synkrotron
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Re:X2 - Improvements to audio engine?
2012/10/02 09:10:48
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Regarding gapless audio;
In X1 I found that I could save even a large project while it was playing back and not cause a break in play. My current X2 test project always stalls for a fraction of a second when saving during playback.
Not that this bothers me, and perhaps I shouldn't be saving during playback anyway. I just thought I'd raise this minor point...
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John
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Re:X2 - Improvements to audio engine?
2012/10/02 09:17:50
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Chregg
im not convinced with this null test thing, i cant understand how one file can sound better that the other file, rendered in an improved or different engine, and with that improved sound quality, there would be phase differences from the other file, of the exact same source, when doing a null test to see if it cancels out
What a null test tests is a bit for bit difference. Any sound would indicate difference. No sound indicates no difference. Nowhere has CW claimed an improvement in the sound of the audio engine. I also must say that it is very hard if not impossible to hear a difference in high quality audio anyway. Usually when we do hear a difference its most often due to a difference in loudness.
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Zonno
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Re:X2 - Improvements to audio engine?
2012/10/02 10:18:10
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk
]
There are some major updates/rewrites to the internals and engine that greatly improve realtime operations. The following areas were updated.
1. Realtime synth triggering and timing. The mechanism to send realtime events to instruments was reworked to make MIDI timing buffer size independent. Synths can now be triggered with the same timing accuracy irrespective of the audio buffer size.
2. Made the following operations fully asynchronous and seamless, minimizing interruptions in audio. (this makes gaps almost imperceptible). Many changes were made to make them more lightweight.
- Inserting virtual instruments, dragging to create new instruments from browser, also minor improvements for inserting audio plugins.
- undo and redo of inserting effects and synths
- Unloading and reloading virtual instruments in the rack. This operation can now be done during playback
- Quick Freeze and unfreeze no longer interrupt audio, so you can actually A/B the results during playback
- Changing loop points on the timeline doesn't require a gap
- Audio metronome no longer requires a gap to turn it on or off
- Preferences dialog can now be opened when browser or groove matrix preview is active (it will stop preview and automatically resume when you close the dialog)
3. Improvements for operations that require small interruptions in audio playback for re-synchronization. For these we now adopt a new "adaptive smoothing" technique to minimize the perceived effect of the operation. This kicks in whenever any perceivable interruption in audio is detected and subtly smooths out the transition. This makes many edit operations feel seamless now.
4. Non linear playback engine rework. This component is responsible for all non linear playback of audio and MIDI including events triggered from the browser and Matrix.
Among hundreds of improvements, a big change was reworking the scheduler, making it synchronous with the audio engine. This makes triggered events from the matrix sample accurate and independent of the audio buffer size.
5. Previewing events in browser now caches the first 16 events and will avoid reloading them when triggered. This makes auditioning loops seamless.
Thanks for the explanation. And thanks for all the work your team has done to make SONAR more gapless, no, seamless.
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Chregg
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Re:X2 - Improvements to audio engine?
2012/10/02 10:28:11
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stevec
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Re:X2 - Improvements to audio engine?
2012/10/02 12:13:18
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Aside from adding instruments during playback, I think this must be what's making the most difference for me: 3. Improvements for operations that require small interruptions in audio playback for re-synchronization. For these we now adopt a new "adaptive smoothing" technique to minimize the perceived effect of the operation. This kicks in whenever any perceivable interruption in audio is detected and subtly smooths out the transition. This makes many edit operations feel seamless now. Me likes.
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Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
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Re:X2 - Improvements to audio engine?
2012/10/02 12:54:48
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In X1 I found that I could save even a large project while it was playing back and not cause a break in play. My current X2 test project always stalls for a fraction of a second when saving during playback. If you have the time to strip down the project it would be interesting to know what aspect of the project causes this. I can't think of what change would have contributed to this off the top of my head. Regarding gaps while saving, with large projects personally I would prefer that the audio is stopped, but I do see the case of auto save etc where you might not want that. With large projects saving during playback actually slows down the save process since the processor is so busy. We in fact have an ini setting to temporarily stop playback and audio while saving... BTW I missed another important optimization. Over the last few versions we have been continually updating our graphics engine and X2 has the most updates in this area. The graphics updates use more efficient drawing routines and offload more work to the GPU. Hence less kernel use and thereby less glitching at low latencies.
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