Insane bit-crushed distortion or what? Can you tell what is causing this by listening?

[gorangrooves]

Hey guys,

A customer of mine reported highly unusual sound issues with my Handy Drums plugins.
The sound is completely messed up, as if it came from the Transformers movies.

The issue happens only on his laptop computer, running W11. He tried a number of audio drivers and buffer sizes with the same results. He has no issues with other plugins.
The issue persists both in standalone apps and when used as plugins inside DAWs. The audio render below is from Cubase, but he had the same issue in Audacity.

He tried loading samples both on-demand (lazy) and all at once and toggled the fast SSD/ slow HDD, with no changes.

Please take a listen to the audio example. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this and how to fix it?

Before hitting play, turn down the volume, as the audio may be very loud!

[ustk]

@gorangrooves sounds nice! You got a new library lol

More seriously, it’s like the samples are picked up randomly in the HLAC
Is it possible the sample index can be messed in the sample maps so they don’t read the audio at the right place?

Perhaps reinstalling the library (samples and sample maps) could help…

[d.healey]

@gorangrooves said in Insane bit-crushed distortion or what? Can you tell what is causing this by listening?:

in Audacity

Audacity doesn't use instrument plugins, does it?

[Christoph Hart]

hmm, that doesn't sound like a HLAC issue, more like a buffer stutter FX. Which effects / routing are you using?