Subject:Sound Source in 10b

Posted by: LiqMat

Date:6/3/2010 4:37:08 PM

So I have two sound sources. A Creative X-Fi card in my computer and a MOTU firewire audio device. If I set Sound Forge 10b to the Creative ASIO driver and do not turn on the MOTU audio device Sound Forge complains at startup that it cannot find the MOTU ASIO device during the initializing of the audio engine. I have to click the error off and then Sound Forge continues to load normally. Why does Sound Forge continue to try and load the MOTU device if I have set the Creative device in the preferences audio tab as the default device?

Subject:RE: Sound Source in 10b

Reply by: jackn2mpu

Date:6/4/2010 3:47:14 AM

There's two things to try:
In Windoze you can't have two ASIO devices at the same time. I know you say you don't turn on the MOTU so you theoretically only have one audio device active. You may want to get the ASIO4ALL drivers and give them a shot. That will allow two audio devices at the same time.

The second thing is: why are you using a gaming sound card for audio work? Soundblasters are not meant for that job. Just use the MOTU and be done with it. Disable the Soundblaster. And you can still play games using the MOTU for audio - you'll get killer sound for sure.

Using two soundcards like this might be the answer to your other problem with the error message after 30 minutes of SF work.

Jack

Subject:RE: Sound Source in 10b

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:6/4/2010 6:21:22 PM

Further, hook t he SB up as default sound device in Control Panel | Sounds.... | Audio,s and games, IE, system sounds will use that exclusively. Then set SF to use the MOTU.

So whenever you fire up SF, you WILL presumably have the MOTU connected.

And as an aside, re ASIO in general wrt SF - what's the point ?!!

geoff

Subject:RE: Sound Source in 10b

Reply by: pwppch

Date:6/5/2010 5:51:11 PM

The error dialog you are seeing is generated by the MOTU driver, not Sound Forge. When Forge starts, it scans all ASIO drivers that are registered on the system. Since the MOTU is not turned on, The driver pops up the error dialog. MOTU should not do this, and we have requested that they don't, with no response.

Your having configured the X-FI card as the default has nothing to do with this. Forge always scans ASIO drivers to assure they are available.

Others have requested that we don't scan at start up and wait for the user to select hardware and fail then. We are considering this for a future version.

Peter

Subject:RE: Sound Source in 10b

Reply by: pwppch

Date:6/5/2010 6:04:48 PM

[I] In Windoze you can't have two ASIO devices at the same time.[/I]

You can have as many ASIO devices as your machine will support, but only one can be used at a time due to how ASIO is designed. It has nothing to do with Windows.

Using ASIO4All will let you use different hardware devices together, but you will pay the price of higher latency and possible I/O sync issues. Not a big deal with Forge since it does not due synchronous I/O.

There is nothing wrong with using the X-FI. It has decent output converters. For recording it lacks, but is more than capable to produce quality results using it. For sure the MOTU is better, but the X-FI is not terrible.

Peter

Subject:RE: Sound Source in 10b

Reply by: pwppch

Date:6/5/2010 6:09:02 PM

[I]And as an aside, re ASIO in general wrt SF - what's the point ?!![/I]

If you are saying 'why use ASIO':

Because Window's audio stack can introduce a -6db pad on WaveMME and Mapper. ASIO is the only way to assure that what your hearing is accurate.

Peter

Subject:RE: Sound Source in 10b

Reply by: LiqMat

Date:6/5/2010 8:04:02 PM

I will point out that the X-Fi is very much in spec with my other pro audio gear. The main reason I use both devices is that Ableton Live ties up my Motu and when I edit wavs in Ableton it breaks out to your selection of audio editing software which in my case is SF. So not to close Ableton every time to free up the Motu I just have SF routed to the X-Fi. You can set the X-Fi to audio creation mode. The results at 24bit/48k with 109dB SNR with my X-Fi is completely in line with ALL my other pro audio gear. This may have something to do with the fact that when Creative bought Emu and Ensoniq they built upon a lot of that tech with their products.

Subject:RE: Sound Source in 10b

Reply by: LiqMat

Date:6/5/2010 8:08:47 PM

A big thanks to Peter. It would be helpful to give the user more control on which device SF scans, as you said. Thanks for the reply.