poet

Hi,

First, thanks for a superb job creating these drivers, can't beat squeezing more life outta old kit.

I have 2 cards to chose from, SBLive! 5.1 and SB Audigy1.
I originally setup the kx drivers for the SBLive, (dual-boot - win98se - installed 3534f and updated to 3537. XP - installed 3537) and things were ok.

Then I realised I had an Audigy sat around (just upgraded), so slotted that in, assuming the better soundchip would mean better performance.

However, under both XP and 98se, I got way more audio hangs and glitches, either playing vst synths, or just listening to mp3's while doing anything else (browsing, playing games etc). Swapped back to the SBLive for now.

- Any ideas as to why this is?
Both cards performed ok with the creative drivers, so I guess its not a hardware fault problem. Tried uninstalling all drivers completely and reinstalling, still same problem.

Also:
Is there any way to get soundfont module saved settings to load without running the kxmixer at startup? I don't have a monster machine, and need every ounce of resources I have, even loading the kxmixer to load a soundfont, and quitting it drains the system a little.

I keep getting random pauses with my vst synths, I have a 21.33 buffer, which should be enough for ASIO (?), but even if I increase it, I still get hangs. Any suggestions? (p4 2G, 512MB).

And lastly - how big an impact does setting the Sample Conversion rate in Windows to "Best" make? I read I should set that in the setup guide, will swapping back to "Good" give me better or worse performance with KX?

Sorry for the length of the post. Been playing with these drivers for the last 2/3 days, and sort of saving these questions up.

Thanks for your time.

Doug W

I don't know anything about synths but here is my 2 centavos on kX versions. For me, 3534f and 3538L are the best for not popping or dropping out.I have used 3534f for both Win98SE and XP on different computers. In my PIII I have 2 Audigy cards with no problems, I leave the latency at 21.33 like you, but like I said, I don't have a synth.3538L is available in this thread:http://www.hardwareheaven.com/general-discussion/118620-3538l-released.html

poet

Hey,
Thanks for the reply.
Spent most of last night reading through all the various documents/readmes/faqs/guides that are liberally spread all about the kx project site (some unification required there, had to read dozens of guides from numerous locations to find what I needed to know).

I've dumped the Audigy for now. Have no idea why Im getting such crappy performance with it under XP and 98se. I know its a better card than the SBLive, and Im fairly sure its not faulty.
Might try adding it as a 2nd card for extra inputs at some later date. But for now Id rather have the relative stability of the SBLive.

Still not found a way to have a soundfont loaded without loading the KXMixer in 98se, SFMan is great for XP. Any ideas?

And still not sure whether I need to set Sample Conversion rate to Best or Good for best performance (not quality.)

Cheers tho.

Doug W

Someone else will have to jump in for this answer-out of my knowledge base- Maddogg6? Russ? dj? Mom? anyone?

So you are still using 3537? I am convinced that 3534f and/or 3538L are the only way to go for kX versions.

Try putting it down some, I don't think it will mess anything up.

Have you done all the standard Audio tweaks?
http://www.pcmus.com/TweakXP.htm

Maddogg6

As far as I can tell - KX mixer is more of a 'launcher' - as in - I need the mixer to make volume / dsp changes - but everything still seems to function ok with the KX mixer 'quit'ed (exited - but DID ran to init the card load dsp config etc..)
Sonars SF loader works as well - loaded SF2's (from KX mixer) stay loaded.... ??
Im not sure what the question is? - load up SF2's with KX mixer - the quit the mixer to free those resources. Not sure why that would be a problem, unless its a problem for that particular card.. ??

poet

Thanks for the responses guys, much appreciated.

I like to stick with Stable first, see if I like the territory Im in, then look at testing and beta's.
Will give the 3538L a go now. And will double check those guides see if theres anything missing.

W98 is notorious for not unloading dlls and exes from memory, and like I say I dont have a monster machine. So even running with the mixer at startup and them exiting, parts of it will linger around in memory. Probably not much, but I've spent nearly 8 years running the OS with minimal startup apps, and the kxmixer is quite a big hit.

dj_stick

if you're still on W98, 3538L no longer supports it…

__________________

Maddogg6

Oh - hehe - you want something for win98 - good luck with that...

I took an $800 loss (high end video capture card) to 'upgrade' out of that now defunct OS. Good luck.

Note: Latest versions of KX wont work in win98. (I forget what V dropped win98 (and was only SE IIRC)

To better answer your question.... maybe use a memory defrag util to clean up resident but 'unloaded' programs... because I have serious doubts youd find anything more efficient (theres not much really to choose from in the line of SF2 managers - there used to be one - back in the AWE days - that was a 'third party' manager - but I havent even though of that in years.)

poet

Stuck with 98 happily, have 4 OSs on this system, so can boot to XP as well.
Have the 3538l on XP, will see if they improve things.
on w98, the 3534f install, upgrade to 3537 was fine, performance seemed improved with 3537.
Though I can't work out why I get 0% cpu with winamp in XP, and 21%+ in w98.

