Reinstalled Sonic. All latest version (just as I had it) still get shuttered sound. It starts at random places and times and ends at random places and time.
Unfortunately, I can not get a hold of tech at PG, but if they are reading this, maybe they can advise.
Including a 30 sec audio file...I recorded it with my phone to headphones to save time, but shuttering is clearly audible then it goes away after 18 sec. Again, Nothing is spiking in Task Manager, Nothing is spiking at Halion monitor. This drives me monkey mad.
Have no problems with Halion 6 (3 SE in my BIAB setup) 64bit and BIAB 713 64bit. If you use a 32bit BIAB that might be the cause, as Halion is 64bit only me thinks.
OK, I see this thread is still active. I also just read the edited first post that says it is limited to Halion Sonic.
I did not get into this thread at first because I was puzzled by the term, "shuttering". I assume that means what I would call "stuttering". If that's wrong, then someone please tell me. Or perhaps "shuddering", as in, you will shudder when you hear this... _________________________________________________________________
I don't think anyone has yet mentioned the problem of an unregistered plugin. These will cause interruptions at random and may come in the form of unwanted noise or stuttering audio. Is it possible that Halion Sonic or some component within it, or something else called by your project, is a plugin that is not registered or expired?
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Go back and re-read the edited top of the thread's first post. It's not a computer resource problem nor (probably) some setting in the operating system. It's related to Halion Sonic, and perhaps you can help.
BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Slate VSX, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
Matt, Fiddler, Thanks for trying. Sonic 3 is full (not SE) current version, fully registered /activated. Clean install this morning. It is not life or death situation, I can probably find alternatives for now, but I would like to get to the bottom of this as Halion Sonic is my "go to" synth in BIAB.
P.S. I got lucky and spoke with Steinberg support this morning without extensive wait time. We checked a few things, and I have everything installed correctly. His only suggestion was to try and reinstall the program and preference files, which I did.
As Jazzmammal stated your specs are MORE than enough to handle this unless there is something we do not know about that you may have loaded into memory, knowingly or not, BUT that aside:
If your six RT with one MIDI track file is a BIAB supplied song can you give me the name of the song file? I have HAlion full, Halion Sonic, and SE and I can try and replicate but so far on my desktop (specs below) picking some songs at random I have no stuttering issues (yet?).
If no stuttering with desktop and your file, assuming I have it, after a few tries, I will also try on one of my laptops with i7-7500U, 16 GB RAM and a 2TB PCIe SSD.
Larry
Last edited by Larry Kehl; 02/03/2009:04 AM.
Win10Pro,i9,64GB,2TBSSD+20TBHDDs,1080TI,BIAB'24,Scarlett18i8,Montage7,Fusion 8HD,QS8,Integra7,XV5080,QSR,SC-8850,SPLAT,FL21&others,Komp.14,IK suite&others, just a guitar player-AXE FX III &FM9T, FishmanTP, MIDIGuitar2, GK2/3'sw/GI20
I assume you have latest Sonic 3 (full, not SE) ver. 3.3.1.77 VST. Can you follow these steps please. This is how troubles started for me...
BIAB: 1) Load a single midi track ~100-120BPM into mixer, just so it can trigger a pattern in Sonic for testing purposes, does not matter which style you choose. 2)Point it to Halion Sonic 3 VST 3)Choose patch in Halion: Ethnic->World Kit01 120 4)Go to mixer track with that midi loaded ->track actions->Save track as WAV file
When it renders, can you playback your file ok? Mine is all distorted in a very bad way.
I know this is not "original" question., but that how it all started for me and the easiest thing to check.
Yep I have current Sonic (3.3.1.77) (I did NOT use Sonic SE or Halion Full)
I need to look at this more tomorrow but YES initially I DID get a very noisy (i.e., crapola) for a file. Yes it sounded like typical digital "out-o-sync" noise BUT then I changed to other patches/instruments and it stop making noise - and the audio file was fine.
