Miroslav crackings and skippings with Notion 4

[Surfwhammy]

My ASIO drive is set at 512 samples. In Notion4, audio is set with ASIO. Still, when I play music written with Miroslav instruments (alone or with Notion4 instruments), there are loud cracking sounds and music bars skip all the time. I just want to be able to use Miroslav instruments without bugs. If the only solution is to reinstall Notion4 in 32 bits, then I will do it. But I just want to make sure I will be able to retreive all the music I already composed with Notion4 64 bits. In your opinion, what is the best solution at this point ?

The first thing you need to do is to locate all your NOTION 4 scores and then to make copies of them in an archive folder, or better yet make several copies of them in different locations (CD, DVD, hard drive folders, external hard drive folders, and USB flash drives) . . .

With the caveat that I do everything on the Mac, I have no problems switching among NOTION 3, 32-bit NOTION 4, and 64-bit NOTION 4, but there are some differences in the NOTION 4 score format, although at the moment I do not recall precisely what they are . . .

Nevertheless, I can open scores in NOTION 4 that were done entirely in NOTION 3, and every once in a while as part of testing and providing a bit of online FORUM support, I switch to the 32-bit version of NOTION 4, although I much prefer doing everything in the 64-bit version of NOTION 4, where for reference I increased the Audio Buffer Size in 64-bit NOTION 4 to "1024 Samples", which resolved a similar problem with some of the MachFive 3 (MOTU) VSTi virtual instruments involving clicks, crackling, and so forth, where this was happening with the heavily sampled instruments like the Telematic, Jazz Bass, and Grand Piano, where the Grand Piano has nearly 10,000 samples and takes over a minute to load . . .

On a related note, IK Multimedia has been very adamant about its plans to release SampleTank 3 this year (2013), and it will be a 64-bit VSTi plug-in and might be a 64-bit standalone application, although I am not certain about the standalone application, since both AmpliTube CS and T-RackS CS are 32-bit applications in the standalone versions but, of course, are 32-bit and 64-bit in the plug-in versions . . .

[NOTE: For the type of computing that AmpliTube CS and T-RackS CS do when running in standalone mode as applications rather than as plug-ins, there is no logical need for them to be 64-bit applications, but of course there are logical reasons for them to be 64-bit when used as plug-ins, which they support along with being available also as 32-bit plug-ins . . . ]

SampleTank is the engine for all the IK Multimedia virtual instruments, and IK Multimedia is very adamant about the existing sampled sound libraries working with SampleTank 3, so regardless of what you decide to do over the next few months, SampleTank 3 will appear sooner or later and you can use it as a 64-bit VSTi instrument in the 64-bit version of NOTION 4, which should resolve the audio quality problems you are experiencing . . .

Regarding switching from the 64-bit version of NOTION 4 to the 32-bit version of NOTION 4, the primary consideration will be what happens when you run your projects in the 32-bit application workspace, which at most can be 4GB and probably less in practice . . .

The rule I used in NOTION 3 was to limit scores to 20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments with nearly no VST effects plug-ins, and this works nicely unless you try to use a 32-bit MachFive 3 VSTi virtual instrument, in which case the limit changes to 10 VSTi virtual instruments with at most two instances of MachFive 3, since MachFive 3 is a "heavy" VSTi virtual instrument in terms of resource usage, as are AmpliTube 3 and a few of the VST effects plug-ins like Panorama 5 (Wave Arts), which is a 3D reverberation effects plug-in and does a lot of intensive computing to create the illusion of three-dimensional audio space . . .

The key to the strategy I developed for NOTION 3 is to use a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application for producing and mixing, where all the virtual instruments were done in a set of smaller NOTION 3 scores, each of which had 20 to 25 VSTi virtual instruments, and this strategy works very nicely . . .

The general idea is to start with a NOTION score where you work on 20 to 25 instrumental parts, and when that is completed, you record the generated audio in the DAW application as soundbites in a ReWire session where the DAW application is the ReWire host controller and NOTION is the ReWire slave . . .

