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Sound Issues Upgrading to GO3

JayR

New member
I have a VPO with 53 sounding stops that worked well in Windows XP 32-bit. The samples are from various free Hauptwerk 1 organs and loaded in under 2.25GB RAM. I have upgraded the PC to a Dell OptiPlex 960 with 8GB RAM on Windows Vista 64-bit and I am using the latest release of Grand Orgue. When I use only a few stops per division, everything sounds fine. But when I really start pulling out the stops, especially when I use the 4' and 16' couplers, the sound begins to cut out, like there is a beat in the sound. There is no antivirus running on this computer, and all drivers are up to date. Any suggestions on fixing this?

Thank You!!!
Jay
 

e9925248

New member
What is your CPU and what sound card entry is selected in GO? Samples per buffer? Various concurrency settings?

This sounds like, the audio engine is not able to finish the audio calculations in time, if you pull more stops. There is no univeral solution for this.

The most effective GO options to adjust:
* Try different entries for your soundcard in GO.
* Adjust desired latency (properties of the sound card in GO - only for entries with "PA")
* Increase samples per buffer

The polyphony limit limits the concurrent sounding samples, which caps the GO load.
Using linerar interpolation reduces CPU load.

I have not evaluated the effect of hyperthreading - disabling/enabling it (and adjusting the various concurrency limits in GO to the resulting core count) could be tested.
 

JayR

New member
The Dell OptiPlex 960 has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with integrated ADI 198x HD sound card. I noticed today that if I held a key down, after a few seconds, the sound would stay continuous. As soon as I moved to another key, the beat would occur again for at least 5 seconds.
 

e9925248

New member
Increase samples per buffer. Have you tried the various entries of your soundcard in GO audio output?

So it is an older CPU, which you want to use with a larger organ => Select linear interpolation in GO.
Disabling lossless compression is also a performance improvement, if you have enough RAM.
 

JayR

New member
Thank you for your suggestions. I am making progress with the issue. I can see that CPU is hardly taxed and memory consumption is only 42% with all samples loaded. It appears now that the remaining contributor of this issue is dirty key contacts. Over 55 years of arcing and oxidation have taken their toll on the contacts. I am going to do another round of Dexoit Gold and manual cleaning of the contacts.
 

JayR

New member
Lars' MIDI file gave the same symptoms as my console. So I am definitely having issues within GO and the PC. I watched the CPU while the MIDI file was playing, and it never spiked above 47%. However, the sound was horrible with all of the stops and couplers pulled. I noticed that the 16' couplers really added to the issue. The 4' couplers seemed to be okay for the most-part.

The strange thing is all this used to work with and old single core Pentium 4 processor PC running Windows XP in GO 2.1. Thanks for the help so far!
 

e9925248

New member
GO 0.3 requires more CPU power then GO 0.2 - but it also has many more features.

You don't provide very much info about your current GO settings (and your CPU - there are multiple versions with different speed) and how your system has reacted to the various tips.

PS: For your custom, big organ, I would make sure, that it uses multiple windchests.
 

JayR

New member
Sorry that I have not provided you as much information as you need to assist me properly. I have to travel to get to the console, and I am attempting to meet a timeline to get it back together and as functional as possible for next Wednesday. So my focus has been more on wiring and not on the software.

The processor is an Intel Core 2 Duo E8500/3.16GHz. I have attempted to implement all of your suggestions. Latency is at Max, Linear Interpolation increases the number of samples I can use before the issue occurs. By increasing the Polyphony to some outrageously high number (over 10000), it seems the issue is not as bad, but at the default of 2048, the issue is pretty bad. I am not sure about the sound card settings you are suggesting I try. If you can get more specific, I will do whatever you suggest.

I am attaching my ODF as it should answer most of the other questions you may have. Please understand, I am not trying to be critical of GO. I find it amazing that you guys have shared this wonderful software with us. That is why I am using GO for pipe organ console conversions and why I have made my designs and methods available to the public as well.

Once again, thank you for all of your help with this!!!
Jay
 

Attachments

  • KilgenOpus7722.organ
    133.7 KB · Views: 5

e9925248

New member
The ODF is OK. There is no need for extra manuals for Zimelstern and Nightingale. You can just place them on any other manual - GO shows the various hidden manuals eg. on the various coupler panels.

I would not recommend using the GO audio recorder in your situation, as it will likely increase the chance of sound issues.

