USB audio patch for WinXP (q316397) that might not be installed. It's included in SP1 but if you have an earlier version of XP it needs to be patched to make USB audio work properly.

Also if you are using the SB card to play soundfonts you'd porbably get cleaner results using an asio driver for that card rather than the Quattro and directly routing the sound font synth output back into SX. Don't take it out of the SB and in through the quattro. If you use a softsynth like sfz or VSampler3 or bs-16, though, you shouldn't get dropouts when exporting to file. Exporting offline effectively gives you unlimited processing power no matter how much power the track needs or how limited your CPU speed is. The lower the CPU speed the longer it takes, is all.

I supect if you want people here to fully diagnose your problems, you will need to be much more specific and detailed about what you've tried and what the impact was - eg what you did to the quattro to reduce the problems, what exactly you are doing differently to sfz now to make it work. Otherwise it's very difficult to understand exactly what your problem is. "Hiss" has many fathers - including, as another poster mentioned above, an open mic channel somewhere. I've fallen for that one too!
_________________
Steve

Desktop: SX 3.1.0.944, WinXP Home SP3, Q6600 EP35-DS3P 4GB, Cosmos case, 2xGeForce 8400, 3x20" LCD, Tascam US-428, ART SLA-1, Blueroom Minipods. Laptop: SX 3.1.0.944, WinXP Home SP2, Dell 6000 PM 2.0 512 DDR2, Echo Indigo DJ. Posts: +400

[foxysoft]

Woah Steve! Hold on there just a minute!

Firstly the problems with crackles and pops are with the Quattro and are the subject of another thread. I won't repeat it all here but yes I have SP1 for XP, the Quattro is running at maximum latency, I even replaced the entire PC and the problem went away for a while then came back. However, that's not the issue I'm addressing in this thread which is hiss from the old Live! card.

I know the hiss came from the Live! card because I muted all other chanels on the mixer and there was still hiss. I muted the channel the Live! card is plugged into and the hiss stopped. I tested that the mixer wasn't at fault.

I replaced the Live! card with an Audigy 2 ZS and this hiss decreased very slightly.

I do use SFZ now whenever I can but it doesn't play all soundfonts perfectly (e.g. Sonic Implants Session Drums - one of my favourites) so I still need the Audigy card for that. It's okay though because now I'm only using the Audigy card for one or two soundfonts I simply take the output of that into the Quattro and record it to audio then apply a noise gate and the hiss isn't really noticable anymore.

Simon.
_________________
Cubase Studio 4.5.2
Athlon 64 4000, GA-M56S-S3 mobo, ATA133, SATA150, 4GB DDR2 RAM, Dual Monitors on Radeon X600
2xUAD-1, M-Audio Delta 1010, Edirol UM-2
Outboard: SPL GoldMike, EH 12AY7, Roland JV-1010, Roland CM32L, Yamaha SY35, Korg Prophecy, Alesis MultiMix 12FX, Adam A7s, Rode NT1 & NT1-a, 2xRode M3, Shure SM57.