You’ve added sounds, but you can’t play anything... There are a few things you can check here.
1. Are the speakers on and plugged in? (Sorry, management made us ask.)
2. Can you play a Wave file through Windows sndrec32.exe or another sound application? If you can't there may be a problem with your sound card's configuration or drivers. Refer to your soundcard documentation to try to figure out what is wrong.
3. Load the volume control that came with your soundcard and make sure that the Wave device is turned up.
4. Another program may be using the Wave device. Mixcraft will put up a dialog stating that another application has the Wave device in this case.
If you are trying to play sounds in Mixcraft and it seems to cut off too soon or it may have some other strange behavior, you should make sure that you have the latest drivers for your sound card. Download the latest drivers from your soundcard manufacturer’s website!
When playing the session, it sounds like someone is starting and stopping the sound real quick, repeatedly. This could be because the computer has slowed down due to other programs running at the same time.
Mixcraft has to work harder as the layers of sound increase. Try increasing the buffer size or the number of buffers in the Advanced Section of the Preferences Playback tab.
If you are doing a lot of recording and you find that the actual recordings are being broken up, you may change the Recording Settings on the Recording tab of the Preference Dialog.
Additionally, you may choose to reduce the # of effects that you are using during recording. Go ahead and mute the effects. You can always turn them back on later. (Effects use significant CPU power.)
Another trick is to reduce the number of tracks. Each track has its own separate mix down which costs in terms of your computer’s memory and CPU power. If you don’t need sounds to be separate tracks, try and put them on as few tracks as possible.
You know how to copy a whole sound, but how do you copy part of a sound? Left click on the bottom selection area of the sound. Keep the left mouse button down and then move the mouse over the area you want to copy or cut. A selection rectangle will highlight over the area of the sound. Then let the mouse button up and select "Cut" or "Copy" from the "Edit" menu. If you are "copying", you can then select "Paste" from the "Edit" menu to paste at the caret point.
I Can’t Load Or Save WMA Files!
In order to load and save to WMA files, you must have support for Microsoft Windows Media Format 7.1. If you are trying to load a WMA file or export to WMA file and the option is grayed out, you probably do not have this installed. To download and install it, please visit http://www.acoustica.com/plugins/index.htm . (You do not need to restart your computer!)
If you’ve already installed WMA support, you may be trying to open a WMA with Digital Rights Management (DRM). If you created this WMA file with Windows Media Player, you could recreate it with DRM turned off. To turn off DRM, run Windows Media Player, choose Options from the Tool menu, click on "Copy Music" and make sure that "Copy Protect Music" is unchecked. You’ll have to recreate the WMA. (The old one with DRM will not work.)
In order to hear RealAudio files, you must have the RealAudio player. Download the latest player from http://www.real.com
Mixcraft Won’t Load The Sound. It Says That The Format Is Unsupported
There are many different types of sound file formats. Mixcraft currently supports the Wave (.wav), MP3, OGG, and WMA formats. Trying to load a .aif or .au will not work.
In addition, Mixcraft will work with Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM) to load compressed wave files. If it is a WMA file, make sure that WMA format support is installed. and that they file does not have Digital Rights Management (DRM) on it.
If you had copied a sound and then edited it in an external editor in the "Edit Original" mode, it would have made the copies reference the same sound file. If the length was changed or if the sound were altered in a time specific way, Mixcraft would not have been able to load it back in the correct way. Next time consider selecting the "Edit A Copy" option.
Mixcraft supports the recording of whatever sound that it is possible to record via your soundcard. Here are the steps to record your CD.
Recording from the CD is simple as long as your soundcard is connected to your CD.
Click the Record button or Ctrl+R to bring up the recording window. Then on the "Source" control, select "CD Player". You are now ready to record the CD player.
How Do I Set Mixcraft Up To Record From Memory (RAM)?
Go to the preference dialog and remove all text in the edit box labeled "Temporary Recording Directory". You should see the words "(RAM)" appear. Then click "OK" and record to your heart’s content.
If you have some sounds selected, you will not hear your volume, pan, or clipboard changes during playback. Once you restart playback after making a change, you will hear the changes.
You need to make sure that you have done the full duplex test and have the "Overdub" checkbox checked on the recording window. Depending on your soundcard’s level of full-duplex support, you may need to set the recording sampling rate to be the same as the playback sampling rate.
Not everyone uses Mixcraft to create RealAudio files. We chose to leave out the RealAudio files and make it an optional download. This makes the download much smaller. Look for the RealAudio patch here.
New Tracks Are Picking Up Sound From Old Tracks.
