Let me describe what I am using before I ask my question. I have a 2.0 ghz pentium mobile processor w/533 mhz fsb, 2 gigs of memory, 60 gig 7200 rpm hard drive, finale 2005.

When I playback the music through VDL2, it's always a little uneven, when the rhythms get more dense (i.e. rolls) it becomes very uneven (choppy playback). What can I do to help improve the performance of the playback?

What Virtual Midi Cable are you using? I had problems with Maple Midi Tools for a long time so I switched over to Midi Yoke and haven't had any problems since.

I am actually using midi yoke. Should I try maple and see what happens?

[quote=";Scott4175";]I am actually using midi yoke. Should I try maple and see what happens?[/quote]

Midi Yoke should work fine. This may have something to do with your DFD settings. These were working OK for us at WGI:

[img]https://www.tapspace.com/images/DFDSettings.jpg[/img]

Remember, if you change DFD settings, it's best to do so [b]before[/b] loading instruments, otherwise all loaded instruments will have to reload. Also be sure to hit [b]Apply[/b] before closing the window. Otherwise settings won't be saved.

If that doesn't help, you might try playing around with these DFD settings so they're best suited to your system. If that still doesn't help, let us know if there are other specific descriptions of the problems that might help trace the source of what's causing them.

Hi Jim. I wasn't using direct from disk, but I downloaded it and I will tweak around with it. It is already better, but occasionally it will be a little uneven. I update on my progress and tell you how it turns out. Thanks.

Also - check the settings for SOUNDCARD in the Setup window. Depending on your soundcard, you'll see different things. It's best to use ASIO interface drivers if your soundcard uses them. If you have this availability, change to ASIO, and verify that the ";output latency"; value is lower than it was. The lower this value, the less ";chop"; you should hear. :)

hope this helps!

What program are you using for playback? Sibelius or Finale will never be dead-on...

Thanks again Jim, I don't think I have ASIO drivers on my card, it's a laptop computer. I did lower the latency to 15 ms. Anything under that and the samples sound distorted. I have my DFD set to High Performance. It's still not perfect, rolls have very slight ";chop";, but at least it's acceptable for now. Any more ideas will be appreciated.

Drumcat, I am using Finale. What can you use to make playback ";dead-on";?

High Performance is not the setting you want if you are experiencing playback problems- high performance means just that: you need an extremely fast computer to be able to use it. Try using ";small instruments"; instead. The Pentium M is a good chip, but tends to fall short in many audio/visual benchmarks when compared to Athlon 64 or higher clocked Pentium 4.

Lowering latency will also cause choppiness. It's really only important to worry about that setting if you are trying to input notes in real-time using a MIDI keyboard. The latency is the delay from hitting a key and hearing a note on the computer. A low setting like yours will likely cause problems like pops and scratchiness unless you have a good internal sound card like an Audigy.

[quote=";jmattson";]Lowering latency will also cause choppiness. It's really only important to worry about that setting if you are trying to input notes in real-time using a MIDI keyboard. The latency is the delay from hitting a key and hearing a note on the computer. A low setting like yours will likely cause problems like pops and scratchiness unless you have a good internal sound card like an Audigy.[/quote]

Good call Jesse. Thanks for pointing that out! To the best of my knowledge, MME or DirectSound drivers don't perform as well as ASIO. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if this performance lag drives you nuts, I think CreativeLabs may have some external Soundblaster options that could help laptop users.

Just FYI I just got up and running and was getting double playback on snare hits in Sibelius with 50 latency. I lowered it to ten and it just about fixed the problem. I am using an audigy creative card.

This is an update. I can playback my old battery scores quite well now. I have been experimenting with bidule and multiple instances of VDL:2 to playback a full percussion score. It�۪s pretty choppy now. I am using the small instruments setting in DFD. Also, playback often times hangs up in Finale 2005. I have playback set to non-scrolling and human playback off. Anymore suggestions? Is anybody having success playing back a full percussion score on a laptop here? If so, what are you doing to make it happen?

Thanks

So, how many instruments do you have loaded at the same time? Are you using a 4200rpm laptop hard drive? Is your program on the same hard drive as your samples? How much ram do you have overall that's unused? Have you defragmented lately?

Frankly, if you're using Finale and a few instances of Kontakt, you'd better have some ram. Otherwise, you're probably going to be drawing a lot from a laptop drive, which is inherently slow. If your ram is mostly used by the programs you're running, then you're going to be digging into virtual ram, also running off of your slower drive.

Maybe you should be looking at something that can render midi... I have a hard time thinking that 2g of ram is problematic.

15 Instruments are loaded up. My hard drive is a 7200 rpm hard drive. I haven't defragmenter since loading up VDL:2. I will try defragmenting. I have a lot of unused ram. According to Windows Task Manager it's using 798 MB out of 2 gigs.

Then you really should be loading up more into ram in advance... try going to your max ram before it goes to DFD.