What doesn't work right is the friggin graphics on NTRACK V4. It hasn't worked right since the first release (which I bought) and the later releases are doing that same crap.
no cents
I just found your thread titled "What OS does Ntrack 4.x work best in?" So there are others experancing the same oddities. A few questions that I have now are: 1. I'm wondering if the problems only show up on surtain size computers. 2. For people who are not experiancing these issues, what is it about their computers or systems that are making it work so well? Is it possible that computes with a little less memory and speed, can't see the ill effects? 3. If v3 worked good on my system, why should I have to alter or change my system to run v4 ?
I just found your thread titled "What OS does Ntrack 4.x work best in?" So there are others experancing the same oddities. A few questions that I have now are: 1. I'm wondering if the problems only show up on surtain size computers. 2. For people who are not experiancing these issues, what is it about their computers or systems that are making it work so well? Is it possible that computes with a little less memory and speed, can't see the ill effects? 3. If v3 worked good on my system, why should I have to alter or change my system to run v4 ?
Tom-
After examining every possible angle of this problem I find it cannot be an issue of drivers, OS, or hardware.
You, I and others have seen the ridiculous behavior of various GUI elements- pop up windows exapnding and collapsing while some expand to the whole screen and need to be closed and re-opened. We've seen the ghosting (on high end and low end systems), the odd behaviour of buttons, all kinds of odd resizing problems.
To answer your questions- 1) As to system "size" I've experimented on my two systems exensively (way too much for a program like Ntrack). One has 256 mB, a 900mHz processor and one 80Gb drive with Win ME. The other has a 2100 mHz processor, 512 mB RAM, one 120Gb main drive and two 80Gb drives in a raid array with an ATI Radeon 9000. I just set up Win Me and 2K to dual boot. I think these two sytems have a pretty good spread in terms of power, plus the 2K machine also represents Win XP because XP and 2K are based on the same core (just as ME and 98). The problems remained exactly the same on both machines despite testing with the latest drivers as well as older drivers. Nothing changes from one machine to the next.
On the latest notebooks (3000Mhz 1Gb of RAM) with XP the results are still the same. I even tried Ntrack V4 on an old Cyrix based PC (200mHz) and the same problems show up.
There are three possibilities here:
a) Those fortunate people who do not have these problems have downloaded one of the many (very many) builds that just happens to have no problem code in it. With all the builds Flavio cranks out its possible he's cutting and pasting from different files- some of which has porrly writen graphics code in it.
b) There is some microsoft related problem here. By that I mean the fortunate people here have a specific version of DX or some other microsoft subsystem (dot net, active X- I don't know much about this) that happens to work well with Ntrack 4. In my case I have DX 9 on one system and an older version on the other but as I said before the problems are the same.
c) both my computers are AMD- maybe 4 doesn't like AMD chips.
I think I addressed your question # 1&2 above so here is 3:
3)Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You shouldn't have to!!!!!!!
Not only does Ntrack 3.x run perfectly on your system and both of mine, but two dozen big name demos and full version audio, video, imaging, and modeling programs work perfectly and exactly the same on both of mine.
What the #### makes 4 a special case? NOTHING because its just a very buggy program. Thats the answer. Its up to Flavio to figure out why these problems exist. The problems exist and are very similar for many more than one user, so he's got his work cut out for him. Thats all.
One other point- the system requiements for v3 and v4 are very similar- maybe the same- I can't remember about 3 anymore. The system requirements for v4 are easily met by both of my computers so the problem is not on our side. I didn't see anything listed about having to have a special system only for Ntrack v4. What some people are saying here that we have "bad drivers" or some other crap is utterly ridiculous and absurd. How come I can run loads of audio software on systems that don't even meet the system requirements and it still works fine, yet with Ntrack v4 the very best still won't cut it?
The answer is its a software/programming/coding/ GUI problem that Flavio has yet to correct. Thats all.
I remember back when AMD came out with the faster cheaper chips and a lot of folks jumped on em. About the same time there was a new version of n-Tracks. All of a sudden there were lots of folks having problems with pops and clicks when recording, and other odd stuff. The common thread at the time was that most of the folks having problems were running the new AMD chips, but not all. There were definitely problems in n-Tracks but there were more problems for AMD folks.
