10Ten


Here's a question on something Brandon said in an earlier thread. Let's say I have 16 measures of audio on a track and I slip edit it to one beat. Then I copy that on beat and paste it 47 times on the next 47 beats giving me 48 beats of the exact same slip edited clip that is one quarter note long.

Am I silently streaming the same 16 measures of audio 48 times over the 16 beats of playback? If so, doesn't that seem very inefficient ?

I just tried it in Sonar 7. I didn't see disk usage, CPU or memory increase so it looks like the clip is just referenced one time. Unless things have changed in Sonar X1 looks like resources are managed well in regards to that.

Here's a question on something Brandon said in an earlier thread. Let's say I have 16 measures of audio on a track and I slip edit it to one beat. Then I copy that on beat and paste it 47 times on the next 47 beats giving me 48 beats of the exact same slip edited clip that is one quarter note long. Am I silently streaming the same 16 measures of audio 48 times over the 16 beats of playback? If so, doesn't that seem very inefficient ?

 
Absolutely not. You can have a 1000 copies of a clip and the audio is referenced only once. Look at the disk meter and you will see that it doesn't spike.

Jeff Evans


Hi Brundlefly I would appreciate you doing this so thanks. Basically setup some external synths say 3 or 4 and create a separate track for each. Drums, bass, synth etc.

Setup a loop say from bar 2 to bar 6. Metronome on. Park on first track. Start and go into play, stay in play for the moment and rehearse what you might play on this first track. Go into record on the fly and when the loop comes around to start of bar 2 play in some music for 4 bars. While still looping and without stopping, switch tracks or jump down onto next track using down arrow. You are now on next track below. You should still be recording. You could come out of record (on the fly) and rehearse the next part. When you know what you are going to do pucnh into record on the fly, record some music on the second track.

Maybe stay in record and jump using down arrow onto next track and start playing some stuff there.

In Sonar I cannot do this. It won't let me jump tracks. Sometimes the music on the first track goes away or I have to stop before I can go onto next track.  Any newly recorded data wont stick or stay behind until I stop.

Studio One allows me to do all of it, track switching, in and out of record etc..without a glitch, very fast and musical. New data just appears and remains behind as a midi clip. If I am in record, S1 stays in record, if I am play it stays in play etc..

This is only a midi situation right now, not using audio engine at all here as such. I am only on 8.5 right now but I would be interested in how your system handles this both in 8.5 and X1. Thanks again.
 

Okay, I tried a facsimile of this workflow, and it basically works without audio glitches or lost takes, but there are a couple of things I don't understand about how you control what gets recorded on which track.
 
- First, are you arming all the MIDI tracks to record before starting playback and rehearsal, or are you using Allow MIDI Recording Without Arming a Track?
- Second, are your playing all synths from a single keyboard controller, or are we talking about separate keyboard synths on different MIDI ports with or without local control enabled?
- Third, depending on the answer to the previous two questions, how are you using MIDI channels and input assignments or arming changes to ensure only one MIDI track records at a time.
- Fourth, what are your record mode settings in terms of muting/overwriting previous takes and creating new layers?
 
As I say, it basically works in the sense that I don't lose anything that's been recorded as you described, but since I am using a single keyboard with multiple rack synth modules, I have to set a dedicated input channel on each track and change output channels on the keyboard as I switch from one to the next to prevent recording all takes on all tracks. Because once a MIDI track is armed for recording - either before playback starts or because Allow MIDI Recording Without Arming a Track is enabled - it's not possible to disarm that track without stopping the transport (EDIT: Okay, found one mistake on my part. I did not have Allow Arm Changes on Playback/Record checked; I thought that only applied to audio. So that solves that problem, but you do have to arm/disarm tracks manually as you move from one to the next).
 
Incidentally, I'm input monitoring all my synths with audio tracks in SONAR, whereas it sounds like you are direct monitoring your synths. I could easily set up to do that, but the way I have it now seems like it would be more prone to glitches, if anything.
 
