Weird clicking project
A simple project with strange clicks in Sonar Platinum 2017.5:
Start with one stereo audio track, two audio clips, couple of measures long each, separated by a couple of measures. The clips have short fades at their ends. The track has the platinum EQ and PC4K S-type chan comp enabled. Settings are default, except the prochannel EQ has 'HP' enabled, so the curve points down on the left (high pass).
Send this track to a bus with BREVERB 2 in the prochannel, with preset A Cappella Vox. Send this bus to the master bus, which has the concrete limiter. The concrete limiter makes the clicks easier to hear. The Breverb may be an integral part of how the clicks are created, but read on for some contradictory factors.
During playback, the clicks are audible ...
1) after the first clip finishes playing and enters the silent measures.
2) after the last clip plays (and the song stops) and also
3) when playback is stopped at any time.
With so little in processing elements, I don't think this is related to CPU load, but I have raised the ASIO buffer to 512 anyway. Simultaneous running of LatencyMon shows no problems.
After investigation, I find:
A) No clicks when HP is turned off in the track EQ, or when track EQ or bus Breverb is disabled.
B) bounce to clips makes a single clip with the space between the original clips filled with silence. This eliminates the clicks for case 1). Cases 2) and 3) still click. Even stopping playback during the silent part makes clicks, though the audio output really isn't silent because Breverb is still sounding.
** Now undo the bounce to clips **
C) bouncing that single track to a new track with fast bounce creates a track with a single clip that behaves like B). (setting the prochannel & output bus the same and soloing just the new track of course).
D) with fast bounce disabled, bouncing the original single track to a new track creates a track with a single clip that has visible spikes in the section that should be silent.
A weird thing about all this is the clicks can always be seen in the track metering. It's easiest to see it when setting the Edit > Preferences > Customization Audio Meter : Rise/Fall time > Peak Fall to 10 ms instead of 1000. Even weirder is that the track meter pulses are eliminated along with the clicks when the bus Breverb is disabled. How could a bus reverb contaminate the track meter?
Hard to be sure, but seemingly the HP option of the prochannel EQ does something to cause these clicks, and the Breverb is a co-factor. I believe the other prochannel effects in the chain are just making the effect more audible.
The difference between C) & D) (fast bounce enabled vs disabled) makes me think there is something wrong with real-time rendering. The improved behavior in B) makes me think there is something wrong with sending implied silence to some effects (in real time) as opposed to populated silence. By implied silence I mean a gap between clips, whereas populated silence is e.g. the silent zone in B) created by the bounce to a single clip (which should be 0's, but I don't know).
Anyone want to comment or try this out?
W10 pro, Sonar Platinum, Alesis Multimix 16 FW, MOTU Express 128, Gigabyte Z370 HD3P, i7 8700K, 16 Gigs, ssd + 2 X 2T disks, D50-MEX, JV80, A90EX, M1REX