It’s a hard question to answer, sort of like the chicken and egg question. We know V4 has problems. I suppose how the different machines handle them is why some folks are having more problems than others, and of course what they are doing that causes the problems (what hits the bad code).
I have 6 machines at home and 8 at work. I have one AMD machine at home and one at work. I can say without a doubt that those two AMD machines cause 90% of the problems I run into. The home machine is the kids gaming machine. It was, until recently, the fastest machine in the house. It was also the only machine in the house that would regularly lockup and blue screen when running some of the kids games. A video driver upgrade fixed the blue screen problem, but it still locks up when running a few games that work just fine on the other machines. Those machines range from 500mhz Celeron to 750mhz PIII. The AMD is a 2400 Athlon. The AMD at work is an AMD64 and it’s just a mess. I can’t get audio to work on it most of the time.
My newest home machine is a 3.2ghz P4 Prescott. While the V4 funkiness it there I’ve been able to use it with no major problems since build 1715 or so. V4 is not stable enough that it doesn’t need restarting regularly. I save often and close and restart the app every 10 to 30 minutes, or whenever something obvious happens…whatever that obvious thing is.
One serious issue (an obvious thing) is that playback timing will get screwed. Playback gets clunky, tempo slows down, and n-Tracks will pop up the CPU usage dialog that should only pop up when CPU usage is very high. Except CPU usage isn’t high. This might be a conflict between plug-ins or it could be yet another symptom of memory corruption, or a driver issue, or who knows what. Regardless, exiting n-Tracks and restarting it will fix the problem temporarily. This problem isn’t manifested as a GUI or graphic glitch, but is just as bad since it force exiting n-Tracks and may cause a loss of any edits done since the last save. So far there have been no corruption of files already saved.
This particular issue is so bad sometimes that it will not only pop open the ActiveMovie window frame, it will run random files off the hard drive. This is a good clue that it is a small memory overwrite – a buffer overrun. This kind of error in code is what allows viruses to do what they do and why the effect is virus like sometimes. It’s VERY difficult to find these. Most utilities that check for memory corruption won’t catch overwrites unless they are a page size or large. Most pages are 4k in size, so any overwrite less than 4k will not be detected.
This could be a memory underwrite instead. The result is the same, but memory on the other end of the memory block is written over. These are even harder to find.
Some things that I know have either caused problems or used code that had already been corrupted are dragging tracks to move them in the timeline, deleting existing tracks, importing waves to new tracks, and cloning tracks. All of the cause the timeline to be redrawn. When something bad happens do that mean the action caused memory corruption or does that mean the action used code that was corrupted? That’s the 64 million dollar question.
Opening songs will cause the timeline to be redrawn, so we have a VERY common action across MANY different systems that will cause some bad stuff to happen.
I have NOT seen the window sizing problem (huge windows, etc.) to cause problems such as ghosts and popped open ActiveMovie windows, etc. I think the resizing is, while a big annoyance, not related to the graphic and other kinds of glitches that might be associated with memory corruption.
By the nature of AMD and Intel based machines being different architecture the same memory will not necessarily be overwritten by the same troublesome code. That would give different problems on the two different architectures. That doesn’t mean AMD is worse, just that by chance whatever is getting corrupted is more vital the way the code is laid out in memory. Anyway, just changing a small amount of code and recompiling an app can cause the whole thing to be laid out differently. One build might be fine and the next not just because of that. Even changing just comments in the code can cause this. To make things worse apps compiled as debug versions may not show ANY problems while non-debug (retail) built apps blow up. That’s because memory corruption that only corrupts the inserted debug info code won’t cause the app to screw up.
Both need addressing and I have faith Flavio is doing all he can to get them fixed.
Nocents, Pooo and all, I’ve just noticed from the “What changed page” for builds, a bug report link. Anyway, THANK YOU VERY MUCH for taking the time to make these GREAT POSTS! I’m sure we are all hopeing for the best, Tom
I noticed while working on a song that on the individual track icons (trackline view) for Mutting, Soloing, and Recording. Flavio has made their bacground highlite bigger, to make this easier for us to use. Maybe in making these larger it has caused some glitch effecting the other images. Just a thought from just another guitar stringer. Tom
2.2 - Q: Does n-Track Studio work with my version of Windows? A: n-Track works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4.0, 2000 and Windows XP
2.3 - Q: What are the minum system requirements to run the program? A: CPU: Pentium 160 or better, 32 Mb RAM, a soundcard.
