| Problem | Solution |
|---|
| Loading of a VST plugin fails | Failing to load a VST plugin has two main reasons
- you are trying to load a VST 3 plugin. Currently only VST 2 plugins are supported
- you are trying to load 32bit plugin into the 64bit version of SoundMexPro or vice versa. Please make sure that plugins and SoundMexPro have the same archtitecture! |
| Using 'loadmem' command on Python on multi-channel arrays the output is not as expected, the output seems to be mixed/distorted | SoundMexPro expects the data for multi-channel data arrays to be sorted non-interleaved in memory. Where MATLAB adjusts the order in memory when transposing a matrix, this is NOT the case with Python: transposing numpy ndarray only changes striping, the order in memory stays unchanged. Especially when reading wave files to memory, the channels will end up interleaved in memory! You may switch the order in memory using the function 'numpy.asfortranarray' (see SoundMexPro tutorials for examples). The same holds for arrays that are created in code: be sure, that the memory order will be non-interleaved when passing data to SoundMexPro! |
| Any call fails with 'SMPIPC startup error: IPC process unexpectedly terminated: check runtime libraries: ...' (... lists all needed libraries) | Starting with version 2.4.0.0 SoundMexPro needs the listed runtime libaries. Be sure that they can be found in current path or Windows seacrh path! |
| Init fails with 'Inconsistent buffer sizes', 'Invalid buffer size granularity' or similar errors | Load the latest driver for your soundcard. Some soundcards drivers (e.g MAudio) contained a bug in older version when quering the supported buffer sizes leading to the described error. |
| Command 'start' fails with error message 'setting samplerate of device to XY not successful' | most probably the sampling frequency of your driver is locked (check control panel and documentation of driver for more information). |
| Playback or record has dropouts (xruns detected with command 'xrun') | Increase number of buffers specified in 'numbufs' parameter in command 'init' |
| Playback sounds ok, recording and visualization has dropouts / is distorted | Ensure that your record files are not written to a network drive or any other slow drive! |
| When starting device you get a message containing a message similar to 'timeout occurred in WaitForRampState' | Check, that no other software is using the soundcard you are trying to use. Increase the 'starttimeout' and/or 'stoptimeout' value on init (see command help for 'start'). |
| Loading a VST plugin fails with an error message about missing files/libraries/Dlls | Some plugins require all files they are shipped with to be located in a directory that is part of the DOS/Windows search path. Copy the corresponding files to such a directory (e.g. Windows directory) or add the directory where they are located to the DOS/Windows search path. |
| Command fails with error message, if drivers own control panel is visible | For some soundcards (e.g. MOTU Traveller) the access to the driver fails, if the control panel shipped with the driver is visible (either shown 'by hand', e.g. from start menu, or shown by SoundMexPro command 'controlpanel'). Therefore you have to close the control panel before calling any other SoundMexPro commands. |
| starting fails with error message: 'error starting device: driver does not want data!' | Some soundcards (e.g. RME DIGI96, RME FireFace) do not start the device, if no playback channels are used and only recording channels were specified (i.e. '-1' was specified for parameter 'output' in command 'init'). In that case you have to use at least one output channel. The easiest way is to specify one or more output channels and use the value '0' for parameter 'length' in command 'start': in that case SoundMexPro plays zeros on all used channels automatically. |
| initialization fails on scripts that ran fine immediately before | With version 1.3.0.10 the internal SoundMexPro structure was changed. If e.g. MATLAB crashes and due to that the SoundMexPro cleanup was not complete, then the new interprocess communication executable might not be terminated correctly and will block the soundcard. Check if a process called SMPIPC.EXE is resident in memory with the task manager. If so, kill the process and run your script again. |
| Init fails with error 'driver with requested name not found' for unchanged scripts in wdm mode (i.e. soundmexpro('setdrivermodel', 'value', 'wdm') called). | Starting with version 2.2.0.3 the wdm mode of SoundMexPro uses new Windows API, where the device names returned by the driver might have changed (in older versions the name was cut to a maximum length of 32 characters by the operating system). If you are loading a driver by name please adjust the name (call soundmexpro('getdrivers') to retrieve the new names). |