sfz multiple instances problem

ok REALLY weird things happening with sfz when i have multiple instances. a couple times i almost blew out my speakers. sfz may officially be useless.

If I have 2 instances working, as soon as I save (or just close), Sonar crashes and nothing is saved.
It seems to happen more often if the two instances have sounds bigger than 10mb each. Small ones have occasionally been OK.

I am trying all sorts of things.

I tested my RAM using Microsoft's RAM testing program. One SIMM was faulty, so I took it out . I really thought I'd found the cause, but it made no difference. I shall be replacing the 512mb SIMM with two brand new 1gb SIMMS tonight , see if that helps.

I am getting a new laptop tomorrow and first I'll install Sonar only, before installing any drivers for any sound interfaces, and test it.

I tried the Sonar 5.0.1 demo (I have S4) and it also crashes in the same way.

One strange thing: the version of sfz.dll bundled with S5 is a different file size to the free one downloadable from rgc:audio and looking inside with a hex editor, it looks different too. Yet both have the version number 2.0.0.0 - and the file name of the rgc:audio download is sfz197, which I take to mean version 197, but if you install it and look in the windows software remove utility, you will see it reports sfz 196! (The S5 version of sfz does not appear in the software utility). I was under the impression the S5 version was native DXi but now I see it isn't - it's also VSTi.

I tried contacting tech support at rgc:audio but they said they'd passed my report on to Cakewalk and that Cakewalk would contact me. I have heard nothing yet, but I shall contact Cakewalk only after I have tried the things above.

I think sfz and the sfz text file concept is absolutely brilliant and I really want to get this to work.

One further thing I find strange is, there is an sfz+ version (which reads SoundFont files but NOT sfz text files?!) and I can happily create instance after instance with 10mb sound fonts or more and it never crashes. Yet it apparently is based on the same sound engine! There is a DXi AND a VSTi version of sfz+, and I freely mix both, creating as many instances as i like. Never crashes.

I will keep posting as I discover things. There are enough people that have told me they are running multiple instances without a problem, so it must be possible.

Sonar 4.0.4,
VST adapter 4.5.1,
ASUS Vintage S800
P4S800-MX with 533fsb,
Celeron 2.4ghz - 512mb,
Edirol UA-101 usb sound interface (audio+midi) with latest (only) drivers
ESI M8U 8x midi usb interface, uses standard windows drivers

I have the same problem with sfz. If I open 2 instances it makes extremely loud noises that scare the hell out of me. I thought my speakers were going to blow up. It scared me so much that I don't dare to try it again. I may get some courage and try disabling multiprocessor support.

ORIGINAL: mlc

I have the same problem with sfz. If I open 2 instances it makes extremely loud noises that scare the hell out of me. I thought my speakers were going to blow up. It scared me so much that I don't dare to try it again. I may get some courage and try disabling multiprocessor support.

YES! Thats EXACTLY what happnened to me. My speakers almost blew up. are there any other ways to use soundfonts in Sonar without SFZ?

ORIGINAL: JazzSinger

If I have 2 instances working, as soon as I save (or just close), Sonar crashes and nothing is saved.

Same for me and if I remember correctly, it's only with two instances containing sfz files. I think it is correct when loading two sf2 files (or maybe it's the inverse thing: ok with two sfz files and crash with two sf2's... ).

ORIGINAL: Patrice Brousseau
Same for me and if I remember correctly, it's only with two instances containing sfz files. I think it is correct when loading two sf2 files (or maybe it's the inverse thing: ok with two sfz files and crash with two sf2's... ).

Hi Patrice

I also have no problems with sfz+ and sound fonts, only sfz and .wav files, so you may be on to something here!

My .wav files are created either on my AKAI Z8 or an old, old version of SoundForge.

I am beginning to wonder whether the problem is the .wav files themselves, that sfz has problems with particular internal structures. It is a RIFF format and some software expects things in a particular order (see esp. the SoundFont specification!!!) whereas I have noticed the files generated by my AKAI and SoundForge have subtle differences in tag order.

If you have sounds that crash, is there any way you could make them available to me to download somewhere? I would like to do a comparison.

ORIGINAL: JazzSinger



I also have no problems with sfz+ and sound fonts, only sfz and .wav files, so you may be on to something here!

Well, I just verified: I loaded two instances of Sfz with two different sfz files... and crash when saving the project!

ORIGINAL: mlc

Ok, I opened 2 instances of sfz with "multiprocessing" disabled and it works fine. No loud noises. I saved the project and didn't crash. I am using sf2 files.

Yes, there's no problem with soundfonts. It is only with more than 1 sfz file that the crash occur.

ORIGINAL: JazzSinger

Hello Patrice.

I have just tried Sonar 5 Demo with the sfz on my machine at work - and I have no problems on it!

The only difference to this machine compared to all the others is that I have XP sp2 on it, whereas the other machines at home all have XP sp1.

Which Version of windows are you running Sonar on?

You tried it with two instances of sfz, each one containing a .sfz file?

I'm on Windows XP SP2 and it is with Sonar 3.1.1 (on my main Office/Net partition).

I will try the same on my DAW partition (XP SP1 and Sonar 5.01) and report back.

No. I have tried it in all the modes. And all the quality settings.

I have tried it starting windows in SAFE mode, so no drivers get loaded. It also crashes.

I have a second PC with WinXP sp1, and it crashes there too.

On the other hand, last night I took out my very old laptop (Pentium III, 128MB) and loaded WinXP sp1 from the same CD I used for my music PC. I installed Sonar 5 Demo, and it worked!!!
Edit: this was a very much smaller pair of sounds. I tried the larger sounds. With only 128mb, the PC hung up.

So if sp1 works on a lame old laptop like that, then it cannot be the service pack.

I have also noticed that I cannot use freeze synth nor bounce to track.

I also must say that, if I keep the size of the sfz sound sets small (one sound, 300KB) then I have no problem.

If I look in my project folder, I notice there are a whole lot of files named "MFCxx.tmp". Looking inside them with an editor, it looks like they are created by Sonar, not sfz.

Do you get these files too, Patrice?

I got an e-mail from Cakewalk asking me to outline my difficulties. I will do so, but it is beginning to look like I have to reinstall, then install all my tools one by one and test at each step.

do you have the 'double-precision' engine enabled? (revalver works fine in 32 bit, but if i enable 64 bit then it squeals like a hog; they're fixing it)

hth
p

ORIGINAL: JazzSinger


If I look in my project folder, I notice there are a whole lot of files named "MFCxx.tmp". Looking inside them with an editor, it looks like they are created by Sonar, not sfz.

Do you get these files too, Patrice?

No such files here in my projects folders...

ORIGINAL: JazzSinger

Are you using S4 or S5?

Sonar 3.1.1 on one of my partitions and Sonar 5.01 on the other.

I have come across exactly the same issue today. 2 instances of sfz in Sonar 5 Studio Edition, both loading relatively large sfz files (a piano and a drumkit, about 50Mb each), and it crashes as soon as I attempt to save the project (its in a project loaded from an old cakewalk bundle file if that's relevant). Its a Pentium 4 3Ghz system with 1Gb of RAM.

ORIGINAL: JazzSinger
Where your sounds came from? Or is there a way I could get hold of them? (50mb is big to e-mail!)

The first instance of sfz (which was working fine) has the ns_kit7 free lite sf2 which I converted to sfz using my own utility (You can download the original sf2 here: http://www.naturalstudio.co.uk/ns_kit7freedownload.html. It has about 30Mb of samples. The second instance (which was the point at which things started going wrong) used the P200 ogg format sfz I created recently, and made available online (see my post here).

I can post more info / email files if required.