Audio "buzz saw" effect

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ChristopherM
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2007/02/15 07:08:30 (permalink)

Audio "buzz saw" effect

Over the past couple of weeks, a phenomenon has appeared where during audio play-back, the sound will suddenly turn into buzz saw (sounding rather like what you hear if you loop and play continuously a very short section of audio). The vertical time cursor keeps moving across the display and the measures count carries on increasing as normal. Clicking "stop" then "play" fixes it, but typically it happens again a short while later.

It does not seem to be associated with any particular projects or the use of any particular plug-ins. I have tried increasing and reducing ASIO latency in the range 4-40ms (which has the effect that you would expect) but this does not seem to reduce the occurrence of sporadic buzz saw. I have also altered disk buffers, with no discernible impact. Essentially, I have tried most of the traditional remedies for playback issues.

Anyone seen such behaviour or have any suggestions to eliminate this, please?

Sonar 6.2; AMD X2 4600+; Giga K8NS Ultra-939; XP Pro SP2; E-MU 1212m with latest drivers; etc.
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    CJaysMusic
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    RE: Audio "buzz saw" effect 2007/02/15 07:12:42 (permalink)
    Change your drivers try WDM or your not setting ASIO configeration right.......
    CJ
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    #2
    ChristopherM
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    RE: Audio "buzz saw" effect 2007/02/15 07:23:56 (permalink)
    As it is not night-time in your country or mine (UK) I am not sure why you say good night, so I'll wish a good morning to you.

    I prefer to remain with ASIO, mainly because E-MU recommends ASIO over WDM, and ASIO has worked fine until very recently. I am not sure what you mean by setting ASIO config - AFAIK the only user-configurable thing is latency, and I have tried that over a wide range, without being able to eliminate the issue.
    #3
    Zig
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    RE: Audio "buzz saw" effect 2007/02/15 07:35:23 (permalink)
    (I think CJ works shifts Chris) I'm guessing that this might be an interrupt?(though it would indeed be an idea to try WDM, as for some systems this works better)...try running "msinfo32" and see if anything is sharing the same IRQ as your card. Also, normal rules apply as regards latest drivers.
    #4
    ChristopherM
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    RE: Audio "buzz saw" effect 2007/02/15 07:45:11 (permalink)
    Thanks - E-mu audio and Nvidia graphics are IRQ 17 and 16 respectively (and neither is sharing with anything else). Both drivers are the latest available. I had (much) earlier had some clicks and pops that I thought might be IRQ-related, so I had shifted the soundcard to a different PCI slot to force separate IRQs. That worked the, but this new phenomenon is rather different. It sounds like something is getting stuck in a loop, which can only be broken by stopping and restarting playback. It's very strange that it appeared suddenly - it may be 6.2 related, as I first heard it shortly after installing the upgrade, but as it is intermittent, it is hard to be sure.
    #5
    Dave Modisette
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    RE: Audio "buzz saw" effect 2007/02/15 09:15:39 (permalink)
    Seems like I suggested this last week. Sorry if I'm repeating myself.

    You could possibly have a looped section with the loop start and the loop end at the same (or nearly the same) time. If you are in Loop mode your playback will progress until you hit the looped section and then it will "buzz saw" until you stop playback. A lot of us have made this same mistake so don't feel alone if you've done it too.

    EDIT: A re-read of you post leads me to dismiss this as the problem if you are getting it in different sections of the project.

    Sounds more like a latency problem to me where you encounter a CPU intense section.
    post edited by Mod Bod - 2007/02/15 09:39:03

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    #6
    darylcrowley
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    RE: Audio "buzz saw" effect 2007/02/15 09:33:45 (permalink)
    I've had this same thing. Sometimes an instance of VC-64 or another plug seems to get corrupted, I delete the plug-in re-add it the problem goes away. Sometimes I have to re-boot if it's not the plug in.

    But when it occurs, it's out of the blue, nothing had been added or changed, it plays fine, then then next instant you hit play again, a terrible buzzing noise. Obviously something in memory or in what has been saved for the plug-in gets corrupted. Probably some small obscure little bug that overwrites some critical data in certain situations. When it's the plug-in, that's pretty straight forward, but when it's not a plug-in. Restarting Sonar doesn't do the trick, you have to reboot, so maybe it's whatever is loaded into memory that controls the interface to the audio interface. Clutching at straws here.

    But obviously it's not outdated drivers, when you have the latest drivers and the problem comes and goes.

    Daryl Crowley
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    #7
    aj
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    RE: Audio "buzz saw" effect 2007/02/15 09:37:50 (permalink)
    I had a similar problem recently - but your symptoms are a little different in that you say the timeline keeps increasing. In my case I realised that loop had spontaneously started engaging on the transport. After a bit of headscratching I remembered I'd been mucking around with keybindings and had mapped loop to a MIDI note with the sustain pedal as the shift trigger and then forgotton all about it...... might, possibly, be worth checking your keybindings though your symptoms do sound slightly different....
    #8
    ChristopherM
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    RE: Audio "buzz saw" effect 2007/02/15 14:45:01 (permalink)
    Well, I seem to have solved it, although I am not quite sure how ...
    I found a newer nvidia graphics driver (albeit a beta) so I thought that I'd try it. However, I had severe problems getting it installed, which I eventually traced to the presence of the /3G switch in boot.ini (don't ask!). I removed the switch, installed the beta driver, and Sonar has run since without buzzing. I hope that it continues to behave so.

    Thanks to everyone for suggestions.
    #9
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