Bottom line: It appears to me there is definitely some room for improvement in the way SONAR handles this workflow in terms of automatically disarming/arming tracks as you move from one to another and preventing the creation of empty layers.
 
I'd be mildly interested to know how Studio One handles this. Does it have a mode that only records on the track that has focus? 
  
   
 

Hi Brundlefly thanks so much for your testing. Firstly in answer to your questions.

1     I only arm the first midi track I want to record on and I might have the pre roll set to 2 measures as a countin as well.

2     Yes playing all synths from one controller.

3     All Midi track inputs will be set to the controller. Outputs to each midi port and channel for each synth. I use Emagic Unitor 8 and it has 8 midi out ports. I have got a synth on each one for best timing. So they are all on Channel 1 but on different ports.

4     Recording options are set so new midi data gets merged into existing data.

Thing I find is although you can arm record on the fly but is there a single qwerty keystroke that can take Sonar out of record?

Sonar as far as I can see cannot do what I want in this regard to this way of working. You have to stop to get out out of record.

Studio One simply goes into record and out of record with a single keystroke. And if you are on a track recording and you jump to another track, the track you were on automatically goes out of record and the new track goes into record. All without glitching. This is what I like because you can build up sequences over multiple tracks quickly and musically.

All my synth outputs are monitored direct to a digital mixer and do not go to Sonar. I can send any of them however digitally across from the digital mixer to a Sonar track easily from the mixer. (via ADAT lightpipe)

Here's a great example.

I'm using the cakewalk linear EQ, I start actually moving around the freq, and I get major drop outs, and even engine stops.  

I've got an i7, 12 gb ram, and an EMU 1820m
running a couple of instances of battery 3, kontact 3, rapture, and izotope stutter.     CPU is around 18%

IMO, WAY worse than having a glitch when moving a loop point is not even being able to adjust an EQ position.

Of course Sontinus etc works fine, but I should be able to use the linear EQ if I want right, lol.


Thanks for listing,

10Ten


I believe that is really meant to be a "mastering" EQ and isn't intended for live streaming purposes.

I have never ever heard of a mastering engineer that would be happy to have to stop playback to adjusts an EQ. Anyway, most mastering engineers don't use Linear Phase EQs because they tend to smear the sound due to pre and post ringing.

UnderTow

A linear EQ may require significant latency and/or CPU cycles compared to some basic EQ, but you should still be able to change settings and params in a live setting... I just wouldn't track with one on the master bus.  After all, if you're "mastering" something, shouldn't you be able to tweak the EQ without an engine stop or whatever?

Anyway, it may be representative of a class of dropouts due to heavy CPU use, high latency, PDC issues, etc.

10Ten


Right or wrong, it is known that that particular plug is an issue and why it is an issue.

Well it shouldn't be.

UnderTow

Jeff Evans

With regard to the mention of EQ's I have tested the Linear Phase EQ in both Sonar and S1 in a mastering situation and really I personally do not find the glitching an issue at all. 

I wouldn't either, unless it's a quick and easy way to replicate something "serious" -- like a full engine stop, in particular. Perhaps such a stop just doesn't happen under use in another engine, and if not you can't just look at, for example, an instrinsic CPU spike from the plug itself when modifying params. Maybe in addition to increased CPU in that scenario it's the adjustment of buffers, or recalculation of buffers, or simply the amount of clock time afforded to the plug that has a negative effect on the running engine, and may point to an area of the architetcure that could be made to be more forgiving. This is all just conjecture, of course! Also, for the record, I haven't personally used the  linear EQ myself other than to briefly try it out a couple of times, so I can't provide specific experience with dropouts in that regard.
 
Then again, a lot of the type of dropout behavior described could be just due to the fundamental difference in engine architectures amongst products. I know, for example, Reaper has "anticipative FX processing", and Samp has their "hybrid engine", which I think is along the same lines, but a bit more complicated. Other engines may do some form of lookahead processing as well, and I'd dare say any engine that you can effectively throw the kitchen sink at in realtime is doing some form of lookahead processing to relax the effective realtime load.
 