Once that is done, I clone the NOTION score by doing a "Save As . . . ", and then start working on the next set of 20 or so VSTi virtual instruments while keeping perhaps 5 of the original VSTi virtual instrument staves the same to serve as references to tempo, rhythm, chords, simple melody, bass, and so forth--just enough to know what is happening and what needs to happen in the song, and by doing the work in ReWire session I can hear the already recorded soundbites from the previous original score and any already existing clones, so I get to hear everything, but sometimes it is easier to work on a new clone solely in NOTION, hence the need for the 5 or so "reference" instruments, since by the time I have finished the original NOTION score for the first 20 to 25 instruments I know enough about the song to need to hear only a few instruments to know where I am in the song and what I need to add next . . .

And the process continues until all the virtual instrumentation is done, where for reference I keep the original NOTION score and the "clones" in a common folder for the song and give them names appended with a sequential part number like {"Song-PT-1.notion", "Song-PT-2.notion", . . . , "Song-PT-n".notion} . . .

Along the way, I might record real instruments and singing in the DAW application, and more recently I added Reason 7 to the overall system, where for some types of virtual instrumentation I do the work in Reason 7, which primarily is MIDI based but with a focus on using automated "sequencers" that typically are programmed manually to play a series of notes in sets of as many as 16 or perhaps 32 notes, which is useful for some types of instrumentation . . .

[NOTE: At a high level, the easy way to understand this is that NOTION 4 uses music notation, while Reason 7 uses automated "sequencers", and for more modern genres there are some quite amazing things that one can do with Reason 7 synthesizers and automated "sequencers" . . . ]

If I need 100 instruments, then I will spread them over five or so NOTION scores, and doing it this way makes it possible to have 500 to 1,000 instruments, which is a lot of instruments . . .

I also do a bit of combining in the DAW application, since it works better to have approximately 50 tracks at any give time, so every so often I do a submix of several tracks to create a single stereo track, which then replaces some number of tracks, which is another aspect of creating a song in layers, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

P. S. This is a high-level diagram of the complete system I use for creating songs in the digital music universe . . .

[Toxybaby]

Wow ! Thank you so much for all your comments. I don't have your knowledge of computer music software, so some of your explanations are beyond my understanding (I'm just a retired old lady who wants to hand down her music compositions to her children). But I understand what you are saying and I get the general idea. You gave me great tools to help me solve my problem. Thanks !

[Surfwhammy]

Wow ! Thank you so much for all your comments. I don't have your knowledge of computer music software, so some of your explanations are beyond my understanding (I'm just a retired old lady who wants to hand down her music compositions to her children). But I understand what you are saying and I get the general idea. You gave me great tools to help me solve my problem. Thanks !

Glad to help, as no doubt are the other folks who provided advice and suggestions!

Regarding the goal of not losing anything, it is important to understand that while switching from working with a 64-bit NOTION 4 score to working with the same score in 32-bit NOTION 4 will not map to losing anything in terms of music notation, you will need to do some extra work, which is expected when a VSTi virtual instrument only is available as a 32-bit plug-in, as is the case currently with all the IK Multimedia virtual instruments . . .

Since you are doing digital music production on a Windows computer, you will need to install the 32-bit version of NOTION 4, and it will co-exist with the 64-bit version of NOTION 4 but in separate directories and so forth . . .

On the Mac both the 32-bit and 64-bit version of NOTION 4 are bundled into a single Mac OS X application package, which basically corresponds to an executable program ("*.exe") in the Windows universe but nevertheless is a bit different and more advanced in other respects, where switching from 32-bit to 64-bit mode is done via an option for the executable program ("Notion 4.app"), such that if "Open in 32-bit mode" is checked, then NOTION 4 runs in 32-bit mode, but if it is unchecked then NOTION 4 runs in 64-bit mode, and since it takes just a few seconds to check or uncheck the option, this makes it easy to switch from running NOTION 4 in 32-bit mode or in 64-bit mode, but you can do only one at a time, of course . . .

On a Windows computer, since both versions are present, you will run whichever one you want to use . . .

THINGS TO KNOW

When you run the 32-bit version of NOTION 4 and open one of your 64-bit NOTION 4 scores where you are using Jbridge to make it possible to use Miroslav Philharmonik, there are two possible scenarios:

(1) Jbridge automagically adjusts itself and everything works . . .

