Yes, I do need to exercise patience, thank you for the friendly reminder. I’m still on Win 7 so Win 10 requirements aren’t applicable to me. I will test on my Win 10 Surface Pro, and see if it is the CPU or RAM causing the issue. And even though Neural DSP says it recommends at least 8 gigs of RAM, I have no issues with it, testing on this Internet PC at 96 samples at 44.1khz, even when switching presets. Which makes me think it’s a GP issue, not my box. But I will test on a powerful machine, to rule it out or not.
Jon, thank you for chiming in, tell me more about syncing the Audio Clock. Where and how is that done? I’m sorry I don’t agree with you, about the Interface being the problem. All Neural DSP plugins operate flawlessly within my DAWs and NEVER make any noise, when switching presets. All those virtual amps run smooth even at very low latency settings.This ONLY happens in GP, when switching Rackspaces. So logic would kind of dictate there in, lies the problem. But to be certain I will test on a powerful Win 10 machine. I could be wrong. More testing is required.
Hi aharry, yes I’m aware of their system requirements, but in my case, all those plugins function flawlessly in my DAW at 96 Samples 44.1khz 2.2 milliseconds. So that just deepens the mystery to me.
Thanks Jeff, so are you saying that it’s GP that requires the increase in RAM. That would make sense, seeing all the factors at play. Like I said I will test on a new Win 10 machine. Thanks for your input.
Thanks Rank, I will watch that meter. It’s not pops or clicks that I’m hearing…like when you’re running at too low of a latency for your CPU, it’s actual noise during the switching of Rackspaces. I will buy Tonex and test it. Which one do you recommend? If it’s lighter on CPU and I can get similar great tones like those in Neural, then that’s the route I will take. Thanks for your advice.
Hmm, I don’t know that. (I am basically just an unsophisticated user).
All I know is that 4GB of ram seems awful low.
This is not the system you’d want to perform with - to have everything low spec’ed and want to run modern high-end hungry plugins.
Maybe you can get away with TH-U or S-Gear (especially older versions), but no way you can run Neural DSP plugins normally on this computer.
Function how? How, for example, are you replicating “switching Rackspaces, between two instances of the same plugin” with your DAW?
Remember that DAWs are mostly not real-time.
You can have dozens of plugins attached to tracks but except for the track that is being recorded (and monitored in real time), everything else can be precalculated because the DAW can “look ahead” whereas a real-time system can’t. So it’s not going to have the demands and real-time priorities needed by a live performance host.
Do you play live the plugin in your DAW?
Regarding sync’ing clocks, I had a specific situation where I had created a composite interface in the Mac that combined my RME interface with some I/O from some loopback drivers. I don’t remember the details, but I needed to force the loopback to use the clock from the audio interface.
The artifacts were somewhat continuous, whenever I was making sounds.
But you mentioned that this only happens when switching Rackspaces. Personally, I only do that between songs. Tearing down an old Rackspace and building up a new one seems too unpredictable, even with predictive loading and delayed release.
I put everything I need for a song in one rackspace and I use mixers and MIDI control to disable things.
In general, I’ll mute audio before any reverb or decay, so the tails continue naturally. For virtual instruments, I disable the Note ON messages to disable sounds. That lets me hold a chord and release it, even after the switch.
You can create widgets and change their states from Variation to Variation to create many presets.
If it gets too heavy, you can use multiple instances to make things independent and to spread the load across multiple cores, but I recommend using one instance and variations as long as possible.
Might be helpful to upload your gigfile so we can check to see if anyone spots anything that might be contributing to the problem.
For ToneX, there’s a free version that you can use to see if it addresses your issue.
Exactly!
Okay I’m uploading my .gig file. I’ve abandoned using two Rackspaces, there was just too much noise switching between them, probably because I was overtaxing GP, with my low RAM and CPU power. The way I’m hoping to use GP in a “Live” situation is this, having the entire Band come in to the 32-channel Mixer. Using two virtual guitar amps, one virtual Bass amp, and a few synths. On the guitar side, which is the purpose of this post, all I want to do is switch each guitar back and forth between 2 Presets. One for the Lead Section and one for the singing sections. I would like that switching to be triggered by the Markers in the Streaming Audio backing track. All the while that it scrolls the lyrics. That’s all I’m attempting to set-up. I’ve included all of the 4 guitar presets, so if you have Gojira and Nolly, you’ll be able to load those in. Thanks to everyone for trying to help me. For those without Gojira and Nolly, just use the included TH-U plugin and use 4 of their presets. I’ll be able to figure out what I’m doing wrong from those…I hope!
