v2.2 can hang Sibelius Kontakt Player

[Norm]

From within the Sibelius 3 notation program, ASIO4ALL v2.2 shows up in the Kontakt Player setup window and gives me access to the ASIO4ALL configuration window, as advertised. I can indeed change buffer size, and playback works, but after making two or three changes, the Kontakt windows don't redraw properly and the system effectively hangs; it gets so slow, it's hard even to get the Task Manager up. There are no problems when ASIO is not selected. (My PC sound device is the built-in SoundMax Digital Audio chipset.) Is there a way to diagnose this?

--Norm

P.S. I don't need ASIO compliance to run the Sibelius Kontakt Player (which has its own "latency" control), but I'm looking to buy sampling software that does need it, so this trial is to gain some experience.

[Michael Tippach]

There are several versions of the SoundMax driver in the wild, some of them known to work better then others.

I did not manage to reproduce this with the Kontakt Demo on a system with SoundMax.

Did you, by any chance, de-select the "Always Resample 44.1Khz..." option? (This could cause trouble with SoundMax)

[Norm]

It seems I can get stability with "Resample" de-selected. (The Sibelius Kontakt player is set for 44100. It gives two choices of sample rate, 44100 and 48000; perhaps this setting has to match the one in ASIO4ALL.) I can do more experimenting. Also, I'm now careful to close the ASIO4ALL window after making any change in it; perhaps this helps or it just makes me feel safer.

I get good playback with "Use Hardware Buffer" selected (default 10 ms for the offset), but if the Buffer Size is set to less than 256 or so with this enabled, the music program crashes at once. With the option de-selected I get occassional crackling, even a large buffer sizes (near 1000).

Thanks for responding.

--N