Soundcard Recommendations

[baroneo008]

Hi
I just bought the East West Composer's Collection as well as Hollywood Brass and am really pleased with the variety of sounds that one can produce. What worries me, however, are some random note dropouts when recording via Midi. Now, to my question: Do you guys think that this might have anything to do with my sound card? And if so, is there any sound card that you can recommend?

What I've already ruled out as the source of the problem:

- RAM (16GB should definitely be enough)
- Harddisk (I'm using the two harddisks that were sent to me by EastWest and I doubt that they'd deliver hardware that doesn't even work; as a second way to rule out the harddisks I tried streaming the samples directly from RAM but this was no use either)
- OS (I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit)

If you guys have any other idea on how to approach this problem, please tell me because I'm already pretty convinced that the sound card is the source of the problem (and I'm not willing to spend money for something I don't even need^^).

Thanks for your replies in advance

P.S: I'm no native speaker so please forgive my mistakes and if anything doesn't make sense to you, just ask^^

[zosoaudo007]

It's not the sound card. It's the Play software. Dropped notes is a known issue that has been around for a long time. A new sound card will not solve the issue.

[JijGaat]

You updated to the last versions?

[trumpoz]

Does this happen in standalone or within a host (like cubase, Logic etc)?

Pops/Crackles are usually a symptom of soundcard/ASIO problems, not dropouts. That generally would point to HDD performance OR voices in play.

To check the Max voice count go to Settings -> Streamings and check the max voices. Increase it to the maximum amount and see if that fixes it.

How many tracks are you trying to run? What instruments (particularly from HB)?
One last thing - at the bottom left hand corner of the Play interface, you will find Disk: MB/s. This is the amount of information streaming from the disk. When the dropouts occur what is the number here please?

Might as well check the following to rule it out as an issue:
What is the buffer size you are usuing (it probably isn't this but it has to be checked)? Try increasing it.
What sound card are you using?
Are you using ASIO Drivers?
Can you open up task manager and watch the CPU meter. When you see the dropouts, is there a CPU spike at all?
Have you run DPC Latency checker to see if there is a system process that is interferring with audio streaming?

[baroneo008]

Ok, I found the source of the problem, it was none of the above mentioned. These drop outs/fade outs were actually only occuring because of my D-Piano (Yamaha AvantGrande N1; Yamaha uses some sort of special technology for newer pianos that interrupts midi transmission somehow). I found that out by hooking up a normal keyboard instead of my D-Piano. So the solution was just to buy another Midi-Interface that is compatible with this kind of technology

Thx for your answers anyway and I hope this post will help others who are experiencing the same as I did