BeefySteve

Eyup!

I have a sticky problem I can't find the answer to, I hope someone here may be able to shed some light on what may be happening.

Audio record and playback is fine.
Midi record and playback is fine.

But when I try to playback audio and midi together the playback will suddenly stop. The midi file is still playing (distorted) in the background but the only audio I get is like "motorboating" (clicking at about 2Hz) with the playback meter hitting the stops like crazy.

The playback may stop after a few seconds, or perhaps a couple of minutes. It happens using MME, WDM or ASIO drivers but MME are the worst, ASIO are the "best"
There are two 16bit audio tracks and one midi track in the song I am using as a test, so my pc is not stretched.

There are no effects / plugins.

I can stop the noise by right-clicking on the kx mixer icon. When I return to my host program it will resume playback but with massively increased processor usage. If I allow it to play until the clicking restarts I cannot recover and the system crashes. I have to turn the pc off.

I have tried probably every combination of buffer settings but with no effect.
I have tried various soundfonts
I have turned off hardware aceleration
I have decreased graphics bit depth
I only have explorer, kxmixer and my host program running

I have a fresh, clean install of win98se and I have tried the win98se "quick fix"

The problem does not happen with Creative (yuk!) or APS drivers.

I have run out of ideas and throw myself upon your mercy.

System:

Latest Kx driver release (did it with last one too (3534) but I don't know about any others)
Soundblaster Live! Value
Win98se (also same on win98Lite)
Celeron 500
256Meg Ram
ATI Rage Pro (onboard agp)
N-Track Studio

Any ideas would be most welcome - Thank you

Steve

NightBreed

What type of routing do you have in your dsp page of KX? I get the samething sometime but it's turns out to be an issue with sound levels. I think, (but not sure) that you maybe just getting feedback.

TravelRec.

Hi!

Same problem here, but only in cubase - no way to play audio and midi together. If I play midi via mplayer and audio via cubase (or a second instance of mplayer or winamp3) then it works - but this is no solution. Finally I can live with this issue cause I don´t use the build-in synth anymore - vst(i)s and external synths are my way to make music. Sorry for saying this but finally this is the hard truth.

Greetings and regards!

TravelRec

__________________
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BeefySteve

Eyup!

Thanks for the replies.
It looks like the Kx drivers cannot play midi and audio at the same time. Quite a shame because otherwise they perform much better than the Creative ones and are much more flexible with the DSP. Does anyone know of any other drivers that CAN play midi & audio, I really need that functionality.

Thanks again.

Steve

TravelRec.

Hi!

That´s not really correct! kx is able to play midi and audio at the same time. Like I said - there are only some issues on some machines with the build-in synth and soundfont-playing. External midi works perfectly! Maybe it´s cool for you to try more than one sequencer stuff to get what you want... And if you have some time, read here in the forum to see other people´s experiences with kx.

Regards!

TravelRec.

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st8

I get this problem too, almost as described, with distortion and lost time. I can also make it happen with many channel or "busy" midi files, especially, but not always, if the CPU load is high. So looks like some kind of overload in the synth. No idea how to fix it yet....

Spec: 733 Duron, Win2k SP2, Creative Live 5.1, latest KX drivers

BeefySteve

I have discovered that the problem only happens with the built-in soundblaster Live! synths. If I set my system up to use the Microsoft synth then I can play audio & Midi together. I repeat that my problem only happens using Kx drivers. So is this a bug in the drivers, or is it something in my system? Obviously I want to be able to use soundfonts, so I want to be able to use the soundcard built-in synths. Does no-one else really have a problem with this??

Eugene Gavrilov

hmm... midi+audio work fine here
more details are required -- try to launch monitor and check its output

/E

st8

I concur with beefysteve, exactly as he describes. I cannot use the MS Synth as it doesn't work as well with my controller as the kx Synth does. What's the monitor? Would posting m y .kx file be of any use ?

BeefySteve

Hi Eugene, thanks for the reply.
I have a worse situation now. I uninstalled Kx and re-installed the APS drivers so I could play Midi & Audio. When I read your reply I decided to re-install Kx and run the monitor program so that I could give you more information. I un-installed APS and removed the remaining files & registry entries (as far as I could see) and re-installed Kx version 3534f(full) After reboot I received the message "cannot initialise sound card, re-install driver" I rebooted again to see if this message would go away, it didn't. I re-installed the driver as I was told to (via control panel) and still had the same problem. I can see the sound card entry in the System window in control panel and it tells me that it is working correctly. In Multimedia I have four entries in the Audio Devices and Midi Devices, three entries in the Mixer Devices, all of which say that the drivers are loaded but inactive due to an unknown problem. The Kx device does not show up in the Audio tab, or the Midi tab. The Kx mixer does not load. Even though your documentation says the mfc libraries are included in the full install I downloaded them separately and installed them. I was asked if I wanted to replace the relevant files and noticed that the date on the ones I had just downloaded was later than the ones already on my system (?) These files did not cure the problem. I un-installed Kx to try and re-install the APS drivers again but on every reboot the Kx drivers just get re-installed. I must admit I was somewhat reluctant to re-install Kx because I, like many other contributors to this forum have had severe problems with Kx installs in the past. Fortunately I have always been able to overcome the problems and end up with a working system. This time I am not so lucky. I am now in a situation where I have no audio or Midi functions and cannot install an alternative driver because yours has somehow hijacked my system. I understand that a lot of the difficulties I have will be due to my own ignorance as regards the exact functioning of Windows but I am not exactly a complete novice. The problems I am having may be due to the fact that I have inadvertently deleted a file required by the Kx drivers, or a registry entry perhaps. I have a dual boot system with win98se and win98Lite installed. The 3534f driver installs on my 98Lite version, but I cannot see any differences as regards the files installed etc. Perhaps you or someone may be able to point me to some information which will help me un-install (or re-install) the Kx drivers so that I have a fully functioning system again. In the meantime, I can use my 98Lite partition to do some tests I hope will help with the Midi & Audio problem. I browsed the SDK thinking that the montor program was there but could find none. Neither could I find it in the download area, could you tell me where it is please? Sorry this is a long post, but I have tried all I can think of and have spent several hours trying to get my system running again. I do not want to re-install Windows if I can avoid it, although I had to do that once when a Kx install resulted in aN "invalid configuration" message.
Hope you can help.

