So far I got no response from Spectrasonics to my yesterdays email. Hope they are now trying to reproduce it.
rreuscher your issue sounds simmilar. The occurence of clicks ans pops as well as the drop outs have also been increased when I used the Sustain pedal. But after testing and repeating the test multiple times I found the following rules apply in my system since I updated to 1.3.0f :
The clicks and drop outs coccured after hitting many notes/chords while holding sutain but only when VOICES=64.
Setting VOICES=63 solved only the drop outs (complete sequence of missing notes/tones) but I still hear clicks and pops.
After startup or instrument change I hear the clips & pops but only while keyscape is loading the samples (e.g. Preview Ready Progress bar in Keyscape). No more clicks/pops after this was done.
After the update the loading of samples is probably no longer correctly indicated to GigPerformer. I’m not famillar with the spec of the VST API but I guess there is some kind of event/callback in this interface used for progress reporting from VST Plugin to the VST Host. It seems this interface does no longer work correctly since 1.3.0f
May be rreusher you can repeat your test while beeing aware of not only what you do but also when you do it. In the sample loading phase (check task manager if not indicated by any progress bar) or even after loading is done? I have had no more audio issues when VOICES<=63 and loading is done (which may takes minutes after startup in non predictive mode)
I don’t know what happened, but I cant seem to reproduce the problem anymore. I have not restarted my PC, I even did not restart GP, but today I’m not able to reproduce clicks and props.
Loading of the heavier presets takes about 10 secs on my computer, and when I play during that “preview time” there are also no crackles. It also does not matter now the amount of voices I set. It just works…
Loaded up 4 Keyscape plugins and loaded 4 hybrid presets, but also then no problems at all.
Strange as yesterday it took me a couple of hours, to investigate, and solve the clicks and pops, and now they magically disappeared
This is indicative of other processes running in the background of your PC and taking resources. It also means that the issue will most likely happen again when that same process starts again.
Look for something that takes a lot of disk bandwidth like a continuous backup for example.
I think so too, but I have yet to find the culprit. This machine is completely debloated (all unnecessary Microsoft stuff is removed), and only GP is installed, plus needed plugins.
Also all non-essential windows services have been disabled.
I will keep an eye on running processes if it happens again.
I’m familiar with the E-book. I even have a bunch of scripts that makes this changes for me automatically.
Which I run after an Windows Update. (my DPC latency varies between 2-6 usec)
But I might have missed something, and I will go thru the book again.
Spectrasonic Support confirmed the dropouts with VOICES=64 is a known bug and will be fixed in next release. Good news!
For clicks and pops they assumed it’s caused by windows defender or any other virus protection software replacing this defender (NortonLiveLock for me). I disconnected network and disabled the virus scanner for 15 minutes for some testing but the clicks&pops are the same as before. I also tried with different Keyscape.exe process priorities and thread affinity mask (in general not recommended to do!) but no noticeable impact on the audio issue.
During my testing I monitored the system load in resource monitor (more detailed view in task manager showing kernel cpu usage too) during “Preview Ready” while playing lots of notes:
RAM 29% of 32GB RAM used after loading is done. (for caching first samples of each note)
All other drives 0%
Ethernet near 0% or 0% when I pull off the cable.
Total CPU usage is 20%… 30% (6 cores)
Keyscape CPU usage is 12%… 15% (1 core max CPU load = 16,6%)
All other regular processes (user space cpu time) are always 0 or near 0% (1…3).
Kernel CPU usage is raising to 10% while loading.
So it looks like there is no other regular process causing a noticeable load on the local drives, especially the STEAM drive (storing steam data only and nothing else). And I think Ethernet load at this point is not relevant. In general network interface interrupts have a high priority over regular processes which can be throttled in very realtime critical applications using the MCSS Multimedia Class Scheduing Service (which is able to block everything excpt the system timer interrupts) but I don’t think they (need to) use MCSS since it might seriously affect system responsiveness.
So for me it looks like it is nothing outside the keyscape process causing this audio issues except the systems kernel cpu usage (10%). I will report this observation to Spectrasonics hoping they have a clue.
