Problems running two concurrent apps.

Spyke

I'm attempting to improve my recordings and vary my sound by using GuitarRig and Waves GTR Solo. I do my recording primarily with Audacity and can use Kristal too but prefer Audacity.

I was having problems with GR3 and GTR and rectified that by installing ASIO4ALL. It's worked brilliantly and latency is almost nonexistent - lovely.

But now I've run into a problem. Neither Audacity or Kristal will allow me to record, citing input error. Neither of them appear in the ASIO4ALL toolbar. It seems only one program at a time can be run through ASIO4ALL. I know that ASIO4ALL can run multiple programs but get the feeling that it's the Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth that's preventing any recording while running ASIO4ALL - seems to be a common problem.

How can I disable / replace the Wavetable SW Synth? Please don't say it's a registry edit... ??? *eep!*

Is there something I'm missing?

My system is as follows.

Accer Travelmate TM260 with on board card.
Win XP home
Audacity 1.2.6
GR3 demo
GTR solo demo
Input via the Aux Line in.

(Yeah I know - I'm a cheapskate ?)

Spyke

OK, going to try and replace the MS SW synth with MIDInight Express... lets see if that helps.

Potentially hazardous post to follow - may contain a lot of swearing. ?

TomCat

Spyke wrote OK, going to try and replace the MS SW synth with MIDInight Express... lets see if that helps.

Potentially hazardous post to follow - may contain a lot of swearing. ?

Anything involving MS usually ends up involving a lot of swearing........ ? ? (Complementary Prozac is in the post...... ?)

AlanRatcliffe

For once it's not M$ - It's ASIO itself that has the limitation. ASIO only allows for one program to access it at a time (I think to ensure stability or something). To run more than one VSTi or effect at a time it has to be done from within the same host program. This means not running programs like GR3 as standalone programs, but rather from within your recording software. The host then does all the mixing and presents ASIO with one single output.

The problem you are encountering is that the MS software synth is external to the host software and is hogging the ASIO driver, so you can't mix the output of Audacity with it.

One way around this is if you have a soundcard that has multiple outputs but allows you to mix them together within its driver for a single monitor output (my ESI cards do this). Then you can assign each software to its own output (each output has it's own ASIO driver).

Spyke

Ok, somewhat confusing but I've noticed this much. The ASIO can run an input on kristal and output on GTR but can't run dual output etc... So i end up with a clean sound and nothing recorded.

Argh... Frustrating.

Spyke

Ok, a little report back.

Through various experiments I've figured that Audacity may not be the best tool for this job due to its limitations with regards to audio I/O. Kristal is better in this sense and I've managed to find a different route with nearly the same required result. Run my emulators as a VST.

Now this works with GuitarRig and Kristal but GTR Solo doesn't, no VST Plugin for GTR that I can see. Pity really as I've become quite fond of GTR.

A new problem arises in that I can't record (yet) while monitoring the GR3 sound. I can record the GR3 tainted sound while monitoring a clean (DI) sound. Sound confusing? It is.
In other words, if I want to monitor the GR3 sound, I can't record it and if I want to record the GR3 sound I can only monitor the clean sound and see what it sounded like with effects on playback.
Is this normal?
(ps: ASIO4ALL works with Kristal and not Audacity.)

This may just be a setting I'm missing but my experiments have turned up nothing yet.

Still looking to get rid of / replace MS Wavetable. Suggestions? It seems to be its 22khz sampling rate.

AlanRatcliffe

There should be some kind of button to turn on FX monitoring, so you can hear guitar rig while you are recording.

A 22 KHz sampling rate will cause all kinds of problems. Don't know any freeware GM softsynths, but there must be some around. I use Edirol Hyper Canvas most of the time for the bread and butter sounds. The only problem (for me) is it doesn't have a standalone version, only DXi/VSTi, so I use NI Bandstand on the rare occasion I need a standalone for guitar synth.

BTW, Have you tried Reaper? From what I have seen, it seems to do everything most people would need and more.