Steve

BeefySteve

Eyup!

UPDATE!

Problems with soundcard solved by re-installing Windows (decided to bite the bullet)
Audio & Midi problem still remain.
As soon as I find the Monitor program I will post more info.

Steve

st8

urgh, I guess i could but with no definance I see no need to reinstall windows... Maybe I have some directX mangledness but mostly its a full on Win2K SP2 setup... Let me post attachments and I'll try to give you more info


Happy new year

ste

BeefySteve

Eyup!

Okay, I have a copy of DebugView installed (neat app!) and here are two of it's logs.
I have indicated where the problem happens, based on watching the elapsed time on the clock of my recording application (N-Track Studio) and comparing it with the times shown on the DbView Log.
I hope I have included sufficient information to enable a possible fix to be suggested.
The logs start from the time I pressed "Play"
I can't say I understand the logfile but it seems there is a similarity between them when things go wrong.
That is to say, when there is NewStream activity.

Steve

************************************************** ***********************

LOG 1

00000000 0.00000000 kx_lib:
00000001 0.00004480 kx_rec_open: sampling rate: 48000 Stereo 16 bit; [Generic]
00000002 0.04856080 kx_wdm:
00000003 0.04858960 waveout open[c147f890;c559e000]: open(freq=48000; n_channels=2[2]; bps=16; type: Normal)
00000004 0.71155280 kx_wdm:
00000005 0.71156880 [CMiniportSynth::NewStream]
00000006 0.71162000 kx_lib:
00000007 0.71162960 Midi initialized

***Problem happens here****

00000008 13.77274960 kx_wdm:
00000009 13.77276480 [~CMiniportSynthStream]
00000010 13.77281120 kx_lib:
00000011 13.77281920 Midi closed

************************************************** ***********************

LOG 2

00000000 0.00000000 kx_wdm:
00000001 0.00004320 [CMiniportSynth::NewStream]
00000002 0.00009760 kx_lib:
00000003 0.00010560 Midi initialized

***Problem happens here***

00000004 41.47375600 kx_wdm:
00000005 41.47377200 [~CMiniportSynthStream]
00000006 41.47380880 kx_lib:
00000007 41.47381680 Midi closed

dreerozz

could this be 'SB hardware bug'? similar problem appear when using original creative driver. when using latency less than 20 ms playback midi & audio stutter in sonar. increasing latency help. but when playing back only audio i can reach 7 ms latency without problem. i use K7S5A, XP 1700, 256 DDR, SB Audigy2 Platinum, Sonar 2.2 XL using ASIO driver. I try kxdriver 3536 same problem appear, midi and audio can't playback together. audio stopped briefly after few second. i stopped and played back sonar, audio & midi play but then audio stopped again after few second. no effect plugin in audio track. only 1 midi track and 2 audio track.
Eugene, what system do you have that said don't have that problem?

Eugene Gavrilov

no, this should not be a 'hardware bug'

I'll try to investigate this issue

/E

dreerozz

Well, how's the progress then.....

As I Downloaded and installed v 3537, the problem still appear. Soundfont and Audio still can't play together. Using other midi device has no problem.

I can use livesynht pro for playing soundfont, but it take precious cpu time I better use for other effect plugin.

Seriously this bug is my biggest concern. Otherwise this is a very fine program for exploiting creative soundcard.

dj_stick

what are your system specs?

__________________

TravelRec.

Hi!

Update: all problems above are gone since I use XP OS - seems to be an 98´er problem. If possible, try to update your computer with 2k or XP. The wdm implementation works far better with these OSses. This may sound hard, but it´s also hard for the programmers to correct issues of a lame OS with an unorthodox driver routine... .

Peace!

TravelRec.

__________________
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BeefySteve

Eyup!

Does Win XP work as quickly as Win98se on a Celeron 500 machine with 256M RAM. ?

Steve

dj_stick

win xp may be a little too much for the celeron… but you should have enough RAM

__________________

NightBreed

I have windows xp running on an AMD 450 that I use as a record and playback box. I use this computer for sending remote midi data also as a sync box. Or sometimes I'll use a cakewalk control panel to control sliders and things so I dont have to use resorces from my main machine.

So, in other words, windows xp will run fine.. Just check to see if you have a lot of old control cards in the box. Graphic cards, Modems, etc and make sure you have xp drivers avail to them......

Peace

dj_stick

but he is talking about using winxp as well as his audio software on top of that… and the celeron's don;t exactly have comparable performance to the athlon/p3 of the same speed due to a reduced cache…

__________________

BeefySteve

Eyup!

I only have one pc and use it for everything.
At the moment, I have 98Lite installed and dual boot with 98se.
I find a 20% speed improvement in my audio application when running it under 98Lite.
I think I'll have to wait until I can afford a new machine before I use XP.
I have heard good reports about XP in relation to streaming audio so I think it will be a good step.
I'll just have to suffer the midi problem for a while longer.

Thanks for the replies fellas.

Steve