For what it’s worth, it’s unclear that just disabling an AV stops it from interfering – it’s still there, it’s still running even if it is not supposed to be doing anything!
Spectrasonic Support asked me to do this. They assume that AV scanning might slow down the loading process and may be is causing the audio issues (which turned out to be false). Do you think a virus scanner which is running but disabled (not scanning anything) could cause any other processes realtime issues?
Just a quick status for everyone still interested. Investigation at Spectrasonic support is ongoing. I answered a lot of questions and sent some recordings demonstrating the issues. Support will discuss with developers and I wait for results.
I write the following to the best of my knowledge and belief!
If you use this information for whatever reason, you do it on you own risk!
Some good news! I seems to be possible to update and/or roll back and forth to any of the versions of the 3 Keyscape components availbale in the Spectrasonic website update area. But you have to be aware of the dependencies btw. the versions of this 3 components as described in the release notes. I was able to get rid of my audio issues by rolling back to Keyscape component versions released on “6-3-20” which are
Keyscape Software 1.1.3.c
Keyscape Soundsources v1.0.2
Keyscape Patches v1.3.1c
After this, I could not hear any clicks&pops or other audio issues neither in Keyscape Standalone application nor when I use Keyscape Plugin in GigPerformer 4. So I assume the issue has been added by one of the releases following “6-3-20”.
If you do encounter the same clicks&pops and try this roll back, then your keyscape user patches might be tagged with the newest plugin version you have used already. This may cause a warning "… patch was created by a newer plugin… might not load correctly… " when you try to use them later after this roll back. I just did a “Utility” → “Save Patch Quick” to get rid of this warnings.
All the tests Spectrasonic Support was asking me the do have been focused on the newest/newer versions of Keyscape and Omnisphere. I seems to me, they have been interested in the status of the newest versions of not only Keyscape but Omnisphere too. They have not been able to reproduce the issue on their end but all the tests they askd me to do did not show any suceess or solution. They also asekd me to update Omnisphere to the newest version. But take care, when I now use my older “recovered” Keyscape Plugin in the newest Omnisphere version I still hear the clicks&pops, espacially when I use “LA Custom C7”. It is to be clarified, if Omnisphere itself has a similar issue.
Short Update. I also reverted Omnisphere to the older version released on 6-3-20 but I still hear keyscape clicks using the Keyscape Plugin in Ominsphere multis, even if I roll back to my initial installation 3 years ago (around August 2018).
But as mentioned in my previous repply, no more clicks or other audio issues in Keyscape Standalone or Keyscape+GP4 with versions released on 6-3-20.
Today Spectrasonics support told me, they were able to reproduce the clicks and pops and found the root cause. The fix will take some time but today they can not tell what the timeline is. I will give an update as soon as I get more information on this.
They recommended to use version 1.1.3c in the meantime.
I too have been getting occasional clicks with Keyscape both with GP4 and standalone since installing the last Keyscape update however this is on a MacMini M1 and I didn’t have this issue before. Hopefully that new update to Keyscape will be released soon
@ahutnick I heard the clicks during loading when progress bar shows “Preview Ready” state. And in order to help finding the root cause I have sent some recordings to spectrasonics demonstrating the characteristics of the clicks.
It shows how the clicks look like, how they sound, the waveform, amplitude and timing (duration of bursts, offset to start audio / note on) and how they are related to the “VOICES” configured, Thinning and the number of notes played repeatedly (1 single note or chords of 6 notes). And escpacially when using Sustain Pedal at VOICES=64 I also got dropouts. May be for a first guess you can compare them to your issue but your clicks seem to bee much more rarely.
I started playing immediately after state “Previey Ready” was shown.
–From moderator Please do not copy/paste an entire earlier post – just link to it!
Actually I was still occasionally getting clicks and pops using Keyscape with GP and being that the Cpu meter was reading around 9 percent in GP I figured it was some effect setting in the piano program. It turned when I lowered the gain in the effect called Tape in Keyscape the occasional clicks and pops stopped.