Is spark supposed to be this slow?

[bulle]

Boy do i hate to come to forums and try to figure out why something that i just purchased is working poorly. Please tell me that Im the only one who has to wait almost two seconds to preview one single sound. It takes ages to get through a dozen of sounds when creating a kit, and theres many hundreds of these sounds if not thousands. On top of loading times there are also other issues that will prolong my search of a sample/sound much further. In library pane, when I select "auto preview", sometimes some sounds are not played at all. In studio pane, the arrows beside the sound selection box are most of the time not willing to change the sound to the next one in the alphabetic order.

A disappointing start to say the least.

Your thoughts?

[genshi]

Boy do i hate to come to forums and try to figure out why something that i just purchased is working poorly. Please tell me that Im the only one who has to wait almost two seconds to preview one single sound. It takes ages to get through a dozen of sounds when creating a kit, and theres many hundreds of these sounds if not thousands. On top of loading times there are also other issues that will prolong my search of a sample/sound much further. In library pane, when I select "auto preview", sometimes some sounds are not played at all. In studio pane, the arrows beside the sound selection box are most of the time not willing to change the sound to the next one in the alphabetic order.

A disappointing start to say the least.

Your thoughts?

You've made no mention of what Computer Platform/OS you are on, processor speed, amount of RAM, hard drive speed, DAW that you are using, etc. All of that could be determining factors. I personally have no load issues at all when previewing sounds in Spark.

[Rfaith]

...but if we suppose that your equipment is up to the job, you might try looking at the ASIO software you use. Some settings govern the latency you may get to hear when reviewing or (worse) playing the sounds, and you might need to tweak some settings to improve that aspect. Sadly a hybrid device like SparkLE is open to all manner of problems from the environment in which it is run, an environment over which it has no control (hardware boxes which can be played standalone but optionally used like a SparkLE - now that would get my vote).

I'm struggling with other aspects of this system (drivers) but my delay is negligible - when it works one day in five! 

[bulle]

You've made no mention of what Computer Platform/OS you are on, processor speed, amount of RAM, hard drive speed, DAW that you are using, etc. All of that could be determining factors. I personally have no load issues at all when previewing sounds in Spark.

Are you saying that your spark is auto-previewing sounds instantly as you select them in library pane? No 1-2 seconds "loading" or any delay whatsoever before you hear the sound? That would be strange, because for me spark 2 (i have software only) has exactly the same sample loading time in cubase 7, live 9 and standalone, both on windows 7 and osx 10.9.5, on any given audio interface whether it is professional or a standard audio controller. So unfortunately this most certenily is not a problem with my daw, os or hardware.

The 2 seconds that spark takes to load a sound is very unusual among plugins. I am guessing that its due to poor programming, and probably an effect inside spark, like reverb is causing this unnecessary loading time. Spark is not a heavy plugin so it should not be like this. The main problem is, that it prevents you from audition sounds quickly and I am used to auditioning samples way quicker then spark is letting me.

[genshi]

You've made no mention of what Computer Platform/OS you are on, processor speed, amount of RAM, hard drive speed, DAW that you are using, etc. All of that could be determining factors. I personally have no load issues at all when previewing sounds in Spark.

Are you saying that your spark is auto-previewing sounds instantly as you select them in library pane? No 1-2 seconds "loading" or any delay whatsoever before you hear the sound? That would be strange, because for me spark 2 (i have software only) has exactly the same sample loading time in cubase 7, live 9 and standalone, both on windows 7 and osx 10.9.5, on any given audio interface whether it is professional or a standard audio controller. So unfortunately this most certenily is not a problem with my daw, os or hardware.

The 2 seconds that spark takes to load a sound is very unusual among plugins. I am guessing that its due to poor programming, and probably an effect inside spark, like reverb is causing this unnecessary loading time. Spark is not a heavy plugin so it should not be like this. The main problem is, that it prevents you from audition sounds quickly and I am used to auditioning samples way quicker then spark is letting me.

Normally, the way I use Spark, I've usually only load the full kits which takes about 1 full second for me. But just to be sure I wasn't missing something, I just now went into the individual sounds of the Library with "Auto Preview" checked and used the down arrow key on my iMac's keyboard to scroll down through each sound... with each sound instantly loading and previewing/sounding (no more than a half a second, if even that.)

So again I ask, what are your specs. I use to work tech support in this industry, so I know what actually matters (and I'm just trying to be helpful, I no longer get paid for this sh*t!) For example, and be honest here, are you running your DAW in 32 bit or 64 bit mode? And how much RAM? Processor speed? And how about the speed of your hard drive, what is the RPM or are you using an ssd? It may make more of a difference than you imagine. As for audio interface, etc., I'm only using NI's Komplete Audio 6 as my audio interface and the latest version of Ableton Live 9 Suite on OS X 10.10.3.

[fudduf]

Boy do i hate to come to forums and try to figure out why something that i just purchased is working poorly. Please tell me that Im the only one who has to wait almost two seconds to preview one single sound. It takes ages to get through a dozen of sounds when creating a kit, and theres many hundreds of these sounds if not thousands. On top of loading times there are also other issues that will prolong my search of a sample/sound much further. In library pane, when I select "auto preview", sometimes some sounds are not played at all. In studio pane, the arrows beside the sound selection box are most of the time not willing to change the sound to the next one in the alphabetic order.

A disappointing start to say the least.

Your thoughts?

I have the same problem.  W7 64, 8GB RAM, RME Babyface.  The Spark library is not on my system SSD, but on an internal 7200rpm HD (this should make no difference, we're talking about single drum hits here).  The lag is not only audio, but it takes a full 2+ seconds for the LCD to update the sound choice as well on my CDM. 

[rookwell]

I have the same issue when browsing through single "Instrument" presets/samples. There's a big lag between selecting a sound and hearing the preview. And sometimes the preview simply doesn't play at all, and you have to click on something else and click back.

My SparkLE has been sitting around for a while, but I decided to play around with it today and as much as I love the sounds and features, it was really a frustrating experience. Lots of bugs. My sample start/end points would randomly reset themselves and I'd have to go into the "Studio" page to get them to jump back to where I set them. Can't save individual effect settings. Undo function doesn't always seem to work. Plus this annoying preview issue.

Hope they get some of this stuff ironed out. It's a great product otherwise.

[fudduf]

I already got rid of mine.  Besides the unacceptable delay in loading samples, both the plugin and standalone were crashing on my machine.  Since nothing's been done in 2 months, I think I made the right decision.  Too bad, I really like the layout of the hardware. 

I may look at Arturia hardware again in the future, but definitely not their software.  After talking to a friend who does tech support for a known DAW, he told me that Arturia plugins have the most cases in their inbox by a wide margin.  That's all I needed to hear.