ProSound woes...

[triffski]

Hi,

I'm synching animation to audio in Max 2017 SP3 and continually running into issues with the rather ironically named 'ProSound'.

I've noticed previously that Max only likes 44KHz 16bit .wav files so that's what I've been feeding it. They play fine in the ProSound dialog, Active and Permit Playback are checked, all good. But not a peep when scrubbing the curve editor and no waveform is visible either there or in the Dope Sheet.

I've tried both my sound cards (onboard Realtek and external Focusrite Scarlett 6i6), all the Nvidia interfaces are disabled, I've tried toggling channels, quality and sample rate in the dialog and I've tried exporting all sorts of bit depth/sample rate/channel combinations from both Audition and Audacity with no luck. The file is about 40 seconds of a music track so I wouldn't expect it would be too much for Max/ProSound to handle.

Weirdly I just noticed this too:

1) Reset Max

2) Load a previously not working .wav into ProSound

3) Waveform displays, plays back fine and scrubs responsively, ProSound 'compositing' popup flashes on and off as normal when scrubbing

4) Zoom in the Curve Editor and it all goes silent, waveforms disappear

I've also noticed the same behaviour when loading a .wav into a new scene then merging my actual scene into it, all good for a minute or so and then it all goes silent.

Here's my Diagnostics with the Scarlett plugged in (which is by far the more capable audio interface), all looks fine to me:

ProSound
Active: Yes
Realtime Playback:Yes
Total Tracks: 1
Windows Version: Version 10.0 (Build 15063)
Processors: 16
Instruction Set: SSE1
Direct X Version: 7.0
Direct Sound:
Manager Status: Initialized
Number of HW Buffers (Avail/Total): 0/1
Number of Static Buffers (Avail/Total): 0/1
Number of Streaming Buffers (Avail/Total): 0/1
Amount of on board memory (Avail/Total): 0/0
Maximum contiguous memory: 0
Direct Sound Buffer Stats:
Number of Buffers: 1
Buffer00 Size: 8167356
Buffer00 Status: 0
Audio Device 1: Line Out (Scarlett 6i6 USB)

Anybody have any suggestions I haven't yet tried?

Cheers,

triff

[darawork]

I've not messed around much with audio in 3DSMax or ProSound, but...

Perhaps you need an proper ASIO (Asynchronous Input/Output) driver for it to use?

It sounds like the audio buffer is set too small and it can't keep up with the stress of scrubbing (Much like what would happen with Cubase or Ableton Live).

You could try installing this free ASIO driver, upping the buffer sizes, and configuring ProSound to use this driver (If that is at all possible?).

http://www.asio4all.de/

Those stats do not look too promising:

"

Number of HW Buffers (Avail/Total): 0/1
Number of Static Buffers (Avail/Total): 0/1
Number of Streaming Buffers (Avail/Total): 0/1"   

Even without installing the ASIO4ALL driver, I'd check into the control panel of the Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 (Nice card btw) for buffer samples, and increase the samples in there first. Making sure to have all other programs closed and then restart them after the buffer size change.

[triffski]

Hi darawork, thanks for the reply.

The Scarlett is totally fine on the ASIO front, I get about <10ms latency in Ableton etc. so Max should be fine. I assumed it was using DirectSound anyway and not ASIO, and I'd rather not install third-party ASIO drivers on my system if the Focusrite one works perfectly everywhere else. I don't see any options in ProSound to select the audio driver in use, the only clue is that DS is mentioned in the Diagnostics box. I get a 'Realtime: No' with the Realtek interface so I'm better off in theory using the Scarlett.

I have given this a quick try today and my scene that was failing last night mysteriously seems to work again, including zooming in the Curve Editor (I did try multiple reboots last night). Still at a complete loss as to why that would break it, but Max's UI has always been buggy as hell. Sadly it didn't get a lot better when they ditched the MFC UI for Qt.

Guess I'll hope for the best and see how things go.

Cheers,

triff

[darawork]

Yeah, it's been a few years since I've been dealing with DAW problems, so my knowledge is a bit rusty. I kinda forget the relationship between DirectSound and ASIO and WDM drivers.

It might be worth increasing the latency (Through the Focusrite panel)? You don't really need <10ms unless you are recording into the device, or triggering loops live with Ableton or something. I remember the rule of having low latency for recording and higher latency for mixdown (where latency doesn't matter), from sound engineering college (years ago).

Or, as you say... just forget about it and plough on regardless. If you are only mixing down, then it shouldn't matter.

