On 28 Mar 2005, at 2:22 PM, Chuck Israels wrote:
What advantages are there to using a "FireWire audio breakout box?
I use M-Audio's FireWire Audiophile, which doubles as a MIDI interface. You can see what it does here:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FirewireAudiophile-main.html
The sound quality is nice. It's especially useful for GPO, since GPO's default output volume is so low, so it's nice to boost the output level beyond what the built-in audio interface is capable of. And the analog audio-in quality is far better than what you'd get from the Mac's miniplug.
M-Audio's OS X drivers for this thing are *awful*, though. They have definitely improved in the past couple of months, but it's still extremely flakey, often requiring me to power cycle (turn on and off) the interface in order for the Mac to "see" it. They seem committed to trying to fix it, though -- the drivers get updated about once a month. Maybe eventually they'll work out all the problems.
- Darcy ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY
On Mar 28, 2005, at 11:05 AM, Darcy James Argue wrote:
Hi Chuck,
On 28 Mar 2005, at 1:38 PM, Chuck Israels wrote:
I have experienced what I think is "audio packets being dropped' when the computer has been in use for a long time and Finale and GPO are working hard. It sounds like machine gun on/off, on/off sound.
No, that's just GPO choking. It does that.
Hi Darcy,
I will do what you have suggested below. No, I have not loaded any "wet" versions of instruments.
Am I missing anything besides the problems Hiro mentioned.
You can probably reduce this problem somewhat by reducing the polyphony (i.e., maximum number of simultaneously sounding notes) on the piano (as well as any other multitimbral patches), as well as using the "Light" version of the piano patch instead of the full-sized version. (It will still probably choke a little at big moments, though.)
To do this, click and hold on the number next to the little eighth notes in the GPO player, then drag down. The number before the slash is the number of currently sounding notes, the number after the slash is the maximum polyphony. For the piano, it's probably set to 64 by default. Click on "64" and drag it down to, say "32" or whatever minimum you find acceptable. Make sure all of your wind instruments are set to a polyphony of 1.
You can also turn off scrolling playback, that helps too. Also try hitting the "bypass" button on the Ambience Reverb (which, obviously, turns it off). And make sure you're not inadvertently loading any of the "wet" versions of the included instruments. In fact, it's probably best to move the folder containing the "wet" instruments to some other location, so you don't accidentally load one of them.
I have no idea what audio interface is in use here. It's simply what's built in to this early G5, single processor 1.8.
That would be "built-in audio".
What do you mean "FW"? Is that Firewire?
Yes. I have a FireWire audio breakout box. I don't plug anything into the audio out jack on my Mac.
If you're not using a FireWire audio breakout box, you don't have to worry about any of the possible complications Hiro warned of.
Question: Will adding considerably more than the existing 1.5 MB of RAM help in keeping things from choking up, as they seem to be doing at the moment?
Possibly, yes, but GPO playback will continue to be problematic due to the Mac-unfriendliness of the Kontakt Player.
Well, I may soon add more RAM, because there are other things that seem to choke up now (memories of System 9 and older Macs - though not nearly as bad and not so unstable). Occasionally, an application will choke and stop working, or refuse to load or quit. Even "Force Quit" can be reluctant. This doesn't happen often, but when it dies, it seems to be after a long day's use when I've had a number of applications open.
Since you know Gary, you might ask him about Kontakt 2.0 (which is supposed to be better-optimized for Mac) and the timeline for bringing that version to GPO.
I will do that when Gary returns from Europe in a couple of weeks. Gary and Tom did imply (without making promises for things over which they have no control) that tighter integration for GPO w/Finale is in the works at MM.
Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
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