Volume Surge in DP 5.13 in Tiger

[dynamix]

OK well Volume Surge ASIDE... Here's one thing that I've determined seems to be hanging up my playback intermittently.

I've been running this setup on the laptop pretty well with a single 200 GB LaCie 7200 RPM Firewire 800 drive. Sample libraries and audio go to the external drive. Applications and the plugs, like Kontakt Player are on the laptop internal drive. The VIs while living on the internal boot drive get their samples from the External.

When Installing my new Garritan Steinway I did the following. I didn't have enough room on the single external for the 16GB VI, so I installed the VI AU Plug In on the Boot drive in the laptop as usual, but I put the samples on an additional super fast firewire 800 drive, daisy chained beyond the main external. Well, when ever I have that 2nd External plugged in now, playback is a bit of a herky jery affair. I'm not even using the Steinway Plug in the sequence, the Steinway VI is not even in the tracks. I try to eject with only DP running and I get a message that the drive is in use and please quit applications. So the Steinway plug is definitely in need of this drive it would seem because without DP running it ejects A-OK.

So I've basically gotta free up some room on my single 500 GB LaCie external it would seem, using the second drive doesn't seem to be "cutting the mustard..."

OK WELL BEEN A COUPLE OF DAYS NOT USING SECOND EXTERNAL. I'M WORKING ON A NEW COMPOSITION IN A NEW CHUNK AND SURGE IS BACK AS WELL AS STUTTERING GLITCHY PLAYBACK. BEATS THE HECK OUTTA ME, I STILL HAVE TO TRY DELETING PREFERENCES, BUT DON'T HAVE HI HOPES, I GUESS ABOVE THEORY IS WRONG.

[dynamix]

Cripes, OK I think the playback problems may simply be solved by purchasing a new drive.

I originally misunderestimated (that's a real word, I swear, I heard the President use it) the size of my little portable external with which I run my VI samples and general audio from. I thought it was 500 GB, confussing it with another drive I purchased several months ago. Its actually 200 GB and I've been running this sucker at 97 percent full for months now.

Time to really upgrade and get a real 500... Then, finally there'll be some room for that SWEET Garritan Steinway.

As for the volume surge, well, I'd be surprised if this helps with that too...

[Tomas E]

OK WELL BEEN A COUPLE OF DAYS NOT USING SECOND EXTERNAL. I'M WORKING ON A NEW COMPOSITION IN A NEW CHUNK AND SURGE IS BACK AS WELL AS STUTTERING GLITCHY PLAYBACK. BEATS THE HECK OUTTA ME, I STILL HAVE TO TRY DELETING PREFERENCES, BUT DON'T HAVE HI HOPES, I GUESS ABOVE THEORY IS WRONG.

I just had to check out the font color of this post. It's really nice.

[dynamix]

Below, two shots within identical measures...

The top image is a successful attempt at recording the final MIDI arrangement.



You can see the surge in the below image at measure six.
Gain structure for both is identical, nothing was changed,
I was just trying to print my final work when the volume surge ghost appeared.



I fixed my permissions ealier today, haven't done that in a long while, still no new external drive yet but soon, No stuttering on playback this evening.

[Frodo]

Wow--- that's the first time I'd *seen* the surge. We now have evidence!!

[michkhol]

Dynamix, as an option to solve your playback problems you might consider a eSATA external drive with the eSATA Express card like this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apiotek/EC0003D. You can easily connect two hard drives and free your FireWire port. The burst transfer rate of a modern 7200RPM hard drive can easily reach 100Mbytes/s. With the FW 800 data transfer limit of 80Mbytes/s in a single direction (and you need the data to go both ways) you can easily overload the FW bus especially if you have two drives daisy chained. The Express card supports up to 250MBytes/s transfer rate and eSATA II up to 300MBytes/s so it should be fine to use two drives at the same time.

[monkey man]

Wow--- that's the first time I'd *seen* the surge. We now have evidence!!

Ha ha ha! Me too, Hobster; we'd better carve those "before and after" shots in stone for posterior... I mean, posterity.

Amazing that someone's finally caught it on tape, so to speak.

