Living 32-Bit in a 64-Bit World (Part Two)

I recently wrote about some difficulty I was having getting my 32-bit workstation software to play nicely with the 64-bit SampleTank 3 module I got for a great crossgrade price from IK Multimedia. I'm pleased to report (after some delay) that I was able to solve the problem. For details please read on.

To recap my earlier post on this topic, I had found out about a nifty little bit of software called jBridge, which would allow me to run my 64-bit SampleTank plug-in as a 32-bit plug-in in my Mixcraft digital audio workstation. But I ran into two problems. First, I couldn't get jBridge to install and then to run. After snooping around the Mixcraft and other forums for awhile, it dawned on me that the problem might be with access rights for the application. Some plug-ins (like the IK Multimedia plug-ins I've become fond of) seem to insist on running as administrator in Windows. In this case, I did a couple of things. First, I ran the jBridger application, which creates the dummy 32-bit "bridged" version of your 64-bit plug-in, as administrator.

To run the jBridger application as an administrator, right click its icon, and select "Run as administrator" from the pop-up menu.

When running the application, I suggest having the application put the "bridged" version of your plugin into a separate directory from your other VST plug-ins. I called mine VSTJBridge. Then, in my Mixcraft settings, I just added that directory to my VST directories, and told Mixcraft to rescan for plug-ins in that folder.

The second thing I did was to set up the auxhost64 application file to run as administrator whenever it runs. The auxhost64 file is important because it creates a big memory space the 64-bit plug-in needs to run properly. This helps to overcome certain limitations of the 32-bit environment.  Since I'm only bridging from 32-bit to 64-bit, I only had to do this for auxhost64. (By the way, I apologize if any of this is not technical enough. I'm assuming the reader has a relatively basic knowledge of Windows -- in this case Windows 7.)

Right click on the auxhost64 application and select "Properties" from the pop-up menu. Click the "Compatibility" tab (circled in the picture) and make sure the box marked "Run this program as an administrator" is checked.

Obviously, if you're doing all this, you need to be an administrator yourself.

I got jBridge to work. I got SampleTank 3 up and running in Mixcraft and put together a nice little bit of corporate pop-rock-easy listening fluff. The next problem I ran into was when I tried to mix down to standard 44.1k/16-bit WAV files to upload to the stock music marketplaces where I sell. I kept getting static in the files when I listened to them. I didn't get that noise when working with the files in the Mixcraft environment. So I poked around some more, and discovered that jBridge does not play well with WaveRT. Again, at the risk of getting overly technical, WaveRT (or "Wave Real Time") is a set of audio software drivers that Microsoft introduced with Windows Vista. Vista is dead, but WaveRT lives on. WaveRT allows applications that use it to have access to audio in Windows with much faster response than plain old Wave. Acoustica designed Mixcraft to play nicely with WaveRT, but it can also work with other audio drivers too. For more about Mixcraft and WaveRT, you can check out this WaveRT info from Acoustica.

So here's what I did. Once I was ready to mix down to audio, I went into Mixcraft preferences and changed my driver selection from WaveRT to Wave. Once I did this, all the pops and clicks in my mixed-down audio vanished!

The jBridge application likes the older "Wave" audio drivers better than WaveRT when mixing down to audio.

This has forced me to change my workflow a little. When I'm working on a track, I set the driver to WaveRT because things respond much more quickly. See up in that last picture where it says "Latency (delay in milleseconds): 743?" In plain English, that means almost three-quarters of a second goes by between when you press a key or say something in a mic and when sound comes out. Yikes! You can reduce that delay, but you have to allocate more memory space to buffers (number and size). You get way better performance with WaveRT, and there's a lot less tweaking involved. So, I use WaveRT until I'm ready to mix down to audio, then save my project, and go switch over to Wave to do the mixdown.

I'm very happy with the results. The sound quality is just a quantum leap forward, in my opinion. I've already created some new tracks with this new setup, and am looking forward to sharing a lot more in the near future.