Cubase VST and crackly distortion

[Leighmo]

Hi folks, Im running an EWS64xl with cubase and most of the time the card plays cleanly . On the occasion I use VST instruments, the pre recorded tracks and the sounds from the VST instrument crackle and make a disgusting digital distortion sound.
It sometimes helps to adjust waveplay buffer latency in synthesiser settings, but I havent found a stable permanent solution to the problem.
Any comments?? thankyou

[philippz]

Hello Leighmo,

This Sounds (by the meaning of the word;-) like a common problem. Instead of increasing the latency in the synth settings, you should try to solve the problem by increasing the size of the ASIO buffers. This helps with this problem with nearly every audio card.

Regards, Philipp

[Leighmo]

Thanks for replying, philip.
I have tried increasing the buffer size within Cubase, however, as I increase the size, of course, so to does the cubase ASIO latency.
On the smallest buffer size of 512K, My latency is at 12ms.
On 1024K, its at 23ms. The problem with increasing this buffer size, is that I get a time delay between when I hit a MIDI keyboard note and when I hear the sound. This is when using VST instrument.
any further comments???
thankyou again.

[philippz]

Hey Leighmo,

higher latency is always related to ASIO buffer size. If you want to use your card with a lower latency without crackle, you should try to speed up your PC:

- a clean Windows installation just for music purposes
- faster CPU, more RAM etc.

Otherwise, you could get a seperate PCI audio card with a fast ASIO driver for these purposes, for example a Terratec EWX 2496 or a M-Audio Audiophile 2496. That?s the way I solved the problem.
ASIO with an ISA card like the EWS 64 isn?t supposed to work really properly, ISA architecture is simply too old. BTW: the EWS 64 consumes much more CPU power than my newer M-Audio Delta 66.
Don?t get me wrong, I like the EWS 64 very much as a sampler, but as an audio card it?s just out of date.

Bye, Philipp

[Leighmo]

Hi Philipp,
yes, I too have heard of problems with the old ISA slots. The crazy thing is, I have a P3 processor at 800HZ and 256MB RAM!
I thought surely this is enough to get low latency.

Do you run a second Audio card in the same computer as your EWS64? If so, can you run them both at the same time, say in VST?

Do the newer PCI interface cards have varying latency, or are they fixed?

One last question...
I live in Australia and this card is German.
I want to upgrade the sample ram to 64MB. In the Hardware manual, it states that I must buy sample RAM with access time of <60 nano seconds! In Australia, I cant find RAM that has this fast access time! What should I do?
---the fastest I have found is 80 nano seconds!

cheers again, Leighmo.

[philippz]

Hello Leighmo,

you?re right, your PC doesn?t cause the trouble.
It must be something about your software and/or hardware configuration.
I?m running a M-Audio Delta 66 beside my EWS 64 in my PC. The EWS 64 is connected to the Delta by SPDIF and is simply used as a sampler.
Logic Audio, which also uses VST PlugIns and ASIO drivers, only uses the Delta 66 as an audio card. The EWS 64 is only used as a MIDI device, just like an external sampler.
Running both cards in VST at the same time simply makes no sense in my case: the AD/DA converters of the Delta 66 are far superior, so I do all the recording and playback with this card.
Latency is adjustable. With Logic 5.0 (or maybe already 4.7?), latency might go down to 2 ms. Most other good PCI audio cards will perform in a similar way.
The last memory stick I bought for the EWS 64 was made by Kingston. To be frankly, I simply didn?t care how fast it is exactly. It was the cheapest I could get(about 40 US-$) and it?s perfect. Have a look at ebay.com or the Australian equivalent, lots of RAM is offered in these online auctions. I got mine from ebay.de.

Bye, Philipp