And there is always 'other' software out there, which I would probably go to first for syncing audio to video, which isn't twenty years old.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @triffski,

I don't have the music background that @darawork has so please bear with me.  I've tested a 44.1 PCM 16-bit wav file to repro what you have listed above and I am unable to do so.  Would you be willing to record a Screencast (free) of what is happening to you so I can fully understand it?   I am able to zoom in and hear the wave file when I play the time line.  

Do you have Update1 installed for 3ds Max 2018?   Would it be possible to share this sound file with me? If privacy is necessary due to NDA reasons, I can create a private folder for you. I am happy to do so if you would like.

Best Regards,

[triffski]

Hi again,

ASIO > WDM / DS becasue it's direct-to-hardware and DS is emulated, I think WDM is the new name for oldskool Windows drivers so would be worse than DS. ASIO is definitely the way to go. If I can run a bunch of softsynths in Ableton with no latency issues, there's no logical reason why Max would struggle playing back one wave file. Synching afterwards isn't an option because I'm animating around Kinect captures which are all synched to music, so I need to hear the music.

I've tried reproducing it today and I'm not able to, I could switch my audio back to the onboard sound but I'm reluctant to do so as things seem to be working at the moment. The only thing I can fathom is maybe I switched over to the Focusrite/ASIO interface and it started working after a reboot, whereas the Realtek driver was still having issues under DS.

Anyways, I don't want to tempt fate but thanks for the input, I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope for the best. 🙂

Cheers,

triff

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Understood @triffski.

I'm betting the reboot is what did it for some reason.  Thank you for the update.  

Best Regards,

[triffski]

I did of course try a reboot earlier, but I spent an hour faffing with the onboard audio before I rigged up the Saffire, mixer and monitors to my PC to try the ASIO route, it initially didn't work but did after a reboot even though audio in everything else seemed to work fine. 

On a side-note, I really do miss the simplicity of audio and video on OSX and I'm completely baffled by the presence of 25 year old video codecs when making viewport previews in Max. Sometimes you just want a quick, playable, shareable h264 without all the hassle of PNG sequences and multiple encode steps, but that's a whole other subject. 🙂

Cheers all, fingers crossed this ProSound holds out.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Fair points.  I think licensing is the main reason the PC marketplace is so strange.  Even Apple abandoned ship and stopped supporting Quicktime on the PC.  Some of the advanced users of the forums have been recommending the Lagarith lossless codec, seems great.  Real time video playback in the viewports too and can be used as a compression for preview animations.  I love it. 

Best Regards,

[triffski]

Used to be a big fan of its predecessor HuffYUV back in the day and I do
have the 64bit version of Lagarith installed, I've had crashes rendering
straight to that from Max and it's still no use for quick previews. Mind,
I've had crashes with most things except image sequences. \

I suppose one workaround would be to always render previews to the same
folder and set it up as a Watch Folder in Media Encoder, have that spit out
a playable h264 every time it's updated.

Do you have any idea why the render dialog and viewport preview seem to use
different video infrastructures and offer different codecs? (Sorry for
going way off topic!)

[darawork]

Probably to do with the emalgmation of nearly 28years of code and hardware
changes? Hrmm 🤔

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

I think the main reason they are different is because they were developed and/or updated at different time periods.  It doesn't make much sense to spend developer time on the F10 File Save video options because it's such a bad way to render frames.  The benefits don't outweigh the costs there, but for animation previews it makes sense to update the codec area more often because animators typically don't know too much about compressing video so you want it simple and fast. Also, they make a lot of previews and the hard drive space can run out quickly that way if good compression isn't an option. That is my guess on that.  

Best Regards,

[triffski]

🙂

I bet there's 3D Studio R1 and AutoCAD for DOS code still lurking in there
somewhere...

[darawork]

8x 5 1/4" floppys from hell. And that was just to get DOS up. Configuration of 'THE TABLET OF DOOM' (Wacom 12" via com port, via hardware dongle).

You try and tell that to the youth of today?
Blank stares.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

... and a flight simulator.  

[triffski]

Double 🙂

[darawork]

Oh yeah, have you tried a local (inside computer) SSD drive for the scratch disk, if you are getting short on ram it helps a lot. Especially with post production tasks, and keep your project local on your own drive. Aim so as to have it that you can plug the network cable out and open a perfectly good scene.

[darawork]

Ideally you should be buffering the audio samples in free ram, like that little button in Ableton does, loads the audio scene into ram. Much better response rate than a spinning disk across the room.

[triffski]

Cheers yeah, I'm very well versed in codecs, bandwidth, bottlenecks and whatnot, when I'm not doing VFX/games I do video so it comes with the territory. Still, I find it hard to ditch the habit of keeping CC's Media Cache on my trusty Zip 100...

[triffski]

The sound is very comforting.