Clicks and Pops During Midi Playback?

[numberforty1]

Using Sampletank HQ Piano to playback MIDI in LE 7.4 with Digi 002...there are a lot of pops and clicks and stops during the playback, very short ones, but they are still there. I've tried fiddling with buffer settings and such but they don't seem to make much difference.

What do I need to do?

[Kiwiburger]

I don't know this specific software, but i'm presuming this piano is a sampler with a very large size sample library - probably over 1 gig?

I've had limited success with these huge gigabyte pianos, and walked away from the concept. The limitation with huge sample libraries is disk speed, and little else. What I found I needed to do was take these steps (from a Windows PC persepective, but the same principles should apply, if not the terminology):

1 - have seperate disk drives for your OS boot drive (C:\), your sample library drive (let's say D:\) and your Audio Project drive (lets say E:\). The reason for this is that your OS boot drive is used for virtual memory, when RAM gets maxed out, and with huge sample libraries, your RAM will get maxed out and require lots of fast page file swaps. You don't want to be streaming samples from the same drive. You also don't want to be streaming samples from the same drive that you are writing or reading audio files - hence the need for 3 seperate drives.

2 - the drives need to be fast drives - 7200 rpm, not 5400 rpm. They also ideally should be internal drives, not external, so you aren't slowed down by USB or Firewire - especially if these busses are streaming multitrack audio as well.

3 - trying to run extremely low latency uses to much resources, so relax the buffer settings and tolerate some latency. Maybe consider tracking your midi performances with an economy piano, and reserve the full quality version for bouncedown, with all other tracks disabled ...

4 - or give up and use external hardware pianos or modules that sound better and have less issues.

5 - or use a modeled piano, rather than a huge sized sample library.

[numberforty1]

Thanks Kiwi, that's good advice. What is a "modeled" piano? I do have another internal 7200 drive so I'll try that. I have the option of using another sampler in a studio I've been to before, but it was just frustrating to have the option at home here and get these problems. At the moment the Sampletank HQ free piano is the only real piano sample I have, if you know of any other free ones let me know.

thanks again