PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums RealBand Realband/PTW locking up solid in Windows 7

Yesterday I was having trouble testing RealBand and PowerTracks under Windows 7 using the inbuilt sound devices, so today, I plugged in a USB sound capture device and fired up Audacity as a first test. It worked properly, so I closed it and fired up realband. Realband locked up solid before it completed starting up fully. Not even task manager could kill it's process. I had to restart Windows. PowerTracks does the same.


Yesterday it was working, although not recording from the wave device. Nothing has changed except the addition of the USB capture device. So I rebooted Windows, and tried PTW again. Again it locked up trying to start, so I removed the USB capture device, and suddenly ptw finished starting up. So I plugged the PNP USB capture device back in, and looked at PTW's config. The new device had appeared on the recording device list, so I selected it. However, when I try to record I get the same 'Can't open wave device' I was getting yesterday.


I am starting to wonder if Realband 2008.5 and PTW 12 are fully compatible with Windows 7 . I guess I need to download the latest patches/builds of each to be sure.


Is anyone else using Windows 7 with these products?

Yes, it runs on Win7 here.
Sounds like you may be opening the device after opening the DAW software.

Hook up device
Let OS find it
Then open Recording software.

Also - if using ASIO drivers and you try to jump from one DAW software to another, sometimes it takes a few moments for the first software to release the driver. I'm pretty sure that error can be caused by this situation.

that's one possibility
Win7 32 bit or 64 bit?
Current drivers for the device? P-n-P doesn't mean it has current drivers.

Dazz
what usb sound device are you useing ??
please also post a pic of your audio preferences and driver selerction
in realband. so people can help.

"Hook up device
Let OS find it
Then open Recording software."

That's the way I did it, and that's when RealBand locked up as it was starting.

"Win7 32 bit or 64 bit?"

32 bit Win 7 Ultimate on Atom powered mini notebook.

"Current drivers for the device? P-n-P doesn't mean it has current drivers. "

Windows update ran 2 days ago. Haven't updated since trying the USB capture device (which, btw, comes with no specific drivers of it's own - says doesn't need them - which means it uses the ones Windows already has)

Good to know it works on some versions of Win7 - thanks for that confirmation. I will look at the ASIO side of things. I have one ASIO driver on the machine now, for a guitar pedal, audio in/out device that I have at home. I will try that as well soon, but it worries me that I can't get the basics working properly.

The USB sound device is called EzCAP USB Audio Capture.

However...
I think I found a workaround. If I leave Realband set to Microsoft Sound Mapper, and start it BEFORE I plug in the USB capture device, then set the USB device as the default using Windows, then I can record sound consistently from it.

Keeping in mind that Audacity doesn't have this lockup problem if the device is already plugged in, I'd say there was a problem with the way realband (and PTW) are interacting with Windows 7 sound, specifically when initialising the interfaces.

When using soundmapper I believe you are using MME rather than ASIO, and that alone may have been the issue (?)
Does the USB device work when selected while using MME drivers?
Or maybe the device requires windows soundmapper to work ..
..according to manual here -
http://www.technologyinthehome.com/downloads/AUDCAP1.pdf
Audacity also uses the soundmapper with this device

Dazz.
this ezcap is also a video device ..correct ??
frankly i would be surprised if it was a rb problem.
with respect there is no way you can assume just cos audacity works
etc etc..and immediately come to the conclusion that it must be an rb problem.
ive seen people useing various daws , includeing friends junk their particular daw
software , and upon close inspection i often found it wasnt the daw
causeing the problem but many times how the persons pc was set up
and/or how things were set up in the daw software itself.

from a software engineering aspect whether Rb or sonar or cubase or
any other daw software they all work the same way.
let me elaborate mate.
basically all daws in their start up go thru a routine asking windows for the audio n midi devices
on a users pc. dont matter daw software used.
so a driver table is instantiated. and this is how drivers are displayed in each daw
for user selection. there is even a common programmers api for this in windows.
the term is "device enumeration".

