druid's Forum Page

Did you update SPAN from an older version, possibly the 1.x series, and not reimport the file (which would result in an incorrect device definition)? That may have done it?

How does your chain look? My template has SPAN 2.2 in it, originally on the Master FX chain though now on a bus track, but I have never had a crash from it.

@Infinitoar wrote:

In ASIO it says: higher=less lag, less glitch.

In other words less broken audio. Or crackling audio. If you lower it the more worse your audio gets.

Sorry, lower means more responsive. Higher means less audio glitching. In general!

My confusion was you mentioning “sample rate”, but maybe you meant higher sample rates are possible with higher buffers, due to having more processing time before the output of audio?

I’m not sure exactly what Infinitoar meant, but just to be clear, the 2048 figure they mentioned is a buffer, and generally lower is better (but really, most people do not need to go below 512).

Personally, I used 192 samples buffer with 96000kHz, then realised I didn’t need it so low, and now have it set to 512. 2048 seems high to me, but I can’t see a problem using it. If you use 44100Hz, it might mean a 2 second delay I think? But if using 96000kHz as I do, even 2048 samples buffer means a delay of a little less than a second.

Anyway, I think Infinitoar knew that, but the way he said going higher, I felt might confuse, and wanted to clear it up.

There may be an easier way than what I’m about to suggest, so waiting for some other responses could be wise. I’ve been a bit out of the loop as I haven’t had a lot of time, and am only getting into Podium now.

The way I would do it currently needs the following: ASIO drivers that show multiple inputs and outputs to Podium (presumably any device with ASIO drivers does this, but if you needed to use multiple audio devices, probably ASIO4ALL would have to be used). supports multiple outputs, so something that can route, or there might be freeware out there that can do this, but I own energyXT and would probably use this.

You can setup an “output device” that does “mono 12 channels”, or if you wanted to use all outputs of the device, 24 channels. Then create a group track and add the multiple output VST as an effect. Within that VST make sure it’s setup to direct the stereo input to all output ports. Then, inside that group track, create all the rest of your tracks.

Be aware that, currently, within a group track that has another track with a Podium mixer bus return assigned to it, you cannot select midi input sources on child tracks.

Please let me know if you need a more detailed explanation. Hopefully there’s another way which others may be aware of!

@druid wrote:

Frits, would you consider allowing input selectors on child tracks? Maybe not all child tracks, but sometimes group tracks are used just as an organisational tool and it doesn’t make sense to prevent them from being separately controlled. I may have missed discussion on this due to me being unable to keep up to date recently.

After having tried a bit more, I worked out what the issue is. On my template, I have six tracks, a bass, lead and percussion track (which is a group track containing two child tracks), and a reverb bus track.

Only the reverb bus track has anything connected, which is of course the Reverb Bus Return that I set up.

I noticed all input selectors stay selectable up until I put the reverb bus track inside the “Analysis” group track. Everything else can be in there, but once I put the track with a bus return on it, the input selectors vanish.

Frits, is this intentional, or an oversight? I don’t really want midi going to my group track for analysis, just want audio to run through it, almost for it to be invisble.

I also tried to do the following: In my percussion track, I have two layers. I thought to create, say, 3 tracks for kick, snare and hats, under a group track called Layer 1 (as there is also a Layer 2), under a group track called Percussion. On the kick track, I tried to assign a VST output 1, the snare VST output 2, the hats VST output 3. Then on Layer 1, I tried to assign the same instance’s VST midi input. The idea was that midi would control the whole layer, but I could then add FX on each output. I don’t think this agrees with Podium’s hierarchical way of working, but still, I can’t see why this would be a problem? I haven’t tried, but I wonder if I had two separate tracks, one for all the audio outputs and one for the midi input, would that work, without having groups? I will try that later.

Still, that was a side comment (paragraph!). My main concern is that as soon as I put a child track with a bus return on it in a group track, all input selectors vanish.

I preferred being able to have a group track for analysis as that way everything I add automatically goes through there. Currently, whatever I want to analyse needs to have a bus send added and volume set, and it seems easier to just solo whatever I want to analyse rather than do it the current way.

Frits,

Sorry to dredge this post up, but I was looking for an answer to a problem I have.

I experience this same crash that was mentioned in the original post (though I can’t see the screenshots, the way to produce it is the same).

I have the latest version of energyXT 1 before it ceased being worked on.

Some background. You can set the VSTi (or VST) to have multiple inputs and outputs by creating an .ini file with the same .dll name. So, if you copy an XT.dll to xt8.dll, then create an xt8.ini and insert some text in there, and put it in the Windows folder (such terrible practices :(, for programming), then you can create an energyXT VST that has, in this case, 16 mono inputs and 16 mono outputs (which is what I’ve done).

However, when loading this specific renamed VST .dll file in Podium and setting up the instance correctly (all global instance 1), it still opens with only one stereo input and one stereo output. And when I go to add an output, crash.

I am unsure if Podium is recognising the multiple outputs or inputs as I can’t connect anything more than the original output due to the crash. However, I did load this renamed .dll into VST Plugin Analyser and it does confirm as having 16 ins and 16 outs.

If it detects properly, and I am able to add outputs without it crashing, I wonder why Podium is crashing? Is there any insight you can give to this Frits?

My issue here is that I was relying on being able to use energyXT modularity and multiple ins and outs to perform a few things that I can’t within Podium itself, without having to use XT as a host. Currently I cannot due to this issue. Are there any other hosts I can try for free to see whether the issue is more likely Podium and the way it handles (presumably) VST inputs and outputs, or energyXT possibly doing something dodgy?

[edit]

My apologies 😳

I just tested again, and because I don’t distinguish between VST and VSTi (coming from working with modularity) I failed to realise what I was testing was inserting it as a source, and then adding outputs. Though, I still don’t see why it shouldn’t work. Perhaps because I was only telling the first instance that it could accept midi notes, but not the others?

Anyway, I inserted it on a track as FX, which is where I probably wanted it anyway, and it worked. So I apologise for that. My brain still just thinks of things modularly.