Peace, APO and voicemeeter work for for a SPLIT second at start up then no...
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I've been trying to wrap my head around how to fix this since December and need help....
So I'm using Peace apo for my EQ and everything is configured correctly, APO output to A1, Peace selected devices all, voicemeeter correct hz and it sounds fine without peace and apo enabled. Then after about 30 seconds into windows running it breaks for no reason and I have no sound. I've reinstalled windows 20+ times different versions of windows and combinations of apo peace and voicemeeter. Wiped the drive to make sure it was a clean install each time etc..
Its boggling my mind why its not working! the only way I can get sound after it dies is to turn off peace and restart voicemeeter internally. I've made sure APO is installed on voicemeeter each time and it works fine for just a few moments then nothing... is strange.
any help is GREATLY appreciated,
Thanks in advance.
Does Equalizer APO work with Voicemeeter in its default configuration, before you install Peace? It would be interesting to find out if one of the commands that Peace inserts into the config file leads to the problem.
So I uninstalled peace and added a preamp in apo and it works with voicemeeter, so it looks like its a peace issue.
As far as I know, Peace is mostly writing config files that will then be used by E-APO, so Peace itself can not be the sole reason for the crash.
If you have the patience, you could install Peace again and copy the config files it creates. I don't know which files this are exactly. You could start by looking at config.txt and following the Include commands to find all the files that contribute to the configuration.
Then uninstall Peace again and insert these config files to see if you can reproduce the issue. (Likely yes)
So it turns out peace can't select what device to output to inside of voice meeter and when I select all devices it breaks, My solution is to copy the varibles from my EQ into an APO EQ.
Last edit: Miles 2019-06-24
Hi Miles,
The audio devices of Voice Meeter should be visible in Peace (see attached image). Aren't they visible in Peace at your computer? Or can't you select one of them?
Perhaps a way to force the inclusion in the Peace audio device list, is to start Voice Meeter first and then Peace. For reference I've installed Voice Meeter Banana and all of its audio devices are available in Peace and after using the Configurator of Equalizer APO these devices become also visible in the Configuration Editor.
As Jonas is writing it can't be sole issue of Peace. Audio shouldn't stop at 30 seconds merely because you have equalized all channels instead of a specific one. Anyway, to me it sounds like an audio buffer issue.
Btw. all commands are located in the peace.txt file which is visible in the Configuration Editor as an include file. You can "zoom in" by clicking the green arrow. By copying your EQ from peace.txt to config.txt nothing has been changed. Equalizer APO still processes the same commands. If you still want to copy, I suggest to copy the Voice Meeter device selection command to Peace. This command isn't changing, your EQ is likely to be changed.
Last edit: Peter Verbeek 2019-06-25
After playing around a little bit, you probably are saying that Peace isn't showing the A1 to A3 (Voice Meeter Banana) or A1 to A5 (Voice Meeter Potato) devices. Are you using one of these?
As Equalizer APO is supporting these A# of Voice Meeter, Peace isn't (yet). So "Device: Output A1 Voicemeeter" has to be copied to Peace in the Commands window. Or your EQ to the Configuration Editor.
Oh that makes more sense, il mess around with that and the audio buffer to see if that fixes it :D il let you know shortly if it does work.
So I messed around and set the buffer to a higher latency and it works ONLY in 96hkz mode in voicemeeter and when I eq beyond 22000 it breaks any audio running under 96hkz for some reason. I took a video of it and reproducing how it breaks if you would like to see it.
Could you try to attach the video to this thread using the "Add attachments" button?
I re-watched my original recording and it had no audio! so I had to do several takes to get the audio to play nicely unlike last time where I could change the hz without needing to restart each time but no audio recorded.... It seams as it breaks a1 completely for some reason but only on hz lower than 96khz.
video is too large to post heres a youtube link https://youtu.be/MvfmOLFsxvw
After watching your video I heard distortion when you went from 96 kHz to 44.1. IMO this could only happen if there's a problem between sample frequencies. For instance, Windows is still on 96 kHz and Voice Meeter is at 44.1. Or Equalizer APO is still on 96 kHz and Voice Meeter is on 44.1. And my guess is that this distortion is directly related to the "buffer" issue (if it's a buffer issue at all). So I'm wondering if it did work previously, for instance with another Voice Meeter like Banana or other drivers or whatever?