basically the application daws...are divorced from the sound device itself.
windows sits tween the sound device and the daw application itself.
think of it like this. in laymans terms irrespective of daw.
imagine a bridge tween two mountains.
on one mountain sits the daw software , and on the other the sound device.
with windows being the bridge that spans the two mountains.
so heres what happens...
the daw says "hey windows mate...what sound devices does this pc have ??"
window says ..lol.."hold on mate i'll tell ya"...n trots off n looks on
the other mountain to see how many sound devices are living on the other mountain.
lets call it sound device village on the other mountain.
so lickety split win sends out a scout to look at the devices in sound device village.
then says back to the daw software "hey i got these sound devices".
and thats the basics of it mate.
in summary its not like a husband n wife cuddled up at night in bed.
its more like hubby in one hotel room and wifey in another hotel room
and a mediator going tween each room.

now ive explained the process, where some people get caught is they often
dont have audio preferences etc etc set up properly in the daw software they use.
so the best bet is to post a pic of your audio preferences in RB...
and this might help people help you.

i frankly wouldnt use ezcap with a daw.
i would use a proper well known sound interface mate like many users do.
i looked up the device but had probs finding detailed info.
for example no audio output jacks. less i'm mistaken.
this brings me to a point.
in windows control panel sound itself youll prolly need to specify that
your recording device is the ezcap BUT...playback is useing on board sound.
have you done that ??
please tell me in windows sound properties what are the selected
devices for recording and playback.

Audacity can't use ASIO drivers.

It is Windows Sound (MME) only.

That is why the sound mapper is working there.

Use of the Microsoft Sound Mapper is NOT recommended when trying to do multitrack recordings, though. There will be latency and other issues.

A device that is "class compliant" for Windows -- ie it does not need you to install any special drivers of its own -- can only be Windows Sound, MME/WDM etc. Typically, one should highlight the physical unit itself and not the Sound Mapper inside the host program's Audio Settings. This is faster and direct address.

I'm not familiar with the sound device you are trying to get to work, but you are likely going to have to try every setting available in the host program, one at a time, to see what's going on. If you change a setting and it doesn't do the trick, be sure to *change it back* to where it was before trying something else. Don't want to compound problems.


--Mac

I put a link to the manual for the device above. I don't think it has any device specific settings.. just a set and forget device. It may a situation where he has no choice but use the soundmapper and accept the situation until he gets a better device.

I have tried to use both Soundmapper and the direct MME driver. I have not tried ASIO (yet).

I have been dragged off trying this in the last few days, but will get back to it soon, hopefully.

I'm thinking you may find joy there..

A device relying on OS drivers from a new OS may have a few kinks in it. A windows update may just fix it one day.

Another thought- are you using the same USB port the device was installed from? Sounds weird but we have found an issue with another generic USB device that had to be physically connected to same USB port it was installed from, or it gave errors from PT/RB. Probably something to do with how it was registered in windows, because you could re-install from different port (let windows find it), and it would work fine. However, then you had multiple registry entries for the device. Yeah, I know, it sounds weird, but it is possible.

Dazz that device is designed by nature to capture audio coming in at a line level from a CD player or a vinyl record player. that is why the bundle the free audacity software with it. Audacity acts just like any audio recorder, and much like the sound recorder that is included in Windows. Except that it has plugins for processing the sound once captured. So this program looks at the natural path of incoming audio in windows and allows the process to happen. latency and timing are of no issue since it is a one time event audio streams in and is recorded, if there is a small delay it does not matter since it is not trying to match anything elses time code.

RB and PTPA are true DAW programs, and while they will do the audio capture thing, they look deeper for master time code, and compensate for possible midi data streams, and mulitple audio streams trying to make everything work together in time. So while they will function with MME or win sound drivers as audacity. For the most part they would introduce latency and timing would become a struggle. So when tracking audio in this type of environment you need an interface that allows you to use better drivers like ASIO or even better versions of WDM written for the interface to allow for latency compensation. While that corded device might do a decent job adding one track at a time to audacity, which could care less what was feeding it, it will not fair well with a true DAW program. If you want to really get this thing to run you need a real recording interface.

Audacity is not a true test of whether your system will record properly, as it is going to always work with just about any system. Try something like this http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pro...face?sku=241710 or if cost is a big problem right now this http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/Lexicon-Alpha-USB-Audio-Interface?sku=245507