(2) Jbridge does not automagically adjust itself, and NOTION 4 (32-bit) tells you that all your Miroslav Philharmonik virtual instruments cannot be found, hence are "missing" . . .

I have not used Jbridge, so all I can do is guess based on what happens when there is a 64-bit only VSTi virtual instrument in a 64-bit NOTION 4 score but I open it in 32-bit NOTION 4, at which time NOTION 4 presents a warning message indicating that the 64-bit only VSTi virtual instrument cannot be loaded, hence is "missing" or whatever. The more likely scenario is opening in the 64-bit version of NOTION 4 a 32-bit NOTION 3 or NOTION 4 score that has Miroslav Philharmonik or SampleTank, and what happens since there are no 64-bit versions of Miroslav Philharmonik and SampleTank is that NOTION 4 (64-bits) considers it "missing", which makes sense, because it does not exist . . .

The music notation is there in the score as it should be, but there is no virtual instrument assigned to the staff, because the virtual instrument that was assigned to the staff is not available in the mode you are running NOTION 4 . . .

You can assign a virtual instrument to the staff that has a "missing" instrument, but I find that it is easier to switch to NOTION 4 Score Setup and then to add a new staff for the specific virtual instrument, followed by exiting Score Setup and then saving the score; but both ways work. I prefer to do it with a new staff, because the original staff continues to exist until I am satisfied that everything is correct, at which time I will delete the original staff, but since I have backup copies in several locations, the extra caution might not make so much sense, but so what . . .

Now, you have an empty staff that has the correct virtual instrument, and you have the original staff which has the music notation; and the next step is to copy the music notation on the original staff, followed by pasting it to the empty staff you created and assigned to the correct virtual instrument . . .

If you are using predefined Miroslav Philharmonik instrument templates, this can be more complex, but you probably are not doing it that way, since you did it with Jbridge, which actually makes everything easier, although you will need to do a few repetitive procedures to get everything setup correctly . . .

For example, consider (a) that you created a staff for a Solo Violin in your 64-bit NOTION 4 score and used Jbridge to "bridge" a Solo Violin from Miroslav Philharmonik and (b) that you wrote music notation for the Solo Violin . . .

When you switch to the 32-bit version of NOTION 4 and open the score you created with the 64-bit version of NOTION 4, the Solo Violin probably will not be found and this will be reported in a warning message, although it might be found if Jbridge switches automagically from 64-bit to 32-bit, but since I have no way to determine what happens, I am presuming that the Miroslav Philharmonik Solo Violin is "missing" but its music notation is present . . .

At this point, you have two strategies:

(1) Switch to NOTION 4 Score Setup and assign the correct VSTi virtual instrument (Miroslav Philharmonik) to the staff . . .

OR

(2) Create a new staff in the NOTION 4 score and assign Miroslav Philharmonik to it, which includes selecting the Solo Violin preset, "COMBI", or whatever type of violin you want to use for the Solo Violin. Now, you have a new staff with the correct Miroslav Philharmonik virtual instrument preset or "COMBI" assigned, but its music notation is on the other staff, so you just need to copy the music notation from the original staff to the new staff, at which time you can delete the original staff; and you will repeat this procedure for each of the "missing" Jbridge Miroslav Philharmonik virtual instrument staves . . .

[NOTE: If you use the first strategy (1), then this only assigns Miroslav Philharmonik to the staff, but it does not select the preset or "COMBI" for the staff, which you will need to do as a separate activity via the NOTION 4 Mixer, where by clicking on the name of the instrument at the top of the track or channel in the NOTION 4 Mixer this causes the standalone user interface for Miroslav Philharmonik to be displayed, and this is where you assign the preset or "COMBI" to make it a Solo Violin or whatever instrument you desire, and this probably is another reason that I decided it was easier to create a new but empty staff, since creating a new but empty staff and assigning it to Miroslav Philharmonik causes the standalone user interface to be displayed while you are in NOTION 4 Score Setup, at which point you can select the desired preset of "COMBI" all within NOTION 4 Score Setup. The cost of this part being easier is that you have to copy the music notation to the new staff, but I think it is easier to copy and paste than it is to switch to the NOTION 4 Mixer and do all that stuff, but both ways work . . . ]