Guitar Set-Up Test.zip (5.7 MB)
I took a quick look at your Gigfile but I don’t think I understand your approach to doing what you are trying to do.
I’d suggest starting simple. Forget using the streaming media player and all that right now. I think you’re saying you want to change two different guitars, running through two different plugins, to two different sounds at the same time. Is that right?
Whether it’s better to do that with different variations or different rackspaces depends a lot on how different the sounds are, and how easily that can be communicated to your amp sims.
I don’t use Gojira or Nolly, so I can’t look at your presets or offer an opinion on that. If the differences are as simple as “fuzz on” vs. “fuzz off” then you’d want to do it with variations. You’d just set up a widget that turns fuzz on or off, then set up a variation for fuzz on and another for fuzz off.
If you’re using entirely different sounds (Gojira presets, for example) then you’re probably going to have to do it with separate rackspaces or multiple instances of Gojira in the same rackspace and use Variations to switch between which one you hear.
If you’re going to separate rackspace route, and trying to figure out where the noise is coming from, then start simple. Just use one guitar, one amp, and see if you’re getting that same noise when switching rackspaces.
I don’t get noise when switching rackspaces with guitar amp sims. Again, I don’t use the ones you’re using so I can’t say whether the issue is with the VST, the way you’re doing things, or if your computer just can’t handle it.
Here’s a tip: don’t send program change messages to a VST and expect it to work well. Most VSTs will not handle that well without noisy glitching. As a general rule, if you want to switch between Gojira doing “Rob’s Lead” and Gojira doing “Rob’s Rhythm” you will need two separate instances of Gojira.
You can put them both in the same rackspace and use a mixer plugin to switch between them. I do that all the time. In my guitar racks I’ll often put four completely separate FX chains in parallel, have them all processing at the same time, and I just have a mixer at the end that will solo, mute, or mix them as I want for different variations. If your saying “I don’t understand” then you probably need to spend more time understanding the basics of how rackspaces and variations work before getting into the kind of automation you’re describing here. You have to learn to walk before you try to run.
My real simple starting point would be this:
- set up a rackspace with nothing in it but Gojira with your Lead sound
- set up a second rackspace with nothing but Gojira doing your rhythm sound
- play a note, or strum a chord, and change rackspaces while it’s playing. Don’t do anything fancy to change the rackspace. Just mouse click on the rackspace in the GP window
If it doesn’t work noise-free, then you need to figure out why that really simple thing isn’t working before proceeding.
If it does work, my next suggestion for understanding how to use GP would be to put two instances of Gojira in the same rackspace. Bring up your Rythm preset in one, your Lead preset in the other. Save the gigfile. Each will retain exactly what you had set. If they’re not, then there’s something wrong with Gojira, but that seems unlikely.
I’m attaching an edited version of your Gigfile that uses variations to toggle between which instances of Gojira you’re hearing. I don’t have Gojira, as I said, so for this to work you’ll have to open each of those instances separately and change each one to the correct preset. Then save the gigfile and changing variations should change between sounds, noise free.
Guitar Set-Up Test - edited.gig (58.8 KB)
Thanks Vindes, all of that is excellent advice! It works perfectly now! I just had to re-name them, they were reversed. But it sounds amazing, and there is no switching noise. Probably because we aren’t switching Rackspaces in your set-up. A few questions come to mind, now that this is working.
How would you go about adding in the automation of the switching, based on the Markers in the mp3? Will that be possible using your tweaked set-up? And if I wanted to now set-up the second guitarist’s 2 presets, could I use the two existing widgets, or do I have to create 2 new ones, for his rig? I ask because I want both of our rigs switching at exactly the same time. If possible triggered by the streaming audio markers. Either way, I want to thank you for helping me. I’m really beginning to believe in the incredible power of this software for “Live” performances.
