Latency in Sonar, Soundfonts

[Paul881]

Glad to be of help

Enjoy NAMM, you lucky, lucky guy! Whatever you do, please post anything you find of interest back here. News, techie stuff, anything.

Say hello to the 12 tones inc. (Cakewalk) guys for me at the show. Tell em we'd all like a 50% discount on Sonar, backdated.

Mr mixerman, happy you enjoyed my post. I would have mentioned your good looks but it skipped my mind (can't think why!). BUt I don't see how I have anything that you can learn from me. Hey, I've just noticed, I'm a Senior Member now. How cool is that? Does that mean my musicianship will improve? Some hope!

Paul

 

[Paul881]

Ahhh shucks, all confused again! This posting has got me doing some research and of course, I now have more questions than I had to begin with.

This whole post started off discussing latency problems, right? Well, it would seem that there has been some discussion in other forums as to whether changing s/blaster standard drivers for ASP drivers will improve/solve the problem for win 98 users. And whether MIDI is good with ASP drivers or not. And then there's talk about ASIO drivers and whether they will assist soundblaster users with latency.

Can anyone throw some light on these areas? What exactly are ASP & ASIO drivers?

BTW, my soundblaster Live! platignum 5.1 card driver is version 4.12.01 0905. Is this the latest version? The creative site doesn't list the version history numbers.

 

[AlChuck]

APS, not ASP. It's the Audio Production Studio, the Emu product that is basically a Sound Blaster Live Platinum with a few better components and a much higher price. You can hack them to work with the "regular" Sound Blaster card. The advantage is that they have working ASIO drivers.

ASIO -- not sure what it's an acronym for (Audio Streaming Input/Output?), but it's a driver model that, like WDM, bypasses the standard multimedia drivers for lower latency. It is supported by Logic and Cubase and others but not by Cakewalk/SONAR.

 

[Paul881]

Okay, many thanks AlChuck, understand all that. So what do the members think about changing from an official Creative driver to a hacked Emu APS driver? Isn't this seemingly the answer to our "no latency" prayers for users of soundblaster and win 98? Can anyone post any of their experiences? Is it worth a try?

 

[AlChuck]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about WDM and Windows 98 SE. I haven't gone there myself yet because it seems that the Delta drivers seemed to be somewhat buggy for the longest while. Also, M Audio acts as if they have no WDM drivers for Windows 98. I know that the official word is that Windows 98 SE does support WDM. There is also a WDM update for WIndows 98 SE; see

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q242937

They used to post a patch thing there but now they say you have to contact Microsoft Product Support. Here's what they say in the article:

"A supported fix is now available from Microsoft, but it is only intended to correct the problem described in this article and should be applied only to systems experiencing this specific problem.

"To resolve this problem, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the fix. For a complete list of Microsoft Product Support Services phone numbers and information on support costs, please go to the following address on the World Wide Web:


http://support.microsoft.com/directory/overview.asp

"NOTE : In special cases, charges that are normally incurred for support calls may be canceled, if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. Normal support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question."

So it sounds like they are making it a little more difficult than usual to get this.

There's some info about this issue in these threads (at other sites, sorry, Dragon -- but I couldn't find any relevant links here):

http://www.audioforums.com/forums/Forum1/HTML/001543.html
http://www.audioforums.com/forums/Forum21/HTML/000064.html
http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=002776

It's unclear to me that the WDM drivers listed as "for Win 2000 and XP only" are or would be any different than drivers listed as "for Win 98 SE" or if the vendors are just trying to keep as far away as possible from the hassles involved in getting them to work under that OS.

The bottom line for me is that it appears that WDM drivers should work in Windows 98 SE but getting there is problematic. Personally, I've decided to wait until I get Windows XP sometime this year, probably, before worrying about it.

 

[Paul881]

Hmmm. I agree with you AlChuck, I'll wait as well. But its so frustrating to be so near yet so far. My latency is a fraction of a second buts its still too much for even half serious music work. Where does the fault lie, with the soundcard vendors or with M/soft? Surely it cannot be too difficult to make WDM drivers for win 98? It would be such a good thing to have.

I take it the "specific" problem as mentioned in the m/soft post is latency?

BTW, where would any wdm drivers reside on a win 98 system? Where would you put them if you had them? Would they replace MME drivers? And where can I find them on my win 98 system?