[dynamix]

Dynamix, as an option to solve your playback problems you might consider a eSATA external drive with the eSATA Express card like this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apiotek/EC0003D. You can easily connect two hard drives and free your FireWire port. The burst transfer rate of a modern 7200RPM hard drive can easily reach 100Mbytes/s. With the FW 800 data transfer limit of 80Mbytes/s in a single direction (and you need the data to go both ways) you can easily overload the FW bus especially if you have two drives daisy chained. The Express card supports up to 250MBytes/s transfer rate and eSATA II up to 300MBytes/s so it should be fine to use two drives at the same time.

Hey Michkhol, Thanks for the Advice, I noticed the LACIE Little Big Disk 500 GB raid 0 is eSATA, and so after reading this I bought the controller card for my Mac Book Pro, should arrive today or tomorrow!!!

[michkhol]

Hey Michkhol, Thanks for the Advice, I noticed the LACIE Little Big Disk 500 GB raid 0 is eSATA, and so after reading this I bought the controller card for my Mac Book Pro, should arrive today or tomorrow!!!

Glad to hear that! I hope it will work for you.

[dynamix]

Got my LACIE SATA II Express Card 34 today. I did my best to keep my expectations LOW and so... I'm not disappointed, it doesn't seem to do diddly. Occasionally an Icon appears for the card in the upper right corner next to the airport indicator but it doesn't seem to noticed by the computer all the time and... my eSATA drive, with external power attached is not mounting. Oh well, I'll have to talk to LaCie about all this, Fire Wire 800 is working fine on the drive sooo that'll do for now.

I might add, that cloning my old drive onto the new has given a whole lot more elbow room but confused the heck outta my boot drive based plugins which are reaching out to the unfamiliar drive for resources. I'm working around these numerous problems but I'm gonna have to get this a little more together eventually.

E.

[greg328]

For what it's worth, I've been dealing with the DP volume surge/burst issue for a few years. Get this, on 2 different machines (Mac dual G5/new Intel 8-core) different Mac OSs, and DP 5 AND 6! This is definitely a core-level MIDI driver issue. The surge, to my ears, always sounds like a flammed track, in other words, 2 or more streams of the same MIDI track triggering its sound source. I can stop the surge by stop/starting the transport, but it comes right back. This has been happening to me EVERY DAY for over a year now. Really hard to mix, and track singers....

So, MOTU is actually solving this issue? About damn time!

Also, FWIW, I can't use 6.01 on my machine, too many graphic rendering bugs. I have to use 6.00

MOTU needs to get their act together and QUICK!

Greg

[monkey man]

Copped 18 surges in 2 hours the other day. MIDI tracks and outboard gear only.

The following day, I only experienced 2 or 3 (I wasn't as focussed on counting that day as DP had behaved very well).

Go figure. At least 3 years for me now.

[bayswater]

I can't edit velocities down to zero in the SE window, I am forced to use the event list, which is very inconvenient for my work style.

!!!! Didn't notice this before. I can't get them to go to zero in the event list either, or the graphic editor. Dragging the value bottoms out at 1, and if I enter a zero in the event list velocity, it won't take.

I CAN enter zero from the keyboard in the event info window in the SE, but not get a zero by dragging the value.

[Tomas E]

DP needs a volume surgery.

[Arceo]

...ok, here's my guess on volume surge.
It comes from speculations on my personal experiences, so no scientific evidence or large statistic events are involved.
Yesterday I had the umpteenth volume surge and I somewhat sensed it could be related to multiple MIDI notes sent at the very same time. I mean, since the phenomenon seems to happen only related to MIDI notes (external MIDI devices or internal VIs) and not audio tracks, I tried to replicate it by doubling several time a single MIDI track and aiming every tracks (which share the exact MIDI data) to the same MIDI output. I started playing just one track and, as I begun to enable the other track, the more I added the more the volume rose. Not satisfied with it I deleted the content of the additional track I created by doubling the first and copied only one measure (let's say from measure 4 to 5 for the sake of argument). I started the playback and when the wiper reached measure 4 here I got the volume surge fenomenon to my ears. So, since it often happens in conjunction with the so called "MIDI bomb" I'm starting to believe that both behaviours are related to the DP MIDI management.
As I said erlier in my post theese are not conclusions, theese are only hypothesis made only on personal experiences, so I would be glad if you guys wanted to try to replicate Volume Sourge the way I (tried to) explained and comment the results.

Thanks in advance.
Cheers
Arceo

Edited for some typos (I'm sure I'm leaving tons of 'them anyway...)