2.q - Q: Which operating system n-Track works better with? A: Windows XP, 2000 and Windows NT. With the same hardware setup Windows 9x/ME has slightly worse performances, with particular regards to hard disk input/output. This is directly reflected in the maximum number of tracks the program can handle, which may be up to 30% higher with Windows 2000, XP or NT. If you can choose among Windows 9x/ME and XP, 2000 or NT, Win XP, 2000 or NT should be preferred, being faster and far more stable. Drivers are a little harder to find for Win XP/2000/NT so before installing it make sure that all your devices (in particular soundcards) have drivers for the OS.
Note that nothing at all was mentioned about graphics performance.
Its the new year but we still have the same GUI problems in Ntrack.
Maybe bringing this issue up doesn’t seem like the nicest way to start the new year, but its only in the best interest of helping to make Ntrack much easier to use. I know there are the types who believe the rest of us should be very gentle with our criticism of Ntrack however they are actually the ones slowing the progress of the program’s improvement.
I spent several hours with N on Win 2K today and am starting to list some of the erratic behavior of the various windows.
First, it seems that its best to reset N to the default settings in the pref. menu. This way we start from a reference point.
1) Attempting to undock the channel strip and redock it results in lots of ghosting which needs to be “wiped away” with another floating window.
2) The channel strip cannot be moved very far without it forcibly docking itself to something else on screen such as the EQ window. This can cause some starnge behavior where the strip causes the EQ window to disappear replaced by a larger channel strip box. The channel strip can also shrink when docking this way.
3) A Suggestion- Other audio programs such as Samplitude allow the user to scroll through track selection on screen with arrow keys. By that I mean when a track is selected, the up/down keys can be used to scroll up or down to a particular track which will also activate the corresponding fader in the mixer. This would be a great feature for N because it allows one to navigate through the track on the timeline much easier than moving a slider to the desired track and then clicking on it to activate it as the current track. This is cumbersome and time consuming as well as irritating. I see that most of the other apps have this ability and it allows the user to treat the tracks on the timeline as a grid that can be navigated with simple and intuitive keystrokes rather than a combination of mouse movements and keystrokes.
Its the new year but we still have the same GUI problems in Ntrack.
Maybe bringing this issue up doesn't seem like the nicest way to start the new year, but its only in the best interest of helping to make Ntrack much easier to use. I know there are the types who believe the rest of us should be very gentle with our criticism of Ntrack however they are actually the ones slowing the progress of the program's improvement.
nocents
Hi NewCents, I happen to agree with you, and I started to list some things today but was side tracked. I probably will tomarrow and have also submitted a bug report Friday. In the bug report email, I mentioned this thread for tips. Tom
I’ve uploaded build 1745 that should solve the problem with the EQ window flashing with very big size and the “Master master” tooltip for the master volume knob. Other bug reports are welcome, the more detailed the better. Often problems happen only when the program is configured in a certain way so it’s useful to try to reproduce the problem starting from the default n-Track settings that can be restored with the “Revert to defaults” button in the Preferences dialog box.
I've uploaded build 1745 that should solve the problem with the EQ window flashing with very big size and the "Master master" tooltip for the master volume knob. Other bug reports are welcome, the more detailed the better. Often problems happen only when the program is configured in a certain way so it's useful to try to reproduce the problem starting from the default n-Track settings that can be restored with the "Revert to defaults" button in the Preferences dialog box.
This is a good development and a step in the right direction. I’m glad to see you finally took the time to investigate these graphics problems.
For my part, I have been doing all testing using the default setings. I did it that way because I found most other layouts (except a blank workspace) too dificult to maneuver in because of the odd behavior.
Flavio, I’m running Win 2K and ME and the problems are identical using the default settings. After I try 1745 tonight I’ll have more feedback for you.
This is a good development and a step in the right direction. I'm glad to see you finally took the time to investigate these graphics problems.
For my part, I have been doing all testing using the default setings. I did it that way because I found most other layouts (except a blank workspace) too dificult to maneuver in because of the odd behavior.
Flavio, I'm running Win 2K and ME and the problems are identical using the default settings. After I try 1745 tonight I'll have more feedback for you.
no cents
Keep the info coming nocents! n-track v4+ is going to be fine software! This might be faster Submitt a Bug Report