Newbie observations and lessons

Bertil

Hello all!

I just started using the KX driver a few weeks ago. While not a complete newbe to MIDI and stuff - I did after all buy Steinberg PRO 24 for my Atari ST - I just recently started playing around with VSTi and stuff.

So far, the one thing that took the longest to figure out was that I HAVE TO turn off all the VST inputs when not recording, in order to be able to play most VSTi without a bunch of crackling nastiness. This might be something Steinberg can tighten up a little. No reason to waste all that processing on an inactive port!

The default routing in the KX panel also required some changes. I am sure I will come to love the extreme level of configurability, it's just a little bit intimidating at first. For my needs, I basically removed all default connections to the ASIO ports and only added the line in (AC97 prolog 0 & 1) directly to ASIO ports 0 & 1 on the epilog, I also wired FX bus 2 & 3 to ASIO 2 & 3 in order to be able to record SoundFont sounds (thanks to the online guide). Not sure that I'll ever need anything else changed to the routing setup.

My little setup consists of a Frankenstein of a PC (Old ASUS A7V VIA KT133, 512 MB RAM CAS2 at 107 MHz, T-Bird XP @ 20x107 = 2.14 GHz, WD 40 GB 7200 8MB, WD 200 GB 7200 8MB, ATI RADEON LE, and 1st generation Live! Value card).

Roland RD100, D-50, Phonic 12 Ch mixer, Samson condenser mic, guitar...

I could potentially swap computers, and use my other rig: nForce2 400, Barton 2500+ @ 3200+ settings, 1 GB 416 DDR, 9700 Pro... Not sure how much extra headroom that would give me...

Anyway, I can now use VSTi and record with Cubase monitoring 5 or 10 ms latency. This is fun!!!

/Bert

dj_stick

i myself use a barton 2500 oc to 2.2ghz with 1 gb of ram, and looking at the mem and cpu status, never goes anywhere near 100%, but i still use the soundblaster card instead of the onboard asio support (kX is much better)

as for the DSP - it may be a little intimidating, but an hour or so of exploration and experimentation is an hour well spent - think of it as a virtual studio rack system

Bertil

OK, I will take the time to play around in the DSP screen some more.

Do you have to turn off ASIO inputs in order to get good VSTi performance? I was about to go out and get a M-Audio card or something. I might still do that for improved the DACs, but the crackling VSTi playback was driving me crazy...

dj_stick

i think that is due to the ASIO latency… you will get better overall performance with a lowered amount of I/O, but if the latency is too low you will still hear crackling

TravelRec.

Hey, cool - started once with the same compi and cubase 2 for ATARI - now a bit of dust is on the keys of it, but I never throw it away

Greetings!

TravelRec.

Bertil

Yeah, I used Cubase 1.0 a year or so after getting PRO 24. Huge improvement. Impressive that Cubase was running on a machine with no hard drive, and only 1 MB RAM. I would have sold a kidney back then for the kind of stuff you can now do on a PC.