DX7 Occasional glitching

[JustJames]

My DX7 V plugin appears to glitch very now and then especially when I edit envelopes in real-time. It can even go so far as freezing my Mac completely. I have re-installed, cleared preferences and pushed my buffer up to 1024 - but it appears to have no effect. To help manage it I’m running DX7 V as a separate process on Reaper - but this is not fixing the glitching.
I cant see any visible CPU or memory issues - although it does get quite high sometimes (+70%). It freezes for a few seconds and then recovers - especially while viewing or editing envelopes.

Note: it almost feels like it “tops out” - resets - and then continues again after 3 seconds.

Any advice?

[LBH]

Hi and welcoem to Arturia forums.

Do you have a step by step list to replicate this issue, so i can test it? I know you say it's occasional, but random stuff is hard to test.

Is it a certain envelope type that causes the issue?
Is it a certain envelope point that causes the glitch?
Is it for a certain operator, mod, the pitch envelope or all that casuses the issue.

I also wonder about the 3 seconds stall you mention.
Do you have the issue on all presets, or on certain presets? A preset example would be good.

[JustJames]

Hi - thanks for your reply.

I'll provide as much info as I can 

1) Steps:
- open plug-in (standalone or Vst)
- select a present (most recently Bass presets, but this can vary)
- switch DX7 V window to Envelope (the dedicated window with envelopes in one view)
- activate sequencer/arpegiator mode on main keyboard GUI
- play on keyboard
- adjust rate on arpeggiator
- select operator in envelope view
- adjust attack on envelope
- switch operator on envelope screen and adjust attack to get more punchy sound
Note: at this stage there are several ball-like animations on the screen to visualise envelope execution)
- after about 45 seconds to 1.5 minutes I get the spinning beach ball of death (SBBOD), which stays for about 3-5 seconds
- the screen freezes during this time (also entire Mac)
- I stop playing and the plugin recovers, If I continue playing  during SBBOD the entire system seizes

I monitor my CPU and RAM closely during this period - there appears to be no indication of overload.

This may be freaky situation - but I'm starting to suspect my graphics card (standard one with my Mac) - not even sure if this is even remotely possible.

[JustJames]

Ok - I think I figured this out. I used the Mac OSX terminal to monitor events on the system when the freeze occurs. It appears that Mac OSX 10.14.6 has a bug in the Intel Graphics 6000 series driver - specifically when it comes to hardware acceleration which may cause issues. I'm looking into this at the moment, but it seems that I'm either going to have to downgrade or upgrade to get this fixed - and that the issue does not lie with DX 7 V.

Side question: Any way of switching off hardware acceleration for DX 7 V? 

[LBH]

Does that mean, that you talk about a graphical glitch and that it's not audioble?

I don't know if any music applications use graphics acceleration. They does'nt require much to run.
Arturias applications have no settings for graphics at all beside the size feature.

[JustJames]

The graphical glitch causes a complete crash eventually - I am not sure how Apple implemented its graphics driver - but the system terminal picks up a graphics event during DX 7 V usage - which luckily isn’t any fault of the plug-in (which I am grateful for). From other online forums it seems that some form of acceleration causes the problem (could just be a standard graphics library). DX 7 V may be leveraging this feature by default as part of its rendering in the OSX Window system.

Thanks for the help and feedback - I’m going to try take this up with Apple to see what option I may have. I’ll feedback any relevant updates here if this can help other users.

[LBH]

Your welcome.

I’m going to try take this up with Apple to see what option I may have. I’ll feedback any relevant updates here if this can help other users.

Yes please.