It's never let me switch frequency without having distortion and restarting the engine alone does not fix it, most of the time It breaks for several restarts then its fine. I have tried over 10 different windows versions and I have installed most of the older versions of VM bananna/potato, APO and Peace I could find to see if that was the issue but nothing has worked thus far until I recorded the first test all on the newest version but no audio was captured in my recording program bc I forgot to select imput. Its strange that it does not like to play nicely for me at first I thought It was because I didn't have it configured correctly. But I kept watching videos on how to set up vm, apo and peace and I was doing everything correctly as far as I can see.
I tried to change the VM buffer but it caused distortion so i'm wondering if its something else that's installed in my system causing issues. But I've had the same issue persist across fresh instillations of windows so who knows at this point. I will dig around some more and let you know if I find anything else.
Last edit: Miles 2019-06-27
Am I right in saying the audio dies when you switch on Peace? In other words, when Equalizer APO is processing the commands Peace is giving it?
Anyway, after installing Equalizer APO on A1, A2 and A3 of VoiceMeeter I got the same distortion you have (but not the audio muting/killing). I'm not sure what's going on but it's definitely a sample frequency incompatibility as I wrote in my other post. For instance, Equalizer APO is working on 96 kHz 24 bits and VoiceMeeter is processing the A# output on another frequency, in my case 48 kHz. When I remove Equalizer APO from A1 the audio is clear, no distortion.
I have found the culprit! For some reason when loading windows if I have multicore enhancement on in my bios it causes the issue..... but when its not enabled it does not happen.... I believe its something to due with the timings of the CPU and APO/VM not liking it which does not make sense considering it should not make much difference performance wise. I will continue to look into it but I believe APO/VM has an issue somewhere related to how it uses CPU cycles. However I still randomly get audio issues when the CPU is under little to no load that can be fixed by restarting VM. I will link this post to the VM guys and create a ticket and see if it is a voicemeeter issue. Thank you for your help.
I'm impressed you have found this! You say "timing" but then others apps should have issues too, I think. Another possibility is that this multicore enhancement leads to "shortcuts" in order to speed up the CPU processing (instead of timing). For instance threads may be handled slightly differently for speeding up but APO or VM (I think the latter) isn't capable or aware of this different handling. Of course I'm also speculating.
Perhaps you could post here if/when the VM guys have something to say about it. It could be interesting for Jonas. Besides I'm sure his understanding reach farther than mine.
Timing-related issues are nothing new between Voicemeeter and Equalizer APO. People often had distortion after Windows startup that could be fixed be restarting Voicemeeter. It first seemed to be a Equalizer APO problem but one user found out that it also happens sometimes with other Voicemeeter clients. (see this thread)
Unfortunately, the issue doesn't happen for me anymore, so I can not really experiment with it. It happened sometimes during development of the Equalizer APO Voicemeeter Client but suddenly vanished. However, the issue is slightly different from Miles' issue in that playback wasn't silent but distorted.
It's clear your approaching the core of this issue. Unfortunately I'm not an expert on these things. I hope Jonas has something more to say about it. Did you have this issue before you've installed Voice Meeter?
Btw it's strange that the sound stops altogether. When a buffer can't be filled fast enough some audio hickups should occur, not a silence. It seems to point to a bug or incompatibity of some sort. I guess that it isn't a problem for Equalizer APO (or Voice Meeter for that matter) to deal with equalization beyond 22 kHz and a lower sample rate than 96 kHz. Of course, at 44.1 kHz equalizing beyond 22 kHz is a bit off since the highest max frequency is half of 44.1 kHz so 22.05 kHz, but it wouldn't "crash" audio stream.
I had the problem Jonas described, distortions, exactly identical to the ones the user recorded and linked to in the voicemeeter's forum linked by Jonas.
Furthermore, my only reason to try and use Voicemeeter was having bitperfect playback through WASAPI but I discovered that one needs anyway to manually select the samplerate... is there no way to automate that?
I'm using a Toppin D10 DAC, it has a display showing the samplerate and that remained fixed at whatever setting I gave to Voicemeeter. In WASAPI exclusive I thought this would not happen. Did I miss something?
I ask before looking into the bios for the setting the other user mentioned. If no automation is possible, I'll remain with sox upsampling to 96KHz and use MME set to 96KHz, so I should get bitperfect sound for 96KHz records and quality upsampling (or downsampling) for other material. Playback is through Squeezelite (that uses sox internally for resampling).
I'm not an expert on WASAPI. Perhaps a restart of VoiceMeeter is necessary after changing the sample rates? I didn't consider this when I tried to remove the distortion by changing the sample rate in VoiceMeeter.