As another example, when I use the 64-bit version of NOTION 4 to open a score that uses SampleTank (IK Multimedia) VSTi virtual instruments and was created with NOTION 3, the 64-bit version of NOTION 4 cannot find the instruments, since there are no 64-bit versions, and it displays the following warning message:



I click "OK", and when I examine the NOTION 4 Mixer, this is how it indicates "missing" VSTi virtual instruments, where the visual cues are the dark orange names with a tiny "warning" sign for the instrument at the top of each track or channel:

[NOTE: If you click on the name of the instrument in dark orange with "warning" sign, all that happens is the warning message indicating all "missing" instruments appears, so to set the staff to use a VSTI virtual instrument, you switch from the NOTION 4 Mixer to NOTION 4 Score Setup, as explained below . . . ]



When you switch to NOTION 4 Score Setup and examine one of the staves for which its VSTi virtual instrument is "missing", the detailed information will look similar to the following screen capture, where you will observe that in the right column there is no selected VSTi virtual instrument but that all the available VSTi virtual instruments are displayed in the left column, and this is where you assign a new VSTi virtual instrument to the staff . . .



This is where you can assign Miroslav Philharmonik to the the staff, although this is not shown in the screen captures (see above), because instead of going from 64-bit to 32-bit, I am showing how it looks when going from 32-bit to 64-bit, where SampleTank is not available, so I need to replace it with a VSTi virtual instrument that runs as a 64-bit plug-in . . .

~ ~ ~ Continued in the next post ~ ~ ~

[Surfwhammy]

~ ~ ~ Continued from the previous post ~ ~ ~

THOUGHTS

When explained in some level of detail, this can appear to be vastly complex, but it actually is easy and straightforward once you do it a few times and see how it works . . .

You know which staves are supposed to be using Miroslav Philharmonik; and you know which preset or "COMBI" you used; so it mostly is a matter of switching to NOTION 4 Score Setup and then doing the new assignments, followed by switching to the NOTION 4 Mixer where you select the desired preset or "COMBI" for each instrument . . .

And depending on the way you named the various instrument staves, you might want to revist the names, since for example if you called all of them "Miroslav Philharmonik", then this is not going to be so helpful as giving each instrument staff a more meaningful name like "Solo Violin", "French Horn", "String Bass", "Cello", and so forth . . .

I usually start the name with an abbreviation of the VSTi virtual instrument, where I might use something like "MP Solo Violin" for a Miroslav Philharmonik Solo Violin or "MF3 Jazz Bass" for a MachFive 3 (MOTU) Jazz Bass . . .

The music notation will be there, so what you will need to do is to ensure that there is a VSTI virtual instrument assigned to the staff and that the VSTI instrument is configured with the correct preset or "COMBI" . . .

If I were doing this, I would do an experiment with one score to see if it solves the problem. If it does, then great, but otherwise I would do one of two things:

(1) Get an orchestral instrument that runs in 64-bit mode, where for this use I like Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments) but only if it is on sale at a 50-percent discount, which might happen during Thanksgiving week this year . . .

(2) Wait until IK Multimedia releases SampleTank 3, which IK Multimedia indicates in their FORUM will provide 64-bit plug-ins and will use all the existing sample sound libraries--including the sampled sound libraries for Miroslav Philharmonik--and IK Multimedia indicates this will happen in 2013, which should be in the next two or so months, since it is not so far from being the middle of October . . .

The strategy I decided to use last year was (1), and it mapped to learning how to use some new VSTi virtual instruments, which has been useful. I like the IK Multimedia virtual instruments, but I need to do nearly everything in 64-bit mode for a variety of reasons, although since I can switch to 32-bit mode, if I need a specific IK Multimedia virtual instrument for a particular preset of "COMBI", then I can do everything in 32-bit mode, including the DAW application step where I record the generated audio as a soundbite, followed by importing the soundbite to the 64-bit DAW application project, but this is a bit of a hassle, so I generally avoid this particular flavor of what essentially is time travel . . .