If you have the mp3 loaded in the streaming file player you just add a marker where you want to switch something. If you’re making the change with variations, you just add the marker where you want it to change variations, then add the Action for that Marker. The action could be “Switch to Rackspace” and then choose the same rackspace and a different variation.
In the image below you can see I have two markers set. The first (called Clean Switch) switches to my Clean variation. The second (called Dirty Switch) changes to my Crunchy variation.
If you’re going to do the same for the other guitarist I’d replicate the same thing for him. I’d add two Nolly instances, another mixer block, and two different Mute widgets for that one.
There are a variety of ways to go about it. You could base your setup on variations, rackspaces, or songs with songparts, or even do everything within one rackspace with widgets if you wanted to. The streaming file player can change widgets, rackspaces, variations, songs, or songparts when you hit markers.
Understand that if you have your Streaming File Player in a Rackspace (rather than the Global Rackspace) then if change to a different Rackspace your streaming file is going to stop playing. Then if you switch back to that original Rackspace the file player will resume playing where it left off. If you’re asking “why?” then you would benefit from spending more time understanding exactly what Rackspaces, Variations, Songs, Songparts, and the Global Rackspace are. It’s not complicated once you understand it.
I just tried what happens when i switch between diffrent rackspaces with diffrent plugins (Gojira-X and Nolly) and also diffrent presets.
Since your provided gig file can’t work the way you described, i did the racksace changes manually while playing the guitar… no noise, crackling or unexpected behaviour!
My laptop:
AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS/3.80 GHz
32GB RAM
Presonus Quantum ES4 audio interface / 44.1kHz @256 buffer size = 5.9ms)
On my system a single instance of Gojira/Nolly causes a Gig Performer CPU-meter read of ~15%
So when i switch between rackspaces there is a short peak to ~30% but that’s all.
My personal advice: Go, get a proper machine and a modern audio interface!
Then learn how to use rackspaces and variatons, what they can do and what they cannot!
If you masterd that, try to build racksaces for your whole band with automation and stuff!
GP definitey has a steep learning curve, because it is a complex and mighty tool, but digging into it is well worth the effort. Take your time!
Thanks Schamass for your continued efforts to help me, it’s greatly appreciated. I totally agree about a better computer and audio interface, and my intent is to use my good gear “Live”, this was only a testing computer. Clearly it can’t handle what I’m trying to do. Further tests will be done with a very powerful computer and my MOTU 24 IN and 24 OUT rack mounted Audio Card. That should solve power concerns in GP. I was at 75% CPU meter, with one instance of Gojira and one of Nolly. So my only question to you is, how would you go about changing presets in those two plugins, without switching RackSpaces? A Midi Program Change, or what method? I would like to set-up a system for the guitars that DOESN’T switch RackSpaces. Have only one RackSpace, with one instance of Gojira and one of Nolly. Where both plugins can switch between two presets, based on the Markers in the Streaming Audio. Is that doable? If you’ve had time to download my Guitar Set-Up Test, or even the one modified by Vines, you’ll see all my Markers are in place, named correctly, and set to System Actions, but there is no switching between presets as the song progresses. So clearly, I am missing one step.
“How would i go?”
I most probably wouldn’t!
The main paradigm of Gig Performer is based on the use of rackspaces and widgets.
Trying to avoid and work around that is IMHO just a potential cause for issues!
Maybe you could go the way to use the GP-Preset system and swtch them via widgets, but this also would bear potential issues, cause it can be difficut to maintain the widget-preset assignment if you ever will change anything! Also you most probably might not have instant and glitch-free switching! So, this won’t be a good way to go if you plan to use automation controlled switching!
I downloaded it and i had a look… the rackspace has
- only one widget which is connected to “Program Change” of the System Actions plugin, which does nothing
- just a “Nolly” and a “Gojira” plugin both going into a mixer (together with the SAFP)
- two variations which will have no effect at all, because there are no widgets whose changes could have been stored or recalled by the variations (read the manual!)
- a whole bunch of action markers in your MP3 file which all together do address the correct variation names but the wrong rackspace name! (And even if the rackspace name was correct, there still was nothing to be done, because your rackspace variations are “empty containers” (no widgets → no function!).
Sorry for being that clear: For me it seems that you’re missing a lot of steps - not only one!