Troubleshooting Studio Vision Crashes? Lexicon Core2

[chanthing]

Hi,

I'm using StudioVision 4.5 with OMS 2.3 on a PowerMac G4 (Digital Audio) running 9.2.2.

I just switched from an M-Audio Firewire Audiophile to a Lexicon Core2 (MIDI now supplied by Opcode Studio 4).

After a few short audio recording operations, when I go to Strip Silence a stereo audio event, the system immediately hangs. One time it gave an Error 17 (I believe) and then froze.

The only other weirdness I notice is that when starting up StudioVision I get an error saying it couldn't initialize the MP-100 VST (daughter DSP card for the Core2).

Any suggestions for fixing or troubleshooting? Thanks.

What's the opinion on 4.5 vs 4.2.2 on a G4 such as mine? It seems weird that it's an offline type operation (Strip Silence) that crashes. One would think that this was a software operation unrelated to the ASIO driver, etc.

-- Thing

[GaryN]

Easy ones first:
1.) Does the MP reverb work? If yes, ignore the startup error. SVP is trying to set it up like software in the menu because it "sees' the card as a VST plugin.
This is one of those things that get taken care of in updates. Too bad there aren't any.

2.) 4.5 was mostly a bugfix but nobody remembers what those fixes were. As far as anyone can tell, either 4.2 or 4.5 should run just fine EXCEPT 4.5 has a bug in the Notation window that causes it to display improperly and crash if you try to edit in it. That's right, the bugfix had another bug. There is a work-around but unless you work heavily in notation, it's not worth worrying about.

Now:

Strip Silence is indeed an offline operation unrelated to the ASIO. It's just an after-the-fact noise gate. How much memory do you have allocated to SVP? Oddly, you can sometimes have too much - yes that makes no sense, but it's true  Try a few different settings in the Get Info window between half to twice the shown recommended amount.

My only question is: when you say "After a few short audio recording operations, when I go to Strip Silence a stereo audio event, the system immediately hangs."
Exactly what do you mean by that? A few rec operations on the same track, on different tracks? If you're set in rec prefs to place each recording in a different file, but laying them end-to-end on the same track, then trying to strip silence from the whole track… who knows, your computer could explode for all I know. Try stripping after just one recording and see if it hangs. Holler back.

[chanthing]

Thanks for the ideas.

I haven't checked to see if the reverb VST works or not. I'll give it a try. TBH, it's not something I see myself really needing, but Lexicon's reverbs have a good rep, so...

> My only question is: when you say "After a few short audio recording operations, when I go to Strip Silence a stereo audio event,
> the system immediately hangs."
> Exactly what do you mean by that?

The problem occurs when I'm following the procedure in the manual for finding the optimal settings for record and play offset. I am able to get through the first part (finding the record offset by recording quarter notes and checking the event offset between MIDI and audio). It's after I've recorded the subsequent audio to another audio track that the problem occurs.

I thought it might be related to using the same audio file for both audio recordings, so I made the second audio track mono and with a different file. That seems to have stopped the operation from crashing the system, although Strip Silence does not behave how I would expect.

No matter. I think I am good with my audio offset settings. The Core2 seems to have low latency with only about a 10 SMPTE bit (80 bits per frame) difference between the MIDI event and its equivalent audio event.

Thanks for the info. I'll let you know what I find out.

-- Thing

[chanthing]

Okay, I can't test if the MP100 plugin works because it doesn't appear in the plugin list along with all the other vst plugins.

The exact error message as Studio Vision starts up is "Error Initializing VST Plug-In MP100. Error 17".

The same VST plugin does work correctly with Peak.

One sort of strange thing is that the file type listed for the plug-in is "M-Audio Firewire ASIO document". That's also the type listed for the Core2 ASIO driver. I guess it's because I previously was using the M-Audio Firewire interface. I doubt if this is the problem, because that's also the type listed for some other VST plug-ins I have which work fine in Studio Vision.

I thought at first it might be because of how I had the routing set up in the Core2 control panel, but changing it around doesn't seem to help at all.

Any ideas for solving this are extremely welcome.

-- Thing