Your new audio tracks are picking up remnants of other tracks. Your microphone or input device is picking up the output from your speakers. Try using headphones. If that doesn’t work, your soundcard may have some touchy circuitry. Go to your mixer's recording settings and make sure that only the devices you are interested in recording are set.
You’re mixing sounds great, but you can’t record anything!!! There can be many reasons why this is not working. Recording tips …
1. Your microphone is not plugged in to the right hole in the back of your soundcard. Sometimes it happens. J
2. You’re trying to record on your CD but nothing is happening. Make sure that your soundcard has a connection to your CD player. This is usually an internal cable.
3. Another problem for not recording is related to the Win95/98/NT audio mixer.
q Double click the speaker icon on the lower right of your Window’s taskbar.
q Select "Properties" from the Options menu.
q Select "Adjust volume for recording" radio button.
q Make sure all the checkboxes are checked in the window entitled "Show the following volume controls" and press the "OK" button.
q Make sure that the device you are trying to record is selected and the slider is up.
q For example, if you are trying to record the CD, make sure the checkbox enabled "Select" in the "CD Audio" panel is checked, then adjust the slider to about 75%.
q Make sure that the overall "Recording" balance on the very left is also set at 50%. (On many systems, you cannot adjust this anyhow.)
q Go back to Mixcraft and start recording!
Track markers can be used to help organize your session. But they can also be used in conjunction with a multi-WAV, MP3 or WMA mix down of when you burn a CD. What’s that you say? Lets say you created this 60 minute CD audio masterpiece that has 10 sections. You invite your friend over and tell him to "listen to this one part." You spend 15 minutes trying to fast forward to the right spot and your friend loses interest! Wouldn’t it have been better to just seek to track #8 ,for example? Thus, you can place a marker at the exact spot and select the "CD Track" checkbox. When you do a multi-WAV save, it will create multiple WAV files based on these "CD Track" markers. Then, use your cd burning software and drag in the new files! Or, it will use the track markers when you burn directly in the software.
Realaudio is now a separate download in some cases. You can download the Realaudio plugin for Mixcraft at http://www.acoustica.com/plugins/index.htm
How To Disable Certain VST Or DirectX Effects From Loading
Mixcraft has 2 files, which allow you to exclude troublesome effects. These files are located in your Mixcraft directory, which defaults to C:\Program Files\Acoustica Mixcraft\
DXIgnore.ini - DirectX effect ignore list
VSTIgnore.ini - VST effect ignore list
Simply open or double click the file and then add the name of the effect and set = 1. For example, if you had an effect called ‘Digital Media StudioDenoiser’ that you didn’t want the software to load, you would enter
Digital Media StudioDenoiser=1
Save the ignore file and restart Mixcraft and the effect will not be loaded. For VST effects, you will need to use the name of the dll such as SuperDuperReverb.dll=1
The VST Or DirectX Effect Sounds Choppy And Is Breaking Up
If you have added a DirectX effect that does time stretching, it could sound choppy. Some DirectX effects are designed for single sound operations. Mixcraft applies effects to entire tracks and does not handle these kinds of effects as you might expect. (Look for a future version of Mixcraft to handle time stretching natively.)
I Am Having Burn Failures
Here are some things to do to troubleshoot a burn failure.
q Try a burn in ‘Test Mode’ first.
q Try a different blank CD (Make sure its not full or scratched)
q Try a different blank CD from a different manufacturer.
q Try burning at a slower speed, especially if your CD recorder does not have ‘Burn Proof’.
q Try checking the option to ‘Convert To WAV First.’
q If you have more than one CD or DVD recorder, try switching to the other recorder.
q If you have Windows XP, try switching to IMAPI by quitting Mixcraft and restarting it by clicking the Window’s Start button followed by clicking "Program Files" followed by clicking "Acoustica Mixcraft" followed by clicking "Config" followed by clicking "Use IMAPI" (Try the burn again when in IMAPI mode.)
q Try burning a short sound just to verify that CD recorder can still burn and is not defective.
q Try burning with another program such as Windows Media Player to verify that your CD recorder is not defective or having some kind of system conflict.
CD/DVD Recorder Is Not Supported!
If you click "Burn CD" and it says that it cannot find a supported CD or DVD recorder, it means that Mixcraft cannot support it! Look for a new version with updated CD/DVD recorder support.
Also, if you have another program that can burn CDs without any space between tracks, you can mix it down to multiple WAV files and then import those WAV files into your burning software!
Hey, I Can’t Even Find My Problem In This Section!
Start your Internet browser and go to http://www.acoustica.com/support.htm for the latest help. You will even find some animated tutorials on the most common problems! If it’s not on the website, you can request a support request from our online help form at to http://www.acoustica.com/support.htm !