DarkDjinn Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 (edited) I was working on a piece this morning, and ran into a problem that I've never had before - crackling, when I added an instrument. So I'm using Garageband, and running 5 tracks of ERA Medieval Legends, 7 tracks of Miroslav Philharmonik, 1 of EZdrummer. When I added two more of Philharmonik (bringing the total number of tracks to 15) and it got to the part where those two instruments come in, the crackling started. It's not a volume issue that I can tell. I'm using an iMac mid-2011 with 14GB of RAM. I just added 8GB so this is depressing if my computer can't handle this many instruments at once, especially since Philharmonik isn't even that great. Any suggestions as to how I can fix this or at least figure out if "too many instruments" is indeed the issue? Edited June 9, 2014 by DarkDjinn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusK Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 Crackling is usually the result of buffer underruns, which is more of a CPU/disk issue. As far as my Google-fu tells me, adjusting your audio buffer was disabled for some reason in Garageband 11. If you're using a version of Garageband older than 11, you can make your audio buffer a bit larger at the expense of latency. If you're running Garageband 11, you can lock tracks while you work, or render your instrument tracks and import them as audio files. Why exactly would you need 9 tracks of Philharmonik? You are using all 16 MIDI channels per instance, right? It kinda sounds like you're only loading a single loop or sample set for each instance; even a complex piece would need maybe two or three instances of Philharmonik at most. It could also explain why you think Philharmonik "isn't even that great"; It's not top-shelf stuff like EWQL, but . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkDjinn Posted June 9, 2014 Author Share Posted June 9, 2014 Thanks for replying DusK. I am using a version older than Garageband 11, but I don't know how old. I'll look into those things you said - I have put off upgrading for some reason but I can't remember why. There was some feature that I vaguely recall hearing wasn't included in the new version that I felt like I needed. And as far as the "single instrument per instance", that is exactly what I'm doing. I'm better with music than I am with software, silly me. So you can load 16 instruments into one instance then? I actually tried doing that in a different piece I was working on (I put regular violins and staccato violins together) and then couldn't figure out how to make it work. I'm showing my ignorance here, but hopefully you can school me on this so I don't keep banging my head against a wall. Andddd finally...the thing I don't like about Philharmonik is the lack of attack of most of the brass sounds. Some of them are pretty good, and others seem to be lacking. And I have a bad habit of comparing what I do have with what I don't have, and I've been eyeing EWQLSO for a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DusK Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 Well, I use FL Studio, and all that stuff is handled through MIDI Out channels. I don't know anything about the Garageband equivalent of that, or even if it has one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkDjinn Posted June 9, 2014 Author Share Posted June 9, 2014 Well, I use FL Studio, and all that stuff is handled through MIDI Out channels. I don't know anything about the Garageband equivalent of that, or even if it has one. Well now that I know it's possible (whether or not it's possible in Garageband) then I know what to look for. Thanks for the heads up, and I hope I can figure it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moseph Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 I don't personally use GarageBand so I can't speak from experience, but a couple minutes of googling suggests that it's not actually possible in GarageBand to assign MIDI tracks to transmit on specific MIDI channels, which is what you would need to do to access multiple patches in a single Miroslav instance. It's probably one of those features they intentionally left out to encourage people to upgrade to Logic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ianuarius Posted June 9, 2014 Share Posted June 9, 2014 I'm using an iMac mid-2011 with 14GB of RAM. I just added 8GB so this is depressing if my computer can't handle this many instruments at once, especially since Philharmonik isn't even that great. If you're running out of resources it has less to do with RAM and more with the CPU. Also, it's not the samples or the quality of the instrument that determines how much processing power it requires but the quality of programming. Some seemingly insignificant plugins might hog a lot of resources if not optimized properly on the programming level. That being said, I find it difficult to believe it'd be a CPU-related problem. You could always try narrowing the problem down. e.g: 1) test out different plugins. do they all crackle? 2) test out different soundcards if possible. similar problems? 3) test out different DAWs, like demo version of Reaper. same problems? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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