When do you plan on fixing Windows bugs?

July 07, 2023 20:33

Been using SoundID for the past ~6 months, and I've been experiencing the same bugs and user experience issues since day one.

So far:

-Safe Headroom seems to change randomly when switching between profiles. Sometimes output will be cut as low as -20 dB. Had to disable this for consistent volume output when switching profiles frequently. This issue has apparently existed since 2021.

-You cannot edit or update currently saved custom targets. If you want to update your custom target, you must first load the target, then delete the target, then adjust the EQ curve, then re-save the preset with the same name, and finally exit and reload SoundID as it seems to cache the EQ presets in RAM once they run for the first time. Honestly, this feature seems very half-baked.

-Latency measurements are - more often than not - inaccurate. Sometimes, it will simply show 0 ms outputor internal buffer latency.

-If you use the APO insert instead of the Virtual Windows audio driver, the EQ presets do not change with your device, e.g if I have preset 1 and device 1 enabled, and I want to switch to device 2, SoundID will keep preset 1 enabled and it will sound horrible until I manually switch SoundID to preset 2. Perhaps this wouldn't be so much of an issue if SoundID would change the windows output when I change it in the app. User experience issue.

With the current state of SoundID, and with the bugs that have remained unsquashed for (some of them, multiples of) a year, I find it hard to recommend this as a solution for mixing EQ. Does Sonarworks have any timeframe for when they plan to fix these long-standing issues? Thanks.

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3 comments

Zane

July 14, 2023 13:47

Hi @bpatcarroll, thanks for your post! Sorry to hear you are encountering some trouble with SoundID Reference!

Thank you for providing this information on the problems you have been experiencing. I would like to address these things one by one:

Regarding the Safe Headroom - as a note, the lowest dB of the presets already loaded will be applied to all future presets, so as not to have any gain differences when switching between presets. This means that if, for example, you have one preset loaded with safe headroom at -10db and you add another preset with safe headroom at -4.5dB, when switching from the first preset to the second preset, the second preset will retain this -10dB level to not cause a gain jump. However, you can adjust the safe headroom for each preset as needed as this will then be saved for each loaded preset.

If the behavior of the issue you mentioned is different, it would be great if you could let me know whether this happens when you have adjusted the safe headroom for your presets and whether it appears to be random.

As for the Custom Target - I recommend installing our latest beta version of SoundID Reference (v5.7.3.1). We have actually implemented some changes with the Custom Target preset saving mechanisms and I think this will also improve your experience with this feature. For beta install instructions, take a look at our support guide here: Beta install in structions

Latency measurements - does this seem to be random? Are you switching between devices, driver types when observing this issue?

Switching presets when using APO - this does sound strange. Does the preset from device 1 still show up as engaged in the app as well? Would you be able to provide a couple of screenshots of this issue? I'd like to look further into this.

Thanks in advance for any additional details you can provide, it is really appreciated!

Best regards,
Zane