Problem with Audition 2.0 and Mackie Onyx

When using the Mackie Onyx with firewire interface there is a problem with the meters in MT view, in playback. If a channel or channels has the level reduced by almost any means, the meter readings jump up and down for some time afterwards. In practice, this is extremely distracting and counter-productive.

The problem becomes much worse when applying an effect to a track. The Full Reverb effect probably illustrates it best. In this case, the meters continue to jump around for up to 15 seconds after the levels have been reduced to zero. The levels they jump to seem to be the max. level reached at any previous point played.

As a test I created 4 32 bit files each 3 min in length and inserted them into the first 4 tracks. I applied full reverb to track 1. I then applied a fade using the volume envelopes at about 1 min 30 sec. I varied this between an instant "fade" to a 10 sec fade with no difference in the results. The meters jumped around for ~15 sec after the fade.

If I change the levels using the new automation feature I get the same result. If I just drag the faders to zero same result. Ditto if I edit the files and silence a section in each.

If I freeze the "effected" track, the problem is far less severe, however this isn't an option if you apply an effect to a bus (where the problem still occurs).

The problem exists on my desktop and my laptop machines, and only with the Mackie. I have tried other sound interfaces on both computers with no problem. In fact, on the desktop the Mackie is set in Control Panel to be the default device (i.e. the one reported in Audition>Edit>Audio Hardware Setup as "Audition Windows Sound"), and if I choose that in Audition, there is no problem except that Windows reports this device to Audition as a 16 bit, 2 in/2 out device. It's actually 24 bit, 18 in/2 out.

Is it Mackie's problem? Not likely; nothing like this has been reported on the Mackie forum, so it probably hasn't surfaced with any other software, indeed, Audition 1.5 doesn't have the problem. Of course, with 1.5 there is only one meter, now there are channel meters as well as the master meter. I've tried to reproduce something like it in Tracktion which has channel meters and a master meter, but there's no problem there.

At present, the only way I can work around this is to select the "Audition Windows Sound" device, which as noted above, is the Mackie, however this requires me to make  the change each time, and only works as 16 bit. The problem is much too distracting to ignore.

Anyone else experience this problem?

I've found metering with the Echo Mia Midi card to be a bit jerky, but if I use the Asio4All driver as an intermediary, that fixes it.  So in Audition's setup page, you point it to the Asio4All driver, and in the Asio4All driver you select the Mia (or presumably in your case the Mackie). It would be most interesting if you cared to try this and to see whether (a) it cures the problem and (b) whether there are any other downsides.

In fact Alan I've just rechecked this here, and indeed the problems you describe happen very similarly with the Mia (including the Full Reverb problem - easy to see if you simply make a 'hole" in a clip and play from before the hole to afterwards), and can be completely fixed with Asio4All.

There seems to be no such problem in edit view.

Anyone else seeing this?

I've found metering with the Echo Mia Midi card to be a bit jerky, but if I use the Asio4All driver as an intermediary, that fixes it.  So in Audition's setup page, you point it to the Asio4All driver, and in the Asio4All driver you select the Mia (or presumably in your case the Mackie). It would be most interesting if you cared to try this and to see whether (a) it cures the problem and (b) whether there are any other downsides.

Thanks, I'll follow that up & report back. Glad to get some corroboration.

On reflection, my comment about AA1.5 is irrelevant because the driver being used was obviously different.

A quick try with ASIO4all indicates that it may be the answer, although using the Mackie ASIO driver with an unfortunately large buffer seems OK too. With ASIO4all I can actually reduce the buffer. So far anyway.

At some stage I'm going to have to migrate the Mia to an XP machine - I've never tried it at all with AA2.0. I must confess that I find the above a little worrying, though. This shouldn't be happening at all really, should it?

Confirmed here with no Mackie Onyx in sight -- like Ozpeter was saying, there's some meter jumping just by using Full Reverb.

Alanofoz -- does the behavior persist if you remove all Full Reverb from the session?

Without full reverb or other processor intensive effect the meters usually jump once. If you're not looking for it you'll probably miss it.

As Steve says, this should not be happening at all. While the meters should receive the same data as the driver because they should be monitoring whatever goes to the sound interface, there should be absolutely no interaction between them. Even a totally buggy driver should still have no effect on the meters.

And oh dear, now I have another problem involving the mixer and full reverb. But I'll start another thread when I have more info on it.