Maschine Plus - Drop outs when changing scenes

S Righteous

I have a project, which runs at between 64% and 74% CPU.

Consistently when I switch from one scene to another, which has some new element (sample or plug-in synth) the audio drops out when the new element first plays. It doesn't drop out when the scene loops, and if I go back to the original scene and make that same transition again - it doesn't drop out a second time.

Possibly it's dynamically loading plug-ins when you switch scenes? and once loaded, it's fine?

Has anyone else noticed this, or found out what causes it, what to avoid, what can be done?

Sometimes if I step away for an hour and come back, then the Maschine Plus has forgotten whatever it learned (or loaded) by me switching scenes, and the issue happens again. It will always happen 100% when I first switch a scene right after loading and playing a project.

I like to improvise switching scenes, so before playing a track, I have to pre-play every scene transition. Not ideal in the studio - impossible to do live.

S Righteous

I gotta say that if I knew Maschine Plus had such terrible bugs, I'm not sure I would have invested in it.

Basic s##t should just work - but [email protected]

ozon

Do your Groups contain Loops using the Audio Module?

S Righteous

I am not using the audio plug-in at all (no time-stretching, which I assume is CPU heavy).

Just samples and some synths.

ozon

What Synth plugins and how many of them? Which Effects are added and how many? Do you use Raum? Which Groups/Kits from Expansions do you use?

I’m just trying to have a look at the usual suspects - if you could share a Project which can be used to reproduce the problem reliably that might be most helpful.

S Righteous

I'm using 12 banks of samples. All of this is home made, no expansions. One of them does use the Kick instrument, which probably uses a bit more CPU than a sample. Some banks are 5 samples, some are 16, but most only have one or two playing at a time.

I'm also using one instance of Massive.

Most banks use group effects, but the usual stuff, reverb, distortion, filters and delays.

Obviously with samples that start on the 'one' there can be a lot going on at a particular time, so I had first thought it might be an issue with polyphony. But it 'can' play these parts and it 'can' make the transitions from one scene to another. It just can't do it the 'first' time after loading a song. That part is the stumper, like some kind of dynamic sample loading is going on or something.

S Righteous

Some of my sample banks have 4 layers. So toms with 4 velocity layers. But when this issue happens, it's with bog standard samples. Some 2 bar bits, some drums, nothing too CPU heavy. I only use Massive for bass, and sample the other synth parts to save on CPU.

olafmol

I have a regular Maschine MK3, but i definately recognise this behaviour. I suspect it has something to do with preloading/buffering samples, because on my side it's often when a sample/audio module is running in that track. Try to disable track by track until the issue dissapears to pinpoint the issue.

ozon

So it’s 12 banks (Groups) with 5 - 16 Samplers. Let’s say average is 10 Samplers, which means 120 Sampler instances load their samples, some of them lengthy loops. That’s a considerable amount of data to be loaded…

Andy Wt

@S Righteous Do you have such dropouts during manual scene switching or even during usual playback in song mode where scenes changed automatically? I have the same bug on my M+ when on first playback sound stumbles (or drops out) for the fraction of second at the beginning of some scenes, but on second and later polaybacks eveything is fine. This happens on my own projects as well as on some of expansion demo projects. For example at bar 9 of Bumbledoople from Motherboard expansion. Not at exact beginning of bar 9 but somewhere around 9:2:1. It doesnt matter where playbak is started - from 1:1:1 or from 9:1:1, result is the same.

@ozon As far as i understand M+ should load all samples during project loading phase, not at scene change. Is that correct?

NI support suggests replacing my unit because they cant reproduce this issue. But i hesitate to do it because in my opinion this is software problem and replacement will not help.

S Righteous

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/48268#Comment_48268

Most of those samples are not playing at the same time. Often only one sample from any given bank is playing back. If it was overload, is should always stumble, but it only stumbles on first playback.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/48343#Comment_48343

I have only ever done manual scene switching. But what you are experiencing seems exactly the same as what I am experiencing, so I wonder why NI can't reproduce it, even with their own expansion.

I believe there is some kind of dynamic plug-in loading or something going on. If you use a particular synth in one bank and it takes up X amount of CPU, then loading it into a second bank doesn't double that CPU usage, so it's somehow tracking all instances of that synth back to a single instance in the background. I'm only using one synth, but I believe it's doing the same thing for reverbs and other plug-ins - their CPU usage doesn't multiply because they are sort of being used as 'patches' of a single instance behind the scenes. This is my belief anyway based on testing CPU usage.

S Righteous

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/48193#Comment_48193

I'm using M+ in standalone mode, so it shouldn't need to buffer samples the same way it might when streaming from a hard drive. Testing this is a real pain, because it only stumbles when I first switch any scene after loading the project. It won't stumble the second time you do that. So testing means reloading the project over and over again! The real issue here is that it's not reliable the first time - but in a live scenario, you can't play your track and buffer all those buffers beforehand.

S Righteous

I figured it out.

1) The issue sucks because simply re-loading the project does not reset the state in which the issue happens. You have to turn the M+ off, back on, and reload the project to replicate the issue.

2) It is the Kick module which is causing the issue. I muted that one pad in the one bank where I used this, and then there was no issue. In fact it was the Kick module which 'stumbled' and made the scene sound broken.

I am going to sample the output of that module, and see how that works. It kinda sucks because I used it because my plan was to module the delay time differently in different contexts. Otherwise I would have just sampled it.

S Righteous

This has led me down a new Maschine rabbit hole.

I set up a sequence, copied my Kick module to a new pad so I can resample it (if you don't copy it, then you will lose your original, and it's effects chain). I resampled it, and edited the sample to be a one shot with zero velocity modulating volume. This should exactly replicate the Kick module sound on the other pad - but it does not. I have nothing set in the sample module, no filters, envelopes etc.

The Kick module has a nice click with some high end going on, very 808. The sample is quite frankly flat with less high end, and less click. The Kick module even has some airy sizzle artifacts which I like. The sample does not.

I was wondering if it somehow sampled without the effects (such as transient master). But I don't think that is even an option. You have to mute the effects if you want that.

I'm going to sample directly into my computer using my RME and see how that fares.

Andy Wt

>This should exactly replicate the Kick module sound on the other pad - but it does not.

For your sampled Kick check Sampling -> Zone (select appropriate zone if required) -> Page 4: Envelope Attack and Decay values. They are non-zero by default. At least Attack should be set to 0, otherwise it eats up sampled attack.

S Righteous

The rabbit hole deepens.

Sampling the Kick module into my computer captured the nice 808 click.

Too bad Maschine+ can't!

I brought the sample into the project to compare it with the original sound. I took the reverb off for sampling, and now have to get the levels the same. This isn't as easy as I first thought, because you can't use the Mixer to set the levels, this kick will have a plate reverb on it, and the mixer is post effects. The source volume going into the reverb will affect the sound a lot.

So first with both samples dry - I edited the level of my sample in the sample edit screen using the gain setting hidden under the Zone parameters. I matched the sample to the volume of the Kick synth. Then I added the exact same plate reverb with the same settings, same mixer settings, and blammo - they do not sound the same. The reverb reacting with the Kick synth, sounds much better than the sample, even though, both sources are the same volume and the final volume with the reverb is the same in the mixer.

It's close enough for rock n' roll, if only that was what I was making!

My next guess is that the Kick synth is probably mono, and I sampled it in stereo. Also, the Kick synth has some serious richness to it. But I had assumed that re-samping within Maschine+ was just an easy peasy way to save on CPU, without much compromise in the sound.