Re: A soudcard issue (sb live, not sure about audigy2)
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Posted by Jeremy D. on August 21, 2003 at 06:50:14:
In Reply to: A soudcard issue (sb live, not sure about audigy2) posted by Demitri on August 21, 2003 at 00:24:04:
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: Does anyone know if this is normal and unavoidable: when I play a midi with prolonged notes, sometimes a long note will cut off suddenly in the middle of the note and it sounds very bad. This happens especially when there are a lot of instruments playing at the same time quickly, and its always repeated in the same places. I'm wondering if anyone knows if this is unavoidable?
I'm afraid this is normal, it's to do with polyphonic limitations. As you say, when there's a lot going on and only 64 notes available (and don't forget that some instruments, like pads and string or brass sections, may be using more than one sample per note), the synth eventually just runs out of notes and has to give up playing something. I find this happens especially with passages with lots of short notes in some parts: you hear the longer notes being cut off.
The Live and the Audigy2 are the same in this respect, except that different driver sets handle cut-off in different ways. For example, when I used a Live in Windows 98, I found that LiveWare 3 (with the subsequent driver update) seemed much smarter at dealing than most subsequent drivers; however, the current Windows XP drivers for the Audigy 2 are also very good.
To some extent you can help by using both the A and B synths, but this has a limited impact. The only real solution is to mix the MIDI arrangement to audio a few tracks at a time, recording the tracks that are prone to cause cut-off separately.