POLL: TESTING GAPLESS PLAYBACK

Today, i did a test:

Ableton Live 2 versus Sonar 4, regarding the Smoothness of Playback/Gapless Playback.

in both Sequencers ->

16 Bit, 44.1 kHz
10 Audio tracks + 20 second audio clips (or 20, 30, 40), no busses
no plugs
meters turned off in Sonar
PDC (Plugin Delay Compensation) turned off in Sonar
both WDM, ASIO drivers used

Result: There are still GAPS in Sonar4! Its obvioulsy CPU-dependent how Sonar performs. The more CPU Usage i have the more and longer gaps occur when editing while playback (eg. moving clips, restart playing a section, not to mention commands like normalize, trim, pitch, etc.)

In Ableton Live this does not matter. Even if there is 80% Usage the playback is smooth and gapless.

A few months there were some who said its because of the PDC, but now you can turn it off in Sonar4 and it is still far from gapless.

Hows your experience, testing?

thanks, planist

I don't. There are other things I think are much more useful and important and I'd rather see little time spent developing a "gapless audio engine" when I don't think it's that necessary at all.

You haven't mentioned how much RAM you have, what your latency is set at in Sonar, the number of buffers, or what other tasks your CPU may be running in the background. So before you make a blanket statement like that, maybe you should provide a little more info.

This for some people like you doesn't make a difference and you can live with it.... But when i have 20-30 tracks running and everytime i add an effect it takes a second to kick back in i lose momentum with the song. Also makes it look like your pc cant handle recording when doing a session.

You haven't mentioned how much RAM you have, what your latency is set at in Sonar, the number of buffers, or what other tasks your CPU may be running in the background. So before you make a blanket statement like that, maybe you should provide a little more info.

The test runs with:

Sonar 4.1.1, 512 MB RAM, Delta 44, Pentium 4, 3 GHz.
Latency, 2.2 msec, 8 msec, etc..

what i said before - it shoudn't depend on the latency setting.
In Live (as well as in Tracktion) you have slider that compensates for the latency.
The amount of RAM should not be of interest either, with only some audio tracks running.

I guess its a "blanket statement" thats been mentioned quite a few times by quite a lots of users - and its true.

planist

ORIGINAL: kp

Does it take that long if you have the ADCRecalc option (not entirely sure of the right name) set to 0? I'd also found that having the "Always Open All Devices" checked/unchecked in the Audio Options dialogue box makes a huge difference to the time it takes to start playback and "gap".

will give that a go, I noticed a big difference in time for it to start up again after upgrading to sonar 4. thanks for the tip

True... this is the biggest problem I have.

Having to explain this to people who are not really "in the know" regarding software and hardware is such a pain. It always makes it seem like your pc is underperforming.

And the truth comes from the mouths of babes, so to speak. Gaps in the audio engine are just not acceptable. We can understand the hurdles that the developers have, but honestly.... that is not our problem. We are paying customers, we can expect the products that we buy to be flawless.

That said, I am using P3 Studio alongside N2, and I since being a Cubase convert.... I find working in Sonar faster.

Just fix those gaps, please.

What I would like is sample accurate recording. (More important than gapless audio IMO). I would love gapless audio as well. The reason Live and Traktion probably performs so well is because they are fairly new programs designed from the get go to support gapless audio. Cakewalk started off as midi only. To make gapless audio work the next Sonar would probably need to be designed from the ground up.

But Project 5 is supposed to have gapless audio but it is a CPU hog. I would love gapless midi. There is nothing more irritating than changing loop markers or moving clips in realtime and having midi playback freeze momentarily. If Sonar got gapless midi together, I wouldn't worry about gapless audio too much (as long as it is sample accurate).

ORIGINAL: danhazer

I know this is gimpy, but I have just resigned myself to stopping playback when ever I want to add an effect, enable or disable a send, slip edit a track or any number of other simple tasks that makes SONAR freak out if I try them during playback. Setting the value to 0 of the one property (the recalc ADC one) in the aud.ini did help shorten the gapping, but then it also allows the audio to get noticeably out-of-sync. I just threw up my arms in surrender and said, "Screw it. I'm manually stopping the audio engine." It's a little dissapointing but I can live with it for now

Me too... however after a Reason-only writing session last night I worked for 2 hours without hitting stop once and it was freakin' brilliant. I do miss that in Sonar.

I agree with GLGRIMES. This was probably not a priorty at Cakewalk when it came to developing SONAR. Ableton live is designed for live performance playback so a seamless gapless audio engine is a priorty. Sample accuracy is clearly the more important item in SONAR's case and there is still room for improvement in this area. So this is were I'd like twelvetone to devote their time and energy when it comes to improving SONAR.

It's also worth bearing in mind that Ableton Live is specifically designed for live performance work, which it's really good at, and hence the name I assume. I'll believe the marketing once CW change the name to Sonar Live... ah, i just read KGBJAMIN's post...

ORIGINAL: kp

What do people actually mean by "sample accuracy" here? Again, not trying to be awkward, but I do think that one of the problems we all run into is that phrase X means different things to different people.

I'm wondering the same thing. Thanks for asking and I eagerly await enlightenment.

My assumption is that sample accuracy has to do with timing or editing issues, not fidelity. Still, I'm not sure I understand where Sonar is not quite up-to-snuff as far as sample timing goes.

My perception of this term is simply the ability of SONAR to playback and mixdown what you record into it as accurate as possible without any artifacts or distortion. In our business no matter how small the level of distortion introduced to your recording it will effect your finished product. This could also be perceived as how well your finish product sounds after your final mix in SONAR...

That's not what I thought it was.

Sample accuacy is obtained through correct syncing of digital devices and use of a good master clock. SONAR has nothing to do with that. How do you figure that SONAR somehow plays into this?

What I thought you were referring to was the idea that SONAR would be able to guarantee that the latency created by the AD/DA process could be accounted for and corrected through some type of compensation routine.

Now I'm confused...

Gimp.

You talkin' to me? I'll show you gimp! Here's gimp - right up your arse!

Just kidding....