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Contribution by Brian

I have perfect sync at the minute. I sometimes work with audio files up to four minutes long with VST effects added and a couple of midi files as well.
Mind you I've not used more than 5 audio tracks simultaneously yet. But generally, everything seems to be working fine. Sometimes when I'm rewinding and fastforwarding a lot, etc. my sync does go out. But going to 'options' and 'reset devices' usually seems to do the trick. If not closing and opening VST will.

System and settings:

Contribution by Steffen Duenner

That's it! I recommended the polling mode to many people on IRC #EWS64 and all of them were very happy with it! I also sent it to the list once before but most of its readers didn't try it I guess. So here again:

The main problem with the EWS and its drivers (yes, also the latest ones) is that waverecord sends its waveposition (needed for timing when you setup your sequencer to use it... the other choice would be DMA block timing) rock solid = sample accurate. BUT: waveplay does NOT send its sample position correctly unless you put your EWS into polling mode. And now comes the most important bit: you can set your sequencer to "full duplex"/"play while recording" or not:

• If you don't set it to "full duplex" the recording/MIDI timing will be perfect in timing. The sequencer follows the wavein driver's sample position for timing. If you now record a 16th line of hihats and play back ONLY THE AUDIO TRACK you won't notice a glitch or stuttering. If you play back both MIDI and audio they both will drift away from each other like hell. Audio might be longer or shorter than MIDI -> not good! This happens because now (when playing back audio) your sequencer no longer uses the wavein but the waveout driver for its timing. -> not good!
  
• If you set it to "full duplex" your sequencer will use the waveOUTdriver's sample out position for timing during recording AND playback. This should be the best solution BUT: like I said above the waveOUT position is NOT reported sample accurate. It jumps arround like crazy more or less. So when you use "full duplex" your recordings will be quite good in terms of sync BUT the timing is one big pile of sh** -> not good!
  
• The third choice would be to use "DMA block" timing which leads to quite OK recordings but this is not what we expect from a semi-professional soundcard, do we?

If you now set your EWS to polling mode all above problems will disappear. I noticed that the waveIN AND waveOUT position become rock stable. The EWS seems to get the highest priority in your system. The audio/MIDI "stream" will be no longer interrupted by other devices. This might BTW affect your graphic performance (screen refreshes) a bit but you have to decide what you want to use your computer/EWS for: for playing games/running gfx benchmarks or for making music. I think the latter in most cases.
I use a P133 here and my windows don't move as smootly as they did before during audio playback. This is the only downside of using the EWS in polling mode.

How to put your EWS into polling mode

Open the EWS control panel, select "setup" (DOSmode will come up) and set the MIDI-1 IRQ to "---". That's all.
If you don't like what you hear/feel/see afterwards just select setup again and change it back to the IRQ it used before.

P.S.: Give polling mode a chance! ;) . Oh, and you free up one IRQ for other
devices...

Pentium 133 and my optimal setting for latency is around 40 or higher.

wave play channels 2,
virtual midi devices 0,
midi record clients 4,
midi monitor clients 0,
midi play clients 1.

(I got this from TT support for months ago, it didn´t work until now.) TT recommends that wave play buffer latency should be
5 ms. I found that 30 ms is optimal for my setup.

Only 1 waveplay channel active (should work with more though!)
NO IRQ for EWS synth/MIDI-1 (DOH! That's what I'm talking about the whole time)
Cakewalk 8.04 sequencer set to "use wave out position for timing" and "play while record"
waveplay #1 and waverecord activated
CODEC not selected (not too important I guess)
dither set to "off" (!!! helped a lot before I used polling mode. This seems to eat up a lot of performance)

Contribution by Joerg Knitter

I had good sync on 4 midi tracks and their internal mixdowns (4 audio tracks). Sync over 1.45 min.

The most influencing settings seemed to be 'Sampleposition - Input' (!!! with -Output I got real problems), in VST 'Sync - System Preroll: 1000ms', EWS only 1 Wave device and NO internal FX (never, never do this :-) Don't even think to turn them on only for one track, because then you will have to
restart your system to get proper sync again even when you turn them off again.

I just want to add that when I did an internal mixdown of a single midi track to a single audio track, I´ve set an 'In' and an 'Out' point for the record, but set the song position pointer before the 'In' point, so I used some kind of manual preroll.

Additionally, I found the registry keys where the ASIO settings are stored. For all of you interesting in how to export the ASIO settings:

Start the file regedit.exe from your windows directory, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE-Software-ASIO and there you find a key for the ASIO DirectX and ASIO MME settings.
The last one might be the most interesting. Simply click on it and select 'export' from the 'file'-menu. Now your settings are saved in a importable textfile with the extension *.reg.