SUMMARY

You work will be there, and you will not lose your work, but you probably will need to redo the specific VSTI virtual instrument assignment for each staff, and this includes specifically selecting the desired preset or "COMBI", where the former is done in NOTION 4 Score Setup and the latter is done via the NOTION 4 Mixer, after you have reassigned the correct VSTi virtual instrument in NOTION 4 Score Setup, where in this context (a) Miroslav Philharmonik is the "VSTI virtual instrument" and (b) you make Miroslav Philharmonik specific by manually assigning a preset or "COMBI", which is what you do via the NOTION 4 Mixer . . .

If you have more than 20 to 25 staves, then depending on the complexity of the preset or "COMBI" for each instrument, this can be a problem, as well, in which case you will need to split the larger NOTION 4 score into subscores, as explained in my previous reply . . .

When NOTION 4 runs in 32-bit mode, it is constrained by the 4GB application workspace limitation, so this is another consideration . . .

For reference, the reason I suggest doing some experiments first is that I do not know what type of Windows computer you are using, and if it is not sufficiently fast, then switching to the 32-bit version of NOTION 4 might not be so much help, although it probably will be helpful since it at least removes the "bridging" utility from the equation . . .

However, if you have a reasonably peppy Windows computer, then switching to using the 32-bit version of NOTION 4 for a while will be productive, albeit at the cost of doing the aforementioned (a) VSTi virtual instrument reassigning and (b) preset or "COMBI" selecting . . .

To put everything into perspective, when I was in college I worked during the day in a grocery warehouse where I put individual price stickers on tubes of Crest toothpaste--all day over and over and over--and I think it is accurate to suggest that I put a price sticker on the individual box for each of somewhere in the range of 100 to 150 million tubes of Crest toothpaste; and one of the more curious consequences of that job is that I have an extraordinarily high tolerance for truly boring repetitive tasks, hence reassigning 100 instruments and selecting 100 presets or "COMBI's" for me is not the least bit boring or repetitive, even if I had to do it for 100 songs, although ideally I would rather avoid it; but if it needs to be done, then I find a way to make it interesting, where one way is to make it like playing drums, although if doing the same thing over and over is boring, then you probably do not want to visit the "Rock Drummer" booth on Career Day . . .

Lots of FUN!

P. S. If you have questions or need help with this, post a reply. Getting this to work is not difficult to do, although it can be a bit boring. It works, and you will not lose the music notation . . .

This YouTube video shows how to reassign a VSTi virtual instrument to a staff for which its original VSTi virtual instrument is "missing". It is two-step procedure, where you first do the VSTi virtual instrument reassignment and then you exit Score Setup and switch to the NOTION 4 Mixer, where you do the preset selection step . . .

NOTION 4 ~ Reassign VSTi and Select Preset -- YouTube video

This YouTube video shows how you can use a Miroslav Philharmonik user-defined "COMBI" to provide the sampled sounds for several NOTION 3 staves, where in this example the "COMBI" is a set of choir voices and the specific voices are assigned to different NOTION 3 staves via the SHIFT+I technique, which is explained in the NOTION 3 User Guide. It works the same in NOTION 4, and is explained in the NOTION 4 User Guide, as well, which is fabulous . . .

NOTION 3 Miroslav Philharmonik (MP) Multi-Channel Multi-Staves -- YouTube video

Fabulous!

[Toxybaby]

Fabulous explanations Surfwhammy! I wish I had a teacher like you when I started with music software
By the way, I use a PC with Windows 7. I will follow your suggestions and hopefully, I'll finally be able to give a heirloom to my children and grandchildren with CD's of all the music I have composed in the last 60 years. Thanks to you and everyone who kindly took the time to answer my questions. I really appreciate !

[Surfwhammy]

Fabulous explanations Surfwhammy! I wish I had a teacher like you when I started with music software
By the way, I use a PC with Windows 7. I will follow your suggestions and hopefully, I'll finally be able to give a heirloom to my children and grandchildren with CD's of all the music I have composed in the last 60 years. Thanks to you and everyone who kindly took the time to answer my questions. I really appreciate !

Thanks for the kind words!

If you need more help, let us know . . .

What you are doing is important, for sure . . .

For sure!