Freeze with Focusrite ASIO driver

[sso]

got a new puter and started to use the 64bit version.

I notice it says amd64 in the build, while i have a intel.

I ask because mpt now occasionally freezes on me. It always happens in the main edit window or sometimes when i press play. (this problem is also when i try 32bit version. I cant find a intel 64 version however.)

Aside from this what intel do you need to help me out?

Would be much appreciated.

[sso]

Dunno. I have been doing some stuff and lot of the problem might be focusrites buffer problems. (acknowledged by the company for several years.)

Im not sure, but it seems to be holding fine at 20ms (mpt forces the focusrite into buffers focusrite seems to have problems with.)

Still would love to know about the amd64 thing and whether there is a intel version or whether this is not a problem. Why are you guys so into amd btw?

[manx]

got a new puter and started to use the 64bit version.
I notice it says amd64 in the build, while i have a intel.
(this problem is also when i try 32bit version. I cant find a intel 64 version however.)

Short answer, the amd64 version works on your new computer with an Intel CPU, and the installer figures this out all by itself and installs it as the default version.

The naming sadly is confusing, no matter which name we choose. In the early 80s, AMD (and others) licensed x86 (16bit) and later x86 (32bit) from Intel. So, AMD x86 32bit CPUs are compatible with Intel x86 32bit CPUs. x86 32bit is also called any of x86, Intel 32, 386, i386 ("Intel 386"), IA32 ("Intel Architecture 32"), x86-32, and for more modern variants also 486, 586, 686, i486 ("Intel 486"), i586 ("Intel 586"), i686 ("Intel 686").

In 2003, AMD extended x86 32bit to 64bit and called it AMD64. Later Intel (and others) licensed x86 64bit from AMD. x86 64bit is also called any of x86-64, x86_64, amd64, Intel 64, x64.
Microsoft sometimes uses x64 and internally uses amd64.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#AMD64 for more details.

To add even more confusion, x32 is a very different thing compared to x86-32, which is why I actively dislike using the name x64 to describe x86-64.

To add even more confusion, IA64 is an even more fundamentally different thing and even has absolutely nothing to do with Intel 64, and is also called Itanium.

We also have a somewhat detailed (albeit incomplete) list of CPUs which fall into different feature classes at https://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?msg=48607.

[manx]

I ask because mpt now occasionally freezes on me. It always happens in the main edit window or sometimes when i press play.

Dunno. I have been doing some stuff and lot of the problem might be focusrites buffer problems. (acknowledged by the company for several years.)
Im not sure, but it seems to be holding fine at 20ms (mpt forces the focusrite into buffers focusrite seems to have problems with.)

I assume you are using ASIO (please correct my if this assumption is false).

Frankly, we have heard more than once about exceptionally bad Focusrite drivers in recent times.
You may have a significantly more stable experience by ignoring their ASIO driver and either using OpenMPT WASAPI or by using OpenMPT ASIO via the ASIO4ALL driver.

If someone wants to sponsor me a Focusrite device, I may invest some time to debug this mess, but I will likely not spend my own money on known broken hardware/drivers.

[sso]

Thanks man. Yes its an asio driver i use.

Interestingly focusrite warns people from using anything but it. Any idea why?

Shame, it sounds so crisp and nice this audio interface. I hope keeping it at 20ms keeps it fine.

As an aside, what audio interface do you yourself use? (and what programs do you use with it?)

[Saga Musix]

I don't think Focusrite is "warning" anyone to not use their ASIO driver, that would seem a bit harsh, but they probably are very keen on telling you that their driver is better than the standard drivers. ASIO has certain advantages over other audio drivers when it comes to music production such as being able to achieve a lower latency for live recordings (which is probably not relevant for you), or not being encumbered by the Windows mixer. The latter used to be a huge quality problem in Windows XP and older, but nowadays the only problem the Windows mixer poses for audio production is that it will apply a compressor effect if the overall audio volume is above 0dBFS. OpenMPT itself clips the signal to never go above 0dBFS, so this is only a practical problem if another application is outputting audio at the same time. But if you end up in that situation, the advantages of ASIO were probably not really relevant for you to begin with.

So all in all, you are probably just as well off using WASAPI. It's certainly less crash-prone.

PS: Please double-check your email address in the forum profile, the reply nofication to this topic couldn't be delivered. That's probably not too big of an issue for you right now, but it means that e.g. password reset mails would also not be able to be delivered if you ever forget your password.

PS 2: Please choose more descriptive topic titles when posting. It should always be clear for an outsider what the topic just by looking at its title so they can decide whether it's relevant for them or not. Nobody can infer from "I have a problem" what kind of problem you have. "Freeze when trying to play audio in OpenMPT" would have been more descriptive, for example.