Vegas audio is dragging along...

Motorbreath

Motorbreath

New member
Hi there,

I searched here, at the SF website, Google web and groups, but am coming up short. Here's the scoop.

I've been using ntrack for multitracking, but lately, I've become a poster child for Sonic Foundry. Tried the demo of Acid. Bought it. Read great things about Sound Forge. Bought it. Tried Vegas Video. Bought it. I'm feeling pretty good about this combo.

Oh yeah, it's all running on an Athlon AXP1800, 512 MB, Audiophile 2496, latest drivers from midiman for the card.

I was running everything on Windows 98 SE, but wanted to move to XP for various reasons, not the least of which was escaping the lockups in 98. But I digress.

Knowing that Vegas is great for video, I've done a lot of reading here and on lists I'm on that say it's great for multitrack audio. Made sense, so that's when I bought it.

When I try to play audio, it seems to buffer just a bit, then chokes. I've moved the playback buffer back and forth, made sure the sound card was selected (not MS Sound Mapper), set everything to 24 bit, 96kHz (that's what the wave files are), even backrevved the driver. Back revving the driver sounded worse, so I went back to the latest version. Checked the sound card properties in Control Panel. All are set to use the Audiophile.

Thing is, if I open up a project in ntrack, it is scratchy only the first I play it through. After that, the files (all three of them, in this case) all appear to be buffered in RAM and play absolutely smoothly. Not the case with Vegas. The most I can get out of Vegas is about 7 seconds of smooth multitrack audio. Even solo'ing a channel doesn't do it.

Silly as it might sound, I tried defragging too. Argh. Still crackly, slower pace, scratchy, awful sound. The tracks are all wave files, no MIDI.

So I'm thinking it has something to do with buffers, but am at a loss as to where to look. Is there anything left to do besides go back to Windows 98? I'm closing in on a time when I actually need to get soem work done with it. Any ideas or pointers in the right direction are appreciated.
 
I just bought Acid 4.0 and am feeling pretty used.

Does this SW record anything? Or is it just for prerecorded .wav files?

What a waste! I bought it for the ASIO support that my Delta 1010 needed to record. Chalk it up to being burned. Last lick for Sonic Foundry.
 
More research and checking with colleagues points me in the direction of ditching XP in favor of Windows 98SE. Lots of people having similar symptoms with XP and sound cards. Argh.

So, I scratch loaded it all tonight back to Windows 98SE because I have work to get done with this PC. Every single audio program is working great.

Sometimes the latest ain't the greatest. As in Windows XP. :(

Now then, it's time for me to get some recording done!
 
Thank You for corroborating my theory behind all this noise.

BUT:

Changing back to 98SE to fix this is NOT an option AFAIC.

1) Win XP is far more stable and just a better O/S IMHO than 98SE. I have two systems with 98SE on one and XP Home on the other. And Win98SE on a third system at work. I'm convinced that XP blows 98 away for stability.

2) Both Sonic Foundry and M-Audio claim that their products are compatible with Win XP. I'm not letting them off the hook for this stretch of the imagination. It was a lie perpetrated to suck money out of my pocket. They owe me some satisfaction. More importantly, they owe themselves a fix for this to keep their products viable.
 
For now, it was my only option, as I had to get some work done. As a network engineer by day (voice guy by night), I really did not want to have to go back to 98SE for exactly the reasons you stated. I actually preferred to run W2K, but the symptoms were the same the last time I tried. I had hoped XP would solve it, but nay.

I'm not entirely convinced it's a Sonic Foundry problem, though that certainly can't be ruled out. I found many, many newsgroup postings at google groups of people having trouble with higher end sound cards of any brand name with Windows XP. One posting was actually a detailed accounting my exact sound card. The sound problem I am having with XP happens in other audio apps too. :(

So, I switched to 98SE last night. And gee, it took only about...15 minutes to lock up a program. Ah yes, the familiar pain of CTRL+ALT+DEL.

What I REALLY wish would happen is to have Linux versions of their software. I would happily pay top dollar for them, though I doubt it will ever happen.

Dude, I would definitely call the Sonic Foundry customer service (not Support) and chat with them about your disappointment with the product. I've called them twice now and they have been very helpful and courteous. You might be able to get your $$$ back, or they might address the issues you have directly. Just a thought.
 
>Dude, I would definitely call the Sonic Foundry customer service (not Support)

I plan to today. I waited for the response from support and it was the slimiest buck-pass I have EVER seen on a software issue.

Quoting them:

"A known bug in the ASIO driver for M-Audio Delta series audio cards can cause problems (including crashes) in ACID. Please contact M-Audio for an updated driver."

This driver works perfectly in Logic Audio so who fucked up?

Apparently ME for believing Sonic Foundry when they claimed to have support for ASIO drivers in this application.
 
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