Like I said More tomorrow Larry
Win10Pro,i9,64GB,2TBSSD+20TBHDDs,1080TI,BIAB'24,Scarlett18i8,Montage7,Fusion 8HD,QS8,Integra7,XV5080,QSR,SC-8850,SPLAT,FL21&others,Komp.14,IK suite&others, just a guitar player-AXE FX III &FM9T, FishmanTP, MIDIGuitar2, GK2/3'sw/GI20
Stupid Q: GM mode active? Maybe the VSTsound file is corrupted. When BIAB was 32bit only i used Jbridge for Halion 3.
Is there any 3rd party plugin active WITHIN Halion? Digi noise is often used as copy protection pestering legitimate users only. IK multimedia stuff i never use anymore, think it comes with BIAB and must be activated.
Try installing 3 SE to see if it behaves the same way, probably so if it uses the same VSTsound file. SE is usually there already.
Larry, Thank you for doing that. Yes, most of the patches render fine. This came up for me first, so I was curious to know if it is my system or rendering issues with BIAB. Seems like it is rendering issues with BIAB. And I suspect "shuddering" issues during a playback is related. ---
Fiddler, thanks for trying. I re-checked license, everything up to date. Even done all the maintenance on soft e-licenser, including memory cleanup. No, it is not related to GM mode or registrations. I tried Halion 6 as VST in BIAB and even a default patch (hexagon synth) had same shuddering issues.
While I am typing this, I came up with something...For testing purposes I can try to run Sonic as a standalone and connect to BIAB through LoopMidi. I think that will shine a light on the whole situation. P.S. I am pretty confident shuddering will not occur. I should have some time around lunch to check this, so will post back.
I didn't read the posts before this. I skimmed a few.
So... the issue is related the Halion and involves midi tracks. I'm guessing the processing of the midi tracks in real time is the problem. (Duh...)
So in this case, why not simply FREEZE the offending synth tracks? Freezing lets the program write the synth track to audio and waa laa, it doesn't have to process in real time. you have the audio and the synth is off line for the playback. It's easy to unfreeze if you need to edit it. Other than that, you don't really need to have the midi processed in real time anyway. Freeze it and use the easy to process audio.
Kinda curious.... I believe you said there were multiple midi tracks..... have you tried running it with a single midi track to see if it can handle the real time processing without stuttering?
I used to work a lot with midi tracks and CPU intensive plugs and synths.... and on a barely capable laptop. I had 80% or better CPU duty cycle and the resultant pops, clicks, and even audio engine drops. The solution was to freeze the tracks and synths that were drawing the CPU power. I could freeze one or two of the main culprits and my CPU usage would drop from 80% or more to well under 40% and I could run problem free.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.com Add nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.
The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
Something occurred to me while reading through this post. There is mention of checking the USB settings in Win 10. I always have these set to off i.e. Win can not shut these down as I have many hard synths running USB.
Well....come to find out that these have all been set back to allowing Win to shut them down after the latest update! Also, I have Bluetooth shut off as it cause spikes on my system when it constantly looks for available bluetooth devices.. Surprise, surprise....Win turned bluetooth back on after the recent update.
Herb, Thanks for trying. You can not "freeze" Sonic. It is 16 channel VST synth. You can freeze the midi line in BIAB...For the sake of argument, I tried "freezing" the midi track (with Sonic) that did not work, because Sonic is not frozen it does not follow mixer "freeze" state but even if you (I) could, "freeze all" it would not help me. I use BIAB to arrange and experiment with tracks, so I do regenerate things often.
Jeff, Good thinking, but still nothing. I have done some extensive troubleshooting and actually on one of the tests, I switched to "airplane" mode before even starting BIAB and on other test, while running BIAB+Sonic and distortion was happening. That did not help. I run tests clean without any external (usb) peripherals. Only interface plugged into the port.
My test results
As I suspected, running Sonic as a standalone and channeling midi through LoopMidi from BIAB worked just fine. I "regenerated" tracks in BIAB 10 times, I poked at different places in the chord grid, so it starts in random places. It works fine (No distortion!) Of course I can not use it like that, this was done only for testing. I (and all of the folks who tried to help here) spent quite a bit of time on this. I can say with great certainty that it is related to BIAB. I believe it is a good idea for the tech support to step in. I am out of ideas. (at least for now)
I'm still looking at this but I get strange results using as well with MIXCRAFT (current version 9 ) and the VST2 version of Sonic using ANY PATCH from that World Persuasion library:
when Rendering in Mixcraft (64-bit) and using the VST2 sometimes same I get NOISE as in BAIB, sometimes SILENCE in rendered file, and a lot of crashes out of Mixcraft. However, using the VST3 version in Mixcraft all is fine- it renders fine and doesn't crash
Repeating all this in REAPER (64-bit, current version and the VST2 or 3 version) that World Percussion library never has issues: so go figure.
