Drop-out with W10 ?? 2015-09-21 08:30 pm Has anyone come across problems playing either NWC or Midi - or, indeed, both - Files under W10? I have a 5-year old PC originally using W7 but recently upgraded to W10. I find that when I try and play a Midi File using large numbers of channels/tracks/staves I get repeatable drop-out of one (or more) of the staves (this might be channel-related, but I'm not sure). Moreover, when I play the NWC File from which the Midi was derived, I get the same drop-out - as I suppose I might expect, since, or so I understand, NWC Files are actually played via Midi. An example is the orchestrally-backed 7-voice Zadok the Priest, which requires 17 staves, downloadable from the Scriptorium - I attach a simplified NWC sample of this (Bars 22 to 30 of the Work), in which everything has been set to "p" except for the Tenor voice which is "ff". This plays perfectly OK under W2K (and I am told it does under XP, too). However, under W10, the Tenor voice drops out again and again. The drop-out effect, which occurs whether using NWC 1.75 (which I normally do) or 2.51a, doesn't seem to be related to the usual Midi problem of having too many staves/instruments for the number - limited to 15 - of available Midi channels. Any advice would be gratefully received. MusicJohn, 21/Sep/15 Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #1 – 2015-09-21 09:03 pm I hear the problem with Windows 7. It goes away if I swap MIDI channels with the Trumpets (channel 1)When dropping voices due to overload, synths are supposed to start discarding with higher channels, so if you want to make sure something is heard, put it on channel 1 Quote Selected Last Edit: 2015-09-21 11:30 pm by Rick G.
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #2 – 2015-09-21 10:14 pm Confirmed. It's not a CPU issue, as other softsynth solutions play fine.This is just more evidence of Microsoft backing away from the GS Wavetable SW Synth, without offering a viable built-in alternative. Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #3 – 2015-09-21 10:28 pm Quote from: NoteWorthy Online – 2015-09-21 10:14 pmIt's not a CPU issue, as other softsynth solutions play fine.CPU load is not trivial. If it were, someone would have put a useable synth on a Raspberry PiIt could be that Microsoft is seeking the least CPU intensive synth that is useable. They now have full Windows running on $70 tablets which is something I thought I would never see. Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #4 – 2015-09-21 10:31 pm I just downloaded and played the file with NWC 2.75 RC4 on Windows 10, and it played all the way through. Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #5 – 2015-09-21 10:36 pm Quote from: Rick G. – 2015-09-21 10:28 pmCPU load is not trivial. If it were, someone would have put a useable synth on a Raspberry PiIt could be that Microsoft is seeking the least CPU intensive synth that is useable. They now have full Windows running on $70 tablets which is something I thought I would never see.Windows 10 is very buggy, probably because it tries to do everything for all users regardless of configuration. I often find my Firefox browser crashes when Windows comes out of sleep mode, and today and yesterday, my Opera browser started freezing in the middle of opening various webpages. Opera page layouts started going wonky too. I put this down to the CPU being overwhelmed by all the crap MS tries to run in the background, including all sorts of cloud service updates and synchonizations that are not user-controllable because you can't tell they're happening until they cause problems. Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #6 – 2015-09-21 11:29 pm Quote from: David Palmquist – 2015-09-21 10:31 pmI just downloaded and played the file with NWC 2.75 RC4 on Windows 10, and it played all the way through.It plays all the way though. The problem is that it drops notes. Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #7 – 2015-09-22 12:15 am Quote from: Rick G. – 2015-09-21 10:28 pmCPU load is not trivial.I successfully played this sample on some pretty old hardware. The GS Wavetable plays it fine on Windows XP. On Windows 10, not so much...unless you use a third party softsynth, that is. Quote Selected Last Edit: 2015-09-22 10:43 am by NoteWorthy Online
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #8 – 2015-09-22 07:39 am Played correctly all the way through using Creative SB X-Fi soundcard on W10. Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #9 – 2015-09-22 04:24 pm Microsoft also dropped the Media Player from W10. One gets the idea that they don't much care about sound. I use a softsynth anyway, and there are plenty of freeware media players out there, so it's not really an issue for me. But you gotta wonder why anyone at M$ thought it was a good idea. I marvel at the stupidity of it - unless it's designed to push people into buying substitutes from the Windows Store, in which case I marvel at the sheer gall. Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #10 – 2015-09-22 10:06 pm Well, given the spyware built in to W10, my next machine will be linux. Might take a while though - I still run XP on most of my boxes, though 2 do have Win7 - I prefer XP... Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #11 – 2015-09-23 03:03 pm Quote from: Lawrie Pardy – 2015-09-22 10:06 pmWell, given the spyware built in to W10, my next machine will be linux. Might take a while though - I still run XP on most of my boxes, though 2 do have Win7 - I prefer XP...Many times I wanted to switch to Linux, but - at least for me - it was not easy to get Noteworthy Composer running on Linux. Installing Wine and NWC were the easy parts, but configuring Timidity++ was hard. Finally it worked, but after a week or so, playing (midi) failed again, and I had to debug the configuration. Eventually, I even reinstalled it from scratch. Windows doesn't always do what "I" want, but at least it "works" quite well without much investment. Linux is more configurable, but without extensive configuration "I" get much less "out of the box". Keeping Linux up to date seems to be a major concern in comparison to Windows.Don't hesitate to try Linux and if it fits for you, don't hesitate to use it. But don't expect it to be as easy as M$ Windows. And keep in mind that the time you loose on your OS is not available anymore for (learning) applications (like NWC).BartQUOTE : "If time is money, how poor, then, is someone without time?" Quote Selected
Re: Drop-out with W10 ?? Reply #12 – 2015-09-23 04:19 pm I already manage linux servers - I don't know everything about them, nor desktop linux configs, but neither am I worried about the config issues. Quote Selected
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