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Score refuses to play? Help? Somebody? Anybody:?

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Score refuses to play? Help? Somebody? Anybody:?

Postby kmlandre » Tue Apr 01, 2014 6:00 pm

Hi All-

I have several pieces which use 64 bit Notion, Miroslav (via jbridge), and Kontakt (v5.3 - 64 bit). They all worked fine until about 1 hour ago.

Just today, several of them based on a particular custom template now refuse to play. It doesn't matter where I start in the piece (beginning, middle, end - where ever) - nothing happens when I click the play button or the spacebar.

I have some other pieces based on earlier version of the template (same VST configuration, Notion, Miroslav, and Kontakt) that are working just fine.

I didn't make any changes to the template or the piece that suddenly stopped working (or any of the others), but...KAPUTT!

Anybody run into and/or know a fix for this issue?

I'd hate to have to recreate the template from scratch as it took me forever to get it where it was at now, what with all the panning settings and whatnot....

Thanks,

Kurt M. Landre'
https://www.SoundCloud.com/kmlandre
kmlandre
 
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Re: Score refuses to play? Help? Somebody? Anybody:?

Postby Surfwhammy » Tue Apr 01, 2014 7:21 pm

It is virtually guaranteed that something changed, so the key is to determine what changed, which you might be able to do with a bit of experimenting . . .

On the Mac side, there have been no updates to NOTION 4 and Miroslav Philharmonik, which probably is the same on the Windows side, and there have been no updates to Mac OS X 10.9.2 (Mavericks) recently, so if you are running Windows, then an update to Windows might be a possibility, noting that Microsoft at times has "slipstreamed" operating system updates in the background without a lot of obvious notice, so depending on the way you have Windows configured with respect to automatic updates, this might be a possibility. This also is possible on the Mac, but I have the Mac Pro here in the sound isolation studio configured to ask rather than to do background updates automagically . . .

EXPERIMENT

Since you have a user-defined custom template, open one of the NOTION 4 scores that is not working and then do a "Save As . . . " to create a copy, being certain to give it a different name . . .

Then exit NOTION 4; reboot your computer; start NOTION 4; and open the copy template . . .

Next, delete all the music notation and trim the number of measures to perhaps 10, which you can do by selecting each vertical measure bar one at a time and then pressing the "Delete" key . . .

When the NOTION 4 score is empty and trimmed, do another "Save As . . . " to create a third copy; followed by exiting NOTION 4 and then restarting NOTION 4, at which time you can work with the empty and trimmed template by doing yet another "Save As . . . "

Add some notes to this newly cloned NOTION 4 score, and see what happens . . .

THOUGHTS

If the NOTION 4 scores that are not working were at or near the upper limit of what a NOTION 4 score running in 64-bit mode can handle, then as was the case with NOTION 3 and also is the case with the 32-bit version of NOTION 4, it only takes adding a few notes to cause problems . . .

Running in 64-bit mode, with or without bridging software, does not map to unlimited resources, no matter how many processors your computer has and no matter how much memory your computer has . . .

There are limits in the 64-bit universe, and on the Mac I can overload a 64-bit NOTION 4 score with just a handful of MachFive 3 (MOTU) VSTi staves when the specific sampled sound libraries for certain instruments are highly sampled . . .

As an example on the Mac side, the following 64-bit mode NOTION 4 has four instances of MachFive 3, but the "heavy" instances are the ones for the Jazz Bass and the Star Drums; and there also is one Addictive Drums VSTi and one Kontakt 5 VSTi, which does not appear to be a lot of instruments, but this NOTION 4 is at the upper limit of what can be handled without problems, which is fine with me, because in particular the MF3 Jazz Bass is very realistic as are the MF4 Star Drums snare drum rimshots, since in this instance realism is the goal here in the sound isolation studio . . .

[NOTE: This is done on the 2.8GHz 8-core Mac Pro (Early 2008) with 20GB of memory running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks, with everything being the current versions. One way to tell that the NOTION 4 score is at the upper limit of what it and the Mac Pro can handle is the occasional short skip or brief pause in the audio, which happens since the screen and audio are being captured by ScreenFlow (Telestream), which in this instance occasionally is using so much of the remaining memory that it overwhelms the Mac Pro, although only for a fraction of a second. Also note that there are no dynamics, articulations, or other marks in the NOTION 4 score, which keeps everything very simple. The tone come from the sampled sounds, and it is the way the real instruments where played by skilled musicians, with minimal computer algorithm based tweaking or whatever . . . ]

"Dance Baby Dance" (The Surf Whammys) ~ Basic Rhythm Section 2014 ~ YouTube music video

For reference, after considerable experimenting I discovered that for NOTION 3 the upper limit for regular, non-heavy VSTi virtual instruments with no VST effects plug-ins was approximately 50 staves, and the strategy I used at the time was to limit NOTION 3 scores to 25 instruments, where each instrument had its own VSTi instance; and since I have a complete digital music production system designed with this as one of the guidelines, it is the strategy I continue to use, especially after discovering that MachFive 3 for certain of its highly sampled instruments is what mainframe computer programmers half a century ago called a "core hog", which is fine with me, because the "heavy" MachFive 3 instruments are very nice . . .

More recently I have been doing experiments with the 32-bit version of NOTION 4 and Miroslav Philharmonik, where there is no bridging application, and at present I can use five VSTi instances of Miroslav Philharmonik to provide the audio for 80 instruments, where there are 5 VSTi staves and 75 basic staves, which is quite intriguing, if not a bit surprising . . .

N4 32 MP 5 VSTi 80 Parts ~ YouTube music video

The only drawback is that this is not done with predefined mappings and rules, so there are no sets of dynamics, articulations, and so forth, where instead each instrument is very specific, but this also is fine with me, since for my favorite genres the important thing is to be able to hear each instrument, and having variable dynamics and constantly changing articulations is viewed as being vastly frivolous and a general waste of otherwise valuable time . . .

In other words, if there are violins, then I want it to sound like the violins in "Eleanor Rigby" (Beatles), which for reference George Martin recorded with microphones so close to the strings that the string players had to devise special techniques to be able to play without banging the microphones with their bows, instruments, or bodies, which they apparently found to be a bit annoying; but it sounds good and you can hear each note; and now all of them are famous, so who cares . . .

"Eleanor Rigby" (Beatles) ~ YouTube music video

Not me! :lol:

The rule here in the sound isolation studio is that if you cannot hear it clearly and distinctly, then (a) it is noise and (b) noise is best avoided, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous! :)

P. S. I like "In a Garden of Fairies", especially the harp, chimes, bells, and deep bass (personal favorites). It sounds good on the calibrated full-range studio monitor system and when I listen with SONY MDR-7506 studio quality headphones . . .
The Surf Whammys

Sinkhorn's Dilemma: Every paradox has at least one non-trivial solution!
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