BUT why would you ever use a drum with a BPM library when BIAB controls the BPMs anyway for entire song? BIAB is NOT a DAW
Last edited by Larry Kehl; 02/04/2001:36 PM. Reason: Fixed for soem spellign and grammer to to clarify
Win10Pro,i9,64GB,2TBSSD+20TBHDDs,1080TI,BIAB'24,Scarlett18i8,Montage7,Fusion 8HD,QS8,Integra7,XV5080,QSR,SC-8850,SPLAT,FL21&others,Komp.14,IK suite&others, just a guitar player-AXE FX III &FM9T, FishmanTP, MIDIGuitar2, GK2/3'sw/GI20
Larry, Thank you for follow up. Yes, I know BIAB is NOT a DAW
This one was just the easiest to test, because the rendered "crap audio" file sounds very similar what I get in BIAB playback with some non World Percussion patches from Sonic.
I have 2019 version of BIAB on my backup computer, I have to transfer Sonic license and test it in the next few days.
Sonic seems to be a popular plugin among users of this forum. Maybe PG staff should request for a couple of "testing" licenses from Steinberg so they can recreate the scenarios with ease?
I think I'm done looking at this (it's tax time plus I need to get some brass prep and reloading done for this coming weekend where I turn lots of gun powder into smoke(less))
I don't use, and have no reason to use, that Steinberg library. Also I have no other issues (to date) with HALion or Sonic, sans that library, and to repeat my last post: using Sonic VST2 and that library (World Percussion) it is also causing issues in at least one other host (Mixcraft 9) so its NOT exclusivity a BIAB issue, it is at least, in part, a Steinberg issue as well.
Good luck Larry
Win10Pro,i9,64GB,2TBSSD+20TBHDDs,1080TI,BIAB'24,Scarlett18i8,Montage7,Fusion 8HD,QS8,Integra7,XV5080,QSR,SC-8850,SPLAT,FL21&others,Komp.14,IK suite&others, just a guitar player-AXE FX III &FM9T, FishmanTP, MIDIGuitar2, GK2/3'sw/GI20
I found out something a few days ago that maybe relevant. Most multi-timbrel and multi-output VSTi players like Kontakt, Halion or Sonic do not attempt to balance resources so if one instance of the player is playing back multiple midi channels and patches the cpu load is cumulative on one cpu core, usually core 1. However, if you use multiple instances of the player the host program may balance the load across multiple cpu cores.
FWIW I recently realized I had hit a Polyphony limit on a certain synth (it could only play so many notes at a time) .. it wasn't BiaB or RB that couldn't handle it, it was how the synth was handling the number of MIDI events being thrown at it. Just a thought. Running another instance of the synth may fix this problem like Jim mentioned above, depending on the synth/OS etc.
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome Make your sound your own!
Larry, You already done more than I asked for. I would even dare to ask to test this further. Thank you!
Jim, Thank you for trying. Sonic has an option of handling / balancing things through multi-core. I tried from turning this multi core feature off to switching from 1-6 cores. No difference. CPU cores are not spiking. Nothing is spiking. Multi instances...sure I would love to use that if I did not have to lose a mixer channel to it
rharv, Good thinking, but polyphony is not maxed. I am only using 4 midi channels. Actually 2 channels, layered. Not busy stuff at all. But I will try multi instance for testing purposes.
Guys, many of you genuinely tried to help. I think it is BIAB related, but Jazzmammal you might be right.. it might be one of those "dark, unknown things" Unless tech wants to get their hands dirty, I will just find alternatives to those synths/instruments (Sonic), and return to this with the next BIAB or a big Windows update.
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but even if you (I) could, "freeze all" it would not help me. I use BIAB to arrange and experiment with tracks, so I do regenerate things often. 
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