 

[AlChuck]

So what do the members think about changing from an official Creative driver to a hacked Emu APS driver? Isn't this seemingly the answer to our "no latency" prayers for users of soundblaster and win 98? Can anyone post any of their experiences? Is it worth a try?

I forgot to mention, we were talking about SONAR too, so the APS ASIO drivers would be useless for you.

Surely it cannot be too difficult to make WDM drivers for win 98? It would be such a good thing to have.

I've wondered a bit about that myself. It might be a bit difficult, because the underlying architecture wasn't mature when Windows 98 was designed. (Sorry to be using the word "mature" in relation to anything Microsoft.) So it might be full of little annoying patches and issues. Then again, they won't make any more money by going back and making it any better. They want you to move to XP. And that's not a bad thing in itself, I mean, who keeps going back and improving old software and never charges for it?

I take it the "specific" problem as mentioned in the m/soft post is latency?

Actually no, there are a number of issues but I don't think latency per se was one in particular.

BTW, where would any wdm drivers reside on a win 98 system?

In the Windows directory, same place where other drivers go. Let's be a little more specific... on my Windows 2000 laptop from work, with a cruddy ESS Maestro on-board audio device, the WDM drivers (five files) are in C:\WINNT\System32 and C:\WINNT\System32\drivers

Where would you put them if you had them?

You wouldn't put them anywhere, you would let Windows Device Manager put them where they belong. They have to get registered and all that.

Would they replace MME drivers?

I don't think so.

And where can I find them on my win 98 system?

You can find them where they reside

 

[A1MixMan]

Now you know why I got WIN XP the first day it came out.

 

[tcdave]

Namm and Latency....Sonic Implants told me....

Well, I just got back from NAMM and I had a great time at the Sonar booth. They gave me a Sonar cap. The demo started with a MIDI sax player and a singer doing a song for everyone. The demo was about a 1/2 hour. I plan to go a couple more times. A big booth. One side had computer stations with someone avail. to answer questions and then on the other side they had the demo. The demo side had about 40 chairs. One guy did all the talking, the other was on the computer and guitar guy. They had a duel screen setup on LCD projectors. And had a pretty good turnout. Demos every hour. They recorded guitar directly for about 4-5 seconds, then exported it. It then it became a acidized sample. They then changed the pitch. It was great and "on the fly". They patched in some guitar effects and reverb.....These guys really know really know the program! (of course) No show specials from Cakewalk. Sonic Implants had 15% off all soundfonts.

Basically, everyone was right about latency. Sonic Implants told me to just load them in directly. I had a chance to have personal attention from both Cakewalk and Sonic Implants. Great companies are hard to find!

Thanks again,

tcdave

 

[Paul881]

Thanks again AlChuck, just checking cos my machine with win 98 hasn't any wdm drivers, and I wondered if they might be hiding somewhere! I understand your point about upgrading old software too, but its so frustrating not to be able to get what you have work right.

So the only answer is to do as A1MixMan did and upgrade to xp. But unlike that smart, rich, talented AND "good looking" (his description, not mine) muso, I can't have a dedicated machine for music alone and/or I have 54 programs on my PC, the cost of upgrading would be significant. All to solve a fraction of a second latency problem!

Oh well, c'est la vie!

Thanks for your NAMM visit report tc dave, I see you are going back Sunday from your other posting. In spite of some comments to the contrary from time to time, I happen to think the cakewalk guys have done a great job, I love what creative opportunities their software have given me. Compared to other music software (mentioning no names) theirs is much easier and intuitive to use imho.

 

[AlChuck]

Paul881,

You would not have any WDM drivers in Windows 98 SE unless you explicitly installed some.

Re the upgrade, you typically do not have to upgrade all 54 programs if you upgrade the OS. No one would ever upgrade their OS if that were the case.

-AlChuck

 

[Paul881]

Hmmm. Maybe I'll do some more research then. I assumed that all my m/s Office stuff would need upgrading plus the plethora of other programs?

What about if I use another dedicated music hard drive on my pc with xp on it along with hs 2002 etc loaded and win 98 loaded seperately on my existing drive? Seems a neat solution to me, unless there is some other reason that would make it impractical. Whadddya think?

 

[AlChuck]

No, most apps should probably work just fine.

You can set up a dual boot, but not like you describe, I don't think... I believe only one hard drive can be bootable at a given time. Look around, there are plenty of decriptions on how to configure a dual-boot setup and I'm pretty sure many people here do that (try a search on "dual boot" and variations thereof).