tutorials 3 and 5 don't work on MacOS

[zipb]

It jumps from 0 to the top(5v?) at bar 37, then goes back to zero and stays there.

[zipb]

BTW, my eyesight is not great and the seaside background pattern of the modules makes it harder to see the text etc. May I politely ask for a nice solid neutral grey background that contrasts well with the info?

[ColinP]

Hi Zip,

Thanks, that's useful info, so the fade out signal from Song Part is not working properly on your setup for some reason.

I can at least focus on this one small element now and try and figure out why it's working fine on Windows and some Macs but not other Macs.

It's all a mystery as the code behind the fade out signal is only about a dozen lines and when I looked at it this morning I couldn't see anything brittle.

As my Beta Testers can't replicate the problem and I don't have a Mac would you be kind enough to join my Beta team? I can then send you diagnostic versions of the Song Part module in the hope of tracking this down. Otherwise sending you diagnostic modules requires them to go through CA approval which takes forever.

This will inevitably involve you in some work so I'll completely understand if you decline.

[ColinP]

On the background of the modules, it's something that divides opinion. It's extracted from a photograph of the sky reflected in the river that I live on, rather than a seascape.

I did plan to have customizable skins by this point but the project has taken longer than expected for various reasons. I personally hate high contrast utilitarian UIs but understand that some people prefer them. I have a sophisticated design for customizable skins on paper but implementation would require more time than I deem reasonable to spend at this point, when there are other priorities, so what I might do is put out a simple dark version of the modules.

[Vincent]

Hi Colin.
I purchased your XL Bundle today and have spent the afternoon going through
your very helpful tutorials... but, like others on here, I too have found that
tutorials 3 and 5 do not work correctly. Tutorial 3 needs me to turn up the
gain control on both VCA's that are CV controlled by the Song Part faders
for me to hear any sound. Tutorial 5 is badly breaking up. I went through
all my settings and they are all the same as you suggest in your online
page where you discuss things such as using more threads. I am running
Voltage software on a Windows PC with an i7 processor and have experienced
no problems with any other software on it - and no problems on your
tutorials 1, 2, and 4 nor your Ninth Triangle tutorial. Hope this report helps
you to pinpoint where the problem my be (in the fader?) in tutorial 3 and
ask if you have any further suggestions why tutorial 5 may be breaking up
so badly in tutorial 5? When running tutorial 5 my Task Manager shows
Voltage using only 23% cpu - even when I'm using 8 voices and 8 threads.
BTW, I really like the help you've given on your website with the module
descriptions etc and congratulate you in adding such an extensive library
of modules to the Voltage collection.
Vincent.

[ColinP]

Hi Vincent,

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm glad you are finding the website useful as, although it's not particularly glossy, I've put a lot of time and effort into it and will continue to work on improving it.

There are two issues here - the bug showing in Tutorial 3 and the efficiency problems with Tutorial 5.

I'll address the bug first...

Your feedback is very interesting because you are using a PC. So the problem is not specific to Mac's at all, it's just that it occurs on a small number of machines regardless of PC v Mac.

I didn't hear back from Zip and have in any case been busy working on the skinning but will now focus on trying to fix this problem.

Could you please try running the following preset...

Fade Test Patch.voltagepreset

(7.44 KiB) Downloaded 257 times

Message continues below...

[ColinP]

You should get something like this...

Fade Test Patch.png (326.05 KiB) Viewed 4210 times

But it sounds like you will probably see something quite different on the CV Watcher traces.

If so could you possibly post a screen grab please?

[ColinP]

On Tutorial 5 breaking up on some setups...

It may be that your global VM settings are nicely tuned but the problem lies with the Mini Plug-in Host's audio buffer size.

They default to just 128 samples and while this works OK on my laptop that is a pretty tiny buffer size. 512 samples is perhaps more realistic.

I've added a section on Plug-in Host settings to the Performance Tips page on the website...

https://www.adroitsynthesis.com/performance-tips/

Another consideration is keeping the Plug-in Host editor windows closed when not needed as VM's graphics overhead is not insignificant.

I have also noticed that the Plug-in Hosts can become unstable if you use their ACTIVE button to disable and then re-enable them. They can perhaps be expected to pop a bit when switched on and off but sometimes they trip up and never recover until VM is closed down and re-run.

[Vincent]

Hi Colin, and many thanks for your reply.

Apologies its taken a little longer to respond than it would normally have taken.

Here is a screen shot of the Fade Test Patch - and as you suspected it is very different
from what it should be.

With regards to LSSP 5 - I have dug a little deeper myself and supply a couple more screen shots
of my settings. What I have discovered is that the sound break up issue seems to have been caused
by me using my Audio Interface drivers instead of the ASIO4ALL. Its the first time I have experienced
any issues using the Audiobox drivers on any of my music software but it definitely seems to have
cured the break up problem in VM now I've switched it to ASIO4ALL.

The fade problem however is still present in LSSP 5 even when I alter the midi host to 512 as you
asked me to do - in fact LSSP 5 audio is perfectly fine too running those latency settings at 128
when running the ASIO4ALL driver. BUT, regarding the fade problem, I am obviously still having
to turn up the gain controls of the VCA to hear any sound.

Hope this info helps,

Regards,

Vincent

[ColinP]

Hi Vincent,

Thanks very much for the update, also you responded rapidly and I'm most grateful for that.

Great news to hear that the breaking up in Tutorial 5 is fixed after you've experimented with driver choices. It's something of a challenge to fine tune settings and sometimes (although very rarely) I've even found bizarre counter-intuitive things like small buffers working better than large ones.

As both Tutorial 3 and 5 use similar fader mechanisms I had suspected that the fader bug would show up on your system in Tutorial 5 too.

The Fade Test Patch screen grab you sent is with Song Control stopped. Sorry, my fault, I should have specified that you need to hit the PLAY button and let the thing run for a few seconds before doing a screen grab. It's not obvious as no sound is produced by the patch.

You may still get the same result when PLAY is engaged but from what Zip reported the fade signals are at least partially working when this bug shows.

If you could give the test patch another go with PLAY engaged I'd appreciate it.