Note: you should always backup your registry files before using regedit.exe

Contribution by Sami Arola

This whole topic is quite weird, I've been working with VST for a while now and I found it to have very stable sync and the only thing I did was that I changed the syncing to DMA block output ...
It works flawlessly even with soft synths like Reality. VST version is 3.502 (I haven't upgraded because this one works just fine, why bother disturbing a working system..!)

I even tested recording 4 minutes of click to an audio track, and it didn't start drifting away.

Contribution by Ryn

When you record midi to audio in cubase (3553-36r02),I use "sample position in", and I only play midi.
Mute from the arrangement windows ALL THE AUDIO TRACKS.... Its the EWS devices, they don't sync right internally.
After you record the midi in one or more Audiotracks you can swicht again In Sample pos out ... unmute all the audio tracks press play ... And all will be in Sync...

Believe me it works.... I finally Can use the Ews Sampler ...

Martin Ecker

It also happens to me sometimes that the mixed down audio tracks start differently because the Wave Record driver seems to have lost sync again. Most of the time it helps to do a device reset in Cubase or even quit Cubase completely and restart it again. You should also use Wave Record Input as sync reference as Jörg Knitter stated earlier.

Contribution by Kerry

I've run numerous tests with all the sync settings and on my system, Sample Position Input gives the worst results. DMA Block Output produces the least variance.

Here's how I test sync (besides using my ears). I take 4 MIDI snare beats, quantized on the beat, the record the MIDI to audio on four seperate tracks. Then I line up the bar on the first MIDI beat, open all the audio track in the wave editor and see how they line up. The best I get is the four tracks starting within a 2, 384 ppqn range, using the DMA Block Output setting. All the other settings give much worse results.

I run these test on two different computer settups and also with a SB Live. I tested Cakewalk 8 and Logic 3.6 and got similar results. I've run out of ideas. I've been saveing for a new 24 bit 96 mhz card. Maybe that's the answer.

Contribution by Janne Laine

Polling mode works perfectly with Logic Audio Platinum 3.5 too. I have perfect MIDI -audio sync/timing using new drivers and Logic Audio Platinum 3.5. I just finished a song including 10 MIDI and 5 audio (stereo) tracks, about 4 minutes. I didn´t find any sync problems when applying fx and EQ to MIDI tracks. There's also loads of real time fx in use: reverb, chorus, delay, EQs.

Pentium II 266Mhz
96 Mb Ram
Windows95,
ATI Rage pro 4 Mb video card
Brilliant P6i440BX Mainboard
Award BIOS
EWS64XL 32Mb Ram.

EWS64 Settings
Same as Steffen Duenner already mentioned, except Codec: IRQ5 and wave play buffer latency 30 ms.

Logic Audio settings

• LA: preferences-> audio extentions-> EWS wave play#1, EWS wave record.
• LA MME setup (LA folder):
  Playback: EWS64XL wave play#1, number of drivers 2, Channels per driver
  Recording: EWS64 wave record. Interpolate position:checked.
• LA: preferences-> display-> high resolution backround: unchecked.

Other
Colours 16 bit. Disable write behind: checked

Contribution by Gerald

I encountered a really strange beheaviour with the Combination of VST3.65/EWS64/EWS64MixerPanel. What´s it all about?

First I prefer using the Wave-Drivers to record my audio because I can go digitally into the EWS with using the the VU-Meters of the DAT-Recorder. OK. So I recorded several tracks in VST, played it back and had fun. Then - after finishing the Song - I saved my EWS-Mixer-Settings, routed the card to "digital out" and started playing the recorded song for mastering it into the DAT. And what was it like? Totally "out of timing" Audio and Midi-Tracks.

After many hours of trying out several ASIO-Setups, EWS-Options and Recording-routings, it seemed to me that there was only one reason for this strange behaviour: as long as you record with VST there are no timing-problems; but as soon as you switch to the EWS-Mixer and then come back to Cubase again you encounter timing-problems.

My solution for this problem is very simple: record in VST, make your choices in the EWS-Mixer and after returning to Cubase go to "OPTIONS/RESET DEVICES" and reset all devices (also the Audio-Devices are reset)! Then you have exact timing all the way.

Contribution by Sam Glass

I managed to solve my problem with completely screwy wave record & playback using Cakewalk Pro 7 (mind you, as it turns out the package is irrelevent). Whenever I created a wave play track in Cake all midi timing went out of the window; everything juddered as if the processor was giving up.
Turns out that by increasing the wave play latency in system - EWS64 -synthesizer - settings from 6ms to 15ms, everything is sorted. I'm guessing that the processor isn't having to work as hard to supply the audio stream immediately. (BTW, I just read in the Stress Control Panel that Terratec recommended a latency of 5ms, but that people are recommending latencies of 30-40ms).

© 1999, Computer ConText, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, except for contributions made by others.

Latest update on page: 10-04-99

Latest update on page: 10-04-99