Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Garritan CFX sustain problem

Does anyone have this issue where the sustain seems to cut the note out to annoying effect using garritan?

I notice when I play say a D in bass to a D chord octave higher the D bass note will cut out when changing sustain or applying sustain pedal... I can't get the timing right most of the time it seems...this issue never occurs on any other VST I've tried or dp samples themselves. It's hard to explain what I mean but I've always had this issue on several different pianos using garritan. It really bugs me as it ruins the whole flow of the passage you're playing. It's like the note half sustains then abruptly cuts off whilst everthing else sustains fine... But I particularly notice bass notes cutting off to awful sounding effects.

I have tried turning off re pedalling but don't think it makes a difference anyway... Don't think it's to do with my issue... Is there a fix to this please?

I have been using CFX for 2 years now and never had that problem.

What you describe sounds like not enough poliphony. Have you tried look into the advanced tab of CFX. There you have the option of picking up how many voices of polyphony you want to to use. Try increasing that. Worth a shot . . .

https://usermanuals.garritan.com/CF...ettings_and_monitoring_and_polyphony.htm

Yes, I've had this happen.

Can you describe your CFX setup? Mac/PC, native engine or ARIA player?

On mine, it doesn't happen when I run CFX natively through the CFX player. But if I run CFX through the standalone Aria Player (Mac Mini M1, 16GB RAM) there's nothing I can do to stop it. It's NOT a polyphony issue for me, it's how Aria handles sustain releases. What I notice is that releasing the key while the sustain pedal is down causes the lifted note to stop sounding (while the sustain sample continues to play). It's somewhat subtle because the sustain effect is still there, but there isn't supposed to be ANY change in tone when you release keys with the sustain pedal down, so the effect can be quite noticeable to the player. Is that what you're hearing?

The only way to avoid it for me is to use the CFX player. Another former user here Cybergene also mentioned that he ran into this when he used extremely low polyphony, but I've tested this on my system and it doesn't seem to be the case.

My guess is that Aria has a bug, or is using some kind of aggressive note stealing because it has to potentially fit many more VSTs/instruments into its polyphony space.

A few quick ideas worth trying:

Tools>Preferences
--Set sample rate to 44,1kHz
--Increase buffer size high, to say 512 just for testing

Advanced
--Reduce Max Engine RAM allocation significantly (to say 512MB)
--Reduce Inst Disc Pre-Caching significantly (to say 128 kB or whatever is available)

If you are using the free Sforzando player, that is up to v1.971 8dec2021 (which apparently is Universal Binary for M1 Macs to run without Rosetta but I am not clear on that and don't have a modern Mac to test). "NOTE: Software downloads below can also be used to update a previous version."

https://www.plogue.com/downloads.html#sforzando

Confusingly, there is a different Aria update page which is v1.967 12jun2020. I suppose this page just wasn't updated.

http://ariaengine.com/support/aria-engine-update/

CAUTION: Installing these ALSO may update the Engine in the CFX player, but I don't recall quite how that works; I am on v1.967 which I suppose came from that second link.

I've used Aria on both the Intel and the Universal binary for M1 and the incorrect damper behavior applies on both.

And yes, you are correct that updating the Aria player also updates the CFX native player code, which migrates the wrong behavior to native CFX (so I had to reinstall CFX from scratch to fix it).

In short, I have to recommend staying away from Aria player entirely.

Gombessa - which version of the Aria Engine are you using in the CFX player that avoids that "bad behaviour"?

v.1.959 28oct2019 is the latest version that shows on the Garritan site.

https://store.makemusic.com/Downloads/

https://store.makemusic.com/Downloads/Default.aspx?id=665

MWF - if you have an older version of Garritan CFX, there was an update 10nov2016 that addressed pedaling issues among others. If you go to the INFO window in the CFX player, I think that would show "CFX Concert Grand v1.010".

There's an even newer version of the Aria Player here:

https://makemusic.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4548377288599

I don't recall the version number, it was the latest version as of March 2022 (Intel binary only for CFX).

Yes this exactly... Thanks for wording it better than me. I'm glad I'm but alone. I only use garritan via cubase now as I only play it when recording mainly. But this cut off thing sucks big time. Is there any fix then? Sorry if I missed details and appreciate all replies greatly.

I'm not aware of a fix and I haven't been using or updating CFX since April this year. But I can confirm that this issue isn't WAI and it does not happen if you play CFX through the native CFX player software (which does use Aria engine, but apparently one that is not negatively affected by this issue).

Note you issue will "infect" CFX if you install the standalone Aria player after installing CFX Grand.

I use garritan via cubase elements and works flawlessly apart from my issue, cubase uses it as a vst plug in obviously. I run a powerful laptop with 16gb ram, hexa core cpu etc.. It's definitely not underpowered, I can run several vsts at once even with it with no issues. I use a yamaha ag03 sound card but use Stein Berg ur22 also sometimes and same thing happens regardless.

Sounds like a software bug to me.

Yes, it's definitely a software issue, since there are configs in which it runs fine. I don't know how VSTs run through Cubase and other DAWs, but I suspect there is something that triggers when it plays in that mode?

QQ - have you tested CFX through the native player? It would be an easy test to run to see if you can get it working in some way (and if so, perhaps a reinstall or something else may help).

I'll try thanks, did you ever fix this issue yourself?

Would these instructions to use the CFX player in Cubase work?

https://forums.steinberg.net/t/garritan-cfx/144310/9

Maybe this file maybe located here
C:\Program Files\Garritan\CFX Concert Grand\VST\CFX Concert Grand VST_x64.dll