As for the SF, guess I'll have to stick with loading and unloading like you say. Shame though, be nice if it stayed loaded after a boot.

Lex Nahumury

You could try SF2LOAD. http://www.hammersound.net/
It's a command line util so you can use a batch file to run it automaticly when OS boots.
It doesn't rely on kxmixer.exe.

Note that 3th-party SF Utils do not always work properly with kX due to diff. SF implementation.

poet

Mmm, getting lots of "could not load aweman32.dll" errors with sf2load, even after a clean boot and no kxmixer running.
Seemed like a good idea though.

Cheers.

Maddogg6

Wouldnt winamp (or potentially any other app) in XP be 'less resource hungry' - due to XP supporting newer CPU's and their new speed enhancing features that win98 was not making use of..?? Like was HT supported in win98? (I didnt think it was anyway??)

To me a better use of resource is to allow KX mixer to run - and only load SF's when needed. I cant imagine using SF's and NOT needing to 'tweak' the KX DSP - so I see KX Mixer as a 'must' . I just let my DAW manage my SF's on a per song basis.

And like I said earlier... you can also still do without KX mixer loaded.

But I am curious how you using the SF's? (ie in a DAW or for live midi keyboard>SF jamming)

poet

Hi,

Still not sure on why its so high in w98, though if XP has 0% cpu, then surely its passing it straight to the card for processing, w98 must still pass it through cpu.
And when you have a 2G P4 and 512mb, w98 makes more sense in terms of overall OS resource usage.
I can at least half the hit by using an eq other than winamps built in one.

My dsp is fine with soundfonts, though Im sure theres many tricks I havent even started discovering yet, will spend time looking at others setups later.

Mainly use my sf collection for either Live playing through vsthost, or recording into Acid both with the sfz vsti.
Theres a lot of sounds there, that none of the vsti synths I have can match, or with the tiny buffer hit.

Lex Nahumury

SF2LOAD V2.1 works fine here.
You probably use an older version meant for the old AWE line of cards.

poet

Oops, didnt spot: "You also need the SoundFont Management System from Creative Labs..."

Thanks.

Maddogg6

If your using VST based SF - players - Id think they dont use the same SF management.

Im beginning to think that - if you get no sound from VST based SF players - is NOT from soundfonts NOT loaded - but the KX mixer didnt initialize the KX ASIO or something not related to soundfonts...
I say this becuase if I use SFz - it doesnt look like it uses the same SF cache manager KX uses. So, Im still confused as to what is your trying to accomplish vs the things you are trying.
(it seems like you shooting at pigeons to get the owl to stop hooting - so to speak)

Maddogg6

For clarity - I have found VST based SF players - load SF's into memory NOT related to KX SF manager...


So - if your using VST based SF players - then DONT LOAD SOUNDFONTS outside of the SF player. They are used differently.
And loading a bunch of SF in KX - then loading them with SFz - is loading it 2 times - or at least that how it looks to me here.
If I load a SF in SFz - then look at KX SF manager - I dont see the SFz loaded SF2 - like I do with Sonars SF manager - and using KX midi synths.

edit: which would make your problem a very different one.
And I would start looking at; if KX ASIO still works w/o KX mixer loading at least 1 time at boot up or not.

Loading SF with KX or anyother 'sound font' manger are all based on CL's SFMAN.dll (AFAIK) and thus - they are for KX MIDI SYNTH 1 & 2 and does not affect SFz (for me with my version of SFz in sonar - I dont use acid).

end edit.

Lex Nahumury

No, that's not necessary since sfman.dll is (should be) already installed.
Just get SF2LOAD V2.1 and you can load soundfonts into the hardware based kxsynths
without kxmixer.exe applet.

cheers.

poet

Hey guys, cheers for the responses.

No, its not for loading SFs into VSTs , its just having a sf loaded at startup, to play my midi files in audio players etc, without, none of them play.

And I tried again with sf2loader, and same error, so I went and installed the SFMan util from creative, and all seems to be working ok now.
It'll do as a fix for now. Thanks.

But its odd that kx without launching the mixer at startup remembers all other settings other than loaded Soundfonts.

Thanks for all the help though.

Lex Nahumury

I can only repeat myself;..SF2Load works just fine.

Just check the following;
- use SF2Load version 2.1
- SFMAN32.DLL is installed and in Windows search PATH

The latter is what causing your error because Sf2load can not find sfman32.dll.
Note that It depends on Windows version were sfman32.dll should reside.

Search your C: drive for sfman32.dll and verify that it resides as next;
for Windows XP:
windows\system32\sfman32.dll
for Window98SE;
windows\system\sfman32.dll

That realy should work!

As a quick test you could copy sfman32.dll into the *same* folder
were you put sf2load.exe. That way sf2load will always find the dll
but it's better to have the dll at the correct place.

HTH,

/Lex

TheKezReturns

Lex Nahumury

BTW and for what it's worth;I totaly forgot to mention you can also load/unload soundfonts by using kxctrl.exe command line util using the -sf2 switches.