[ev666il]

Hello, everyone.

I am currently using the Waves Q10 Paragraphic EQ plugin with Audirvana and, while it mostly works, it does make Audirvana laggy and prone to crashing especially when streaming from Tidal (or going back and forth between Tidal and my local library.)

While I contact Waves about the possibility of making Audirvana an officially supported host, I figured I'd turn to you for advice on alternatives to Q10.

My needs are:

• Variable bands (at least 9, for which I can determine the frequency.)
• Adjustable Q factor (like in Q10 or Peace GUI.)
• Selectable type (e.g. peak, shelf, pass.)
• Windows 10-compatible VST3 plugin.

Appreciate any suggestions

 

[jiiteepee]

Hello, everyone.

I am currently using the Waves Q10 Paragraphic EQ plugin with Audirvana and, while it mostly works, it does make Audirvana laggy and prone to crashing especially when streaming from Tidal (or going back and forth between Tidal and my local library.)

While I contact Waves about the possibility of making Audirvana an officially supported host, I figured I'd turn to you for advice on alternatives to Q10.

My needs are:

• Variable bands (at least 9, for which I can determine the frequency.)
• Adjustable Q factor (like in Q10 or Peace GUI.)
• Selectable type (e.g. peak, shelf, pass.)
• Windows 10-compatible VST3 plugin.

Appreciate any suggestions

If it's not because of low capacity hardware setup then, I suggest, Audirvana is the culprit for your problem ... contact them instead of blaming Waves.

As a fix, you could try by increasing the I/O buffers in Audirvana.

Fof alternatives, here's a good database you could check - https://www.kvraudio.com/plugins/instruments/effects/hosts/newest

 

[ev666il]

If it's not because of low capacity hardware setup then, I suggest, Audirvana is the culprit for your problem ... contact them instead of blaming Waves.

Contacting Audirvana was actually the first thing I did. I sent them my dump/log files, and they told me I should disable my Waves plugin as that's what's making Audirvana crash. I asked them whether this could be fixed in a subsequent version of Audirvana, and they said the fix is on Waves, rather than on them.

In all fairness, Audirvana is not on Waves' list of officially supported hosts for the Q10 plugin, and they seem more focused on the professional, recording side of the music business, rather than the enthusiast, playback side of it. I asked them whether they could look into making Audirvana an officially supported host, but I'm not holding my breath.

My computer is getting old, but it's still way above the system requirements of either (i7 4790k, 16Gb DDR3 2400Mhz, 512Gb Samsung 850 EVO SSD.)

As a fix, you could try by increasing the I/O buffers in Audirvana.

That actually seems to make the problem worse. I do have the "Use large WASAPI I/O buffer" option on (turning it off doesn't appear to make a difference), but the memory allocated for pre-loading tracks is at the minimum. Increasing it makes the lag worse when browsing/streaming from Tidal.

I'll have a look at the link you provided; thank you!

EDIT: Using the "ASIO for generic USB device" driver seems to fix the issue entirely. No idea why it would occur with WASAPI and not with ASIO, but hey. Whatever works.

 

[jiiteepee]

...

EDIT: Using the "ASIO for generic USB device" driver seems to fix the issue entirely. No idea why it would occur with WASAPI and not with ASIO, but hey. Whatever works.

ASIO (and WASAPI Exclusive (not in all cases)?) works better with low I/O buffers (i.e. low latency) so that's why I asked to try that buffer fix ... .

 

[ev666il]

I've done some more digging and figured I'd post my findings for the benefit of anyone who might be having the same issue and ran into this thread.

ASIO seemed to have fixed the issue but ultimately didn't. Shortly after my "Eureka!" moment it started lagging just like WASAPI, sending me right back to square one.

I browsed the plugin list @jiteepee linked above in search for an alternative equalizer, found one that had everything I needed, and downloaded a demo version to try. Exact same behavior.

At this point, I was pretty much resigned. I checked Audirvana's device setup menu one last time, and saw the "Realtime control" box under the "VST3 plug-ins" options. I didn't think it would make a difference, but figured I'd tick it just because. Well, color me surprised, but I've been using it this way for hours now and not a single hiccup, lag, slowdown, or crash. It's snappier than it's ever been.

Ticking this box seems to convert the audio stream to 32 bits, probably because the equalizer needs the headroom to work. I guess the conversion to and from 32 bit was a tad on the resource-intensive side during the track preloading phase.