For changing the GO audio driver, go to the audio output tab in the GO settings, select the sound card and use change. Try the different possibilities.

Your statement, that increasing the polyphony helps, seem a little bit strange to me.
Are you suffering from the fact, that your computer has enough free CPU and the polyphony limit prevents starting of new new samples or releases? [There is a polyphony meter in the GO tool bar].
Or is "Active polyphony management" causing troubles?
Or are you suffering from a "too much load in a 20ms time window" issue?
 

JayR

New member
I had to raise the polyphony limit until the meter no longer pegged out, which it was doing at the default of 2048. I will hopefully be getting back to the console on Sunday. I will try your other suggestions and then post an update.

Thanks Again!
Jay
 
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e9925248

New member
Disabling lossless compression also reduces CPU usage.

You can experience two sound failuers:
1) If there are to much samples playing, so that GO can't finish all caluculations in time, there are very short breaks in the sound ("cracks"). This is a clear indication, that you need to reduce the polyphony as last resort.
Don't forget, that Windows features various background task, which also consume CPU - configure the polyphony limit in such a way, that there is enough free CPU power for these task, as otherwise there will be a crack in the audio signal. As GO needs to finish a audio buffer in a short time window (<= 20 ms), it is sensitive to very small load spikes. The task manager averages larger intervals, so such spikes might just show up as a few %.
2) If there are more samples than the polyphony limit playing, GO will skip starting samples. If polyphony management is active, GO will start fading out releases, if there are too many samples, so that new samples can start.

The limit should be select in such a way, that 1 does not happen (even if 2 occurs).

PS: I would really be interessted in your final polyphony setting.
 

JayR

New member
Here is an intermediate update on the situation. I used my home VPO for testing which has about 20 sounding stops (1.5GB of samples), mostly derived from the Enigma Wet Set. These are the specs on the PC:

Compaq Presario SR1726NX
AMD Athlon 64 3400+/2200MHz - Single Core
3GB RAM
Windows 7 64-bit with SP1

Here are the settings required to play Lars' problem.mid file without any sound distortion...

AudioCfg1.jpgAudioCfg2.jpg
 
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JayR

New member
The settings above also work on the larger VPO to remove the sound distortion. Unfortunately, once I set the Audio Output to DrectDraw, GO locks up any time I try to make any other changes to the audio settings. This is true for both consoles.
 

e9925248

New member
What is the polyphony limit?

My test case for Lars midi file (fast alternating choords) is: Send the manual part to manual I, open the coupler panel for manual I and pull all couplers except "U.O" and MEL/BAS. Even a small orgen like Pibrac (15 stops, the second manual has a smaller compass) can easily overload a 3.GHz Dual-Core AMD X2. So it seems, that you are not using any sub/superoctave couplers.

You are loading the samples in mono - this means less CPU usage, but the stereo to mono transformation can affect the sound quality.
 

JayR

New member
On the smaller organ, the polyphony is set to 2048. I will have to check on the larger organ, but I believe I at least doubled that number. When I tested problem.mid, I was running full organ - all stops and couplers pulled except for Unison Off. I wanted to go back and try with stereo instead of mono, but now that I have DirectDraw set for Audio Output, GO locks up on both consoles whenever I try to save additional changes.
 

e9925248

New member
You mean DirectSound (not DirectDraw)?

If you consider the GO settings unfixable, you can remove the GrandOrgueConfig File from the Roaming Directory of your AppData folder:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...lders-in/26f4d163-7340-4974-b513-72bfcd1f54a5
That way GO will start with the initial values for all global GO settings. Organ specific settings are still perserved in the GrandOrgueData folder.

You error descriptions indicates, that opening or closing a audio or midi driver hangs. My only suggestion is: If one sound card entry is broken, try the next. I'm not aware of any other reports, that that the DirectSound code is broken - so its likely related to the driver you use, which I can't fix.

PS: There should be two entries using direct sound (with and without "(PA)") using a different implementation.
 

JayR

New member
I just wanted to thank you again for helping me to get the sound issue worked out with my settings in GO3. The nice thing with these consoles is, once I get them working, I don't have to change anything else. For future planning, I will try to get out of the "old days" mentality where I would save an older, but decent computer, and use it for a VPO. If I get an opportunity to do another VPO, I will plan for "latest and greatest".

Thanks Again!!!
Jay
 
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