UAD-2 Massive Passive, Ensemble and Buffering problems...

Ok here is the deal. This problem is not entirely limited to just the Massive Passive, but it seems to be the main offender. I have been having this same issue for a while, even after switching to a powerful new hackintosh. Previously I was on a Mac pro. I've been having really odd buffering issues with reaper. For one thing, in both lion and mountain lion, I have been consistently unable to set my buffer to 256 samples. I use and apogee ensemble. I can run at 128 or 512, for example, but if I set it to 256 audio just stops. The meters bounce, my session runs, but no audio. Ok, so that is weird enough. BUT, here's the other strange buffering issue. UAD Massive Passive in particular, but occasionally some other intensive plugins (brainworx BX-XL v2) will seem to not be able to find a workable buffer size. For instance, I may have a MP on the stereo bus at 512 buffer. There is plenty of CPU on my satellite duo to handle it. It's playing fine, and then it will start to crackle. So, raise the buffer, right? WRONG if I raise to 1024, say, the crackling gets worse and becomes unlistenable. It sounds not like cracking by then but more like choppy, granular delay. And here's the kicker: it usually doesn't matter if I raise, lower or keep the buffer the same at that point. I usually just have to restart reaper at that point. Also, i recently was experiencing this issue using the massive passive at 512 buffer and decided to try an arbitrary higher buffer size, 576. Oddly enough that seemed to work. Anyways, if anyone has ANY input or similar experiences, I'd really appreciate their feedback. Thanks!

It sounds like you're having sync issues. Not buffering. Are you running multiple interfaces in an aggregate device? Some of what you said "It sounds not like cracking by then but more like choppy, granular delay." sounds like distortion from clocks out of sync (free running). If this is the case, changing your buffer sizes was a moot point and the temporary fix was actually the reset of core audio. You kind of verify this by "it usually doesn't matter if I raise, lower or keep the buffer the same at that point. I usually just have to restart reaper at that point." Multiple devices MUST be synced by word clock. No exceptions. And this DOES mean that you cannot successfully aggregate a hardware interface with the computers built-in audio. (The core audio 'resync' feature is only intended to work when you use the built-in audio's internal clock as master and then only use other virtual devices like Soundflower.) You can check the boxes anyway and then maybe you get anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour before you get a sync hiccup and distortion from now free running clocks. What is/are your interface(s)? What have you selected for master clock?

Hi Serr, Thanks for he reply. I am using an Apogee Ensemble. The strange thing about it is that is currently the only interface I have running and it's being clocked internally. Is there some weird way it or reaper could be getting out of sync with one another?

You may want to contact UA tech support directly about the Massive Passive issue. What UAD version are you using? There has been issues with using the Massive Passive on the master bus on the Mac. The most common issue is severe native CPU munching at specific buffer settings. Using 512 samples happens to be the main culprit. What is your native CPU reading when using the MP? If your native CPU is overloading/spiking it could be contributing to the other problems you are seeing. UA is aware of this issue and is looking into it. I would still contact them with all of your specific details (computer/UAD specs, recipe for the behavior, etc...). Cheers, Billy Buck

YES I have had the exact same problem over time with Reaper, as well as Ableton Live, so it's probably more of a UAD thing than a Reaper thing... buffer size of 256 causes issues for me mostly with the Lexicon 224 reverb, but also sometimes Massive Passive... I remember reporting it to UA at some point and getting fobbed off a little bit with generic tech support stuff about "we only recommend a buffer size of X for stability" etc. etc., but I can def confirm that the 256 buffer size causes issues here too

Hi Guys, thanks for the help. I am on version 6.3.2 of UAD software. At first I did think it was a plugin only issue but now it really does seem like the Ensemble is having a hard time staying in sync with its self. I am new to the Hackintosh world but I was under the impression that audio over firewire is stable.

Well maybe this is just making things more difficult, but today I noticed that this problem seemed to happen after I started another audio application running at the same time as reaper, in this case spotify. And not running in the sense of both programs playing, just both open. It's so weird. Wish I could get this figured out. I do have to update my UAD version so maybe that's the answer. Also, I was running the Akai MPC Rennaisance software and was getting similar sounding issues, also using the ensemble, but not using any UAD stuff. Vexing for sure.