Noise, clips etc on playback and mixdown :(

    Hi Folks,


    I have had my TI Desktop 2 for close to a year now and I have never had anything but problems. As a result, though I love the sounds in it, I try and use it as little as possible as it creates
    too much headache. Recently I decided to use it in a track for bass and pads. However, no matter what I do I constantly get clips and glitches in the audio. This happens during both playback and mixdown. As a result I cant mixdown the parts I need because I can't get a clean mixdown. There is always noise, clips and blips introduced randomly in different places each time.


    If I mixdown a part say 15 plus times, I might if I'm lucky, get a clean mixdown.
    I have tried OS3, all the new betas and the 64bit versions both in Vista and Windows 7. All with the same issue.


    Thankfully, as I've stayed in touch with my dealer throughout the year, they have aggreed to refund me. Before I go that
    route though I just wanted to ask if people were having these problems?


    Any help would be seriosly appreciated. I dont want to get rid of it because I'm sure a future OS update will fix all.
    I just want to be sure my unit is not faaulty.


    Cheers
    Ciaran

    Hey man,


    That sounds pretty rubbish - there's no way you should be getting problems like that. I got my TI2 a couple of months ago and it has worked pretty much flawlessly since day 1, never had a glitch or clip. So you're using Virus Control? Do you have all the audio and MIDI coming down your USB? Taking a shot in the dark here, but it sounds like you could have bandwidth issues with your USB port - have you done anything to rule that out? Maybe try unplugging everything apart from the TI2 and see if it still happens. Also check your USB hubs in device manager.


    Sorry if you've already tried those, worth checking though..

    Cheers for the reply Simon! I'm going to do some USB testing tonight and see how I get on. Yep, I'm using the virus control. I also found though that my Virus seems to do its own thing all the time.


    For example, if I play 3 midi notes, record and copy them for say 10 bars, shouldn't the virus play the same thing each time? The oscillators seem to drift and each time I reopen a project each day my sounds are slightly different. Thats not normal is it?


    Cheers
    Ciaran

    Hi Mark, thanks for the reply. I am using Cubase 5. I have tried installing to a new system today with the same results. Actually, it a bit worse on this system.


    Anyway, heres what I am using


    Cubase 5
    Hewlet PAckard Dual AMD 1.9ghz with 2G ram


    My virus settings are System Performance - Normal
    Application Priority - High


    I have attached a quick mixdown. You can hear the clips. Its worse on playback today. I'm assuming this patch should be a clean one. I get loads of hiss in the background.


    I also noticed that my Virus's output is quite low.


    You can get the file here....


    http://www.transferbigfiles.co…c6-4deb-9c5b-e5b94bc7e844


    Any help would greatly be appreciated. I'm mixing down a release at the moment and this has really added to the time I'm spending.


    Cheers
    Ciaran

    Ciaran,
    i'm not much of a cubase/PC expert so you might want to get in touch with access support in order to get help. i'm sure we can work out what happens with your setup. as for you comment on the output volume level in virus control, i've seen similar comments recently, so let me explain why this is:



    the more voices you can playback with a synth, the more headroom it needs to cope with a situations like all the voices play back at the same time. as a result, the individual voice is low in volume. i don't think that this is a problem in the digital domain because with most modern sequencers we enjoy a virtually unlimited dynamic range anyway because the mixers work with so called floating point precision. as a result one should attempt to mix less "hot", in other words, lower the volume of the individual channels and boost at the end. most DAWs are fairly forgiving when it comes to overloads but the mix sounds better when you leave room. when i start a song, i got all my faders @ -20dB and i boost the master @ +6dB so i enjoy a reasonable listening volume. once the songs gets more dense you can lower the master volume to something around 0dB.



    best, marc

    Hi Marc,


    Again thanks for getting back to me. Thats cool, I'll get on to support and see what happens. Hopefully I can get sorted because I really love the synth, I know if I got sorted I'd use it on everything!


    Cheers
    Ciaran

    Zitat von Marc

    i got all my faders @ -20dB and i boost the master @ +6dB so i enjoy a reasonable listening volume. once the songs gets more dense you can lower the master volume to something around 0dB.


    Thats a great tip, wish i'd started off that way. It's a nightmare now finishing old projects.

    Zitat von mitchiemasha

    i got all my faders @ -20dB and i boost the master @ +6dB so i enjoy a reasonable listening volume. once the songs gets more dense you can lower the master volume to something around 0dB.



    Thats a great tip, wish i'd started off that way. It's a nightmare now finishing old projects.

    if you haven't started automating volume in those old projects you might want to try to select all necessary faders in the mixer and drag them down in one go. in many DAWs, e.g. logic, the individual offsets of all channel are being honored when doing so, so you mix sounds the same but is lower in volume. another things you can try is to insert "gainer" plug-ins on every channel. both techniques only work as long as you don't make use of send/return structures a lot or e.g. distort/compress subgroups.


    best, marc

    Hi again,


    I did some digging in the forum and found a suggestion that if you buy a dedicated USB card, that can help. So I did over the weekend and it has improved things greatly. I am going to do more tests but so far there seems to be a great improvement.


    I'll let ya know how I get on!


    Cheers
    Ciaran

    Zitat von Marc

    if you haven't started automating volume in those old projects you might want to try to select all necessary faders in the mixer and drag them down in one go. in many DAWs, e.g. logic, the individual offsets of all channel are being honored when doing so, so you mix sounds the same but is lower in volume. another things you can try is to insert "gainer" plug-ins on every channel. both techniques only work as long as you don't make use of send/return structures a lot or e.g. distort/compress subgroups.


    best, marc


    Yet another great tip. I'm usealy good at figuring out lil things like that, that would of saved me hours of time.