Then again, another significant factor is the thread architecture between engines... I know the sonar engine went through a couple of cycles of optimization, and it may be that the result of that work is enough to ameliorate dropout conditions that people are running into. For example, I think there is an explicit "thread scheduling" param in the INI that was added to optimize certain achitetcures like quads and above. There's also the internal "plugin extra buffers" INI setting that's been around for a long time...
 

Jeff Evans



With regard to the mention of EQ's I have tested the Linear Phase EQ in both Sonar and S1 in a mastering situation and really I personally do not find the glitching an issue at all. (mastering means for me only an unmastered stereo mix sitting on one stereo track and being assigned to the Master. EQ patched in Master buss) ie Taxing your CPU the least.

For the tiny bit of inconvenience you get a whole lot of equaliser. It does respond a little faster in S1 but it is also very good for me in Sonar. If you are quick about your moves I find the EQ drops out or glitches for such a little event in time it is not worth worrying about. Once you stop touching it, the music is instantly perfect and remains so.

It is a matter of using your ears first to discern the area that needs attention. (maybe check with a spectrum analyser.) Say the mix is a little heavy around 250 Hz where energy sometimes builds up. You create the point at that frequency, set a suitable Q, and you wont hear anything at this stage and then pull it down eg - 3db. I hear very little interruption if you use it this way. As you modify settings like Q for example it can be done without hearing it hardly glitch at all. I find it does not glitch as much when you are applying cut as opposed to boost.

A great mix might only need 2 or 3 points. EQ points are useful at the extremes of the spectrum too as gentle LP (10 Khz etc) and steep HP filters. (35 to 40 Hz) Two LF points very close together with very high Q's and large amounts of cut can make a really great steep HPF for setting around 35 hz or 40Hz or so for really cleaning up excessive deep bottom end.

Sorry but my mixing skills aren't that great, when I EQ, I often spike it, move it around till I get the area I want, and then adjust to suit.    IMHO, being able to adjust an EQ in real time is an ESSENTIAL part of mixing (at least for me).   Way more than almost anything else.  I need to be able to hear the changes to do my job (poor as it may be :)  )

Thanks,

panup


CWBRN-2843, 5/2/2010 4:35:35 PM

Problem description:

Editing clip boundaries, especially such clips that are currently playing, will cause dropout more often than not. Sometimes whole audio engine tils (CPU Usage goes to 100% and playback makes some rude noise before stopping). Dropouts happen, no matter how fast the machine is. ASIO buffer has little or no influence, too. I'd like you to pay attention to optimize source code so that editing clip boundaries does not disturb playback. This behavior is OS independent and it has happened with earlier Sonar version, too.


Status: SUBMITTED TO DEVELOPMENT
Notes: Thank you for your report. We have logged this with our development team.

---clip---

That was an year ago ... nothing has been fixed.
Probably never will.

I do this all the time with vocal tracks and have no issues. 

Well, I guess if I can ever get more than two UAD pluggins to go at once, I will probably use those instead.   But still, it would be nice to use the included software in a reasonable manner if I wanted, lol

Danny Danzi


Just curious, do any of you get a drop out once in a while when changing screen sets...or a specific screen set? I think the default #4 or #5 is the one that gets me everytime I use it for the first time in a project. After that it never does it again. Any one else? I also kinda get a drop once in a while when turning on pro channel...that too only seems to happen once within a project and won't happen again. It doesn't happen always, but it has definitely hit me quite a few times.

i do..and with me its mostly going from screenset 2 to 5.

Jonbouy

I know i don't come around here as often as before but stealing my owl waxing and otter lathing lines is just criminal :)

Right back to the workshop there are some weasels in need of a good planing.

G

thomasabarnes


Noel,

I just noticed that I get a stutter or pause in playback when I turn input echo on/off for an audio track. I used to olny do this when playback was stoped, but I have a current project which caused me to do this a lot during playback.

Surely, this is a function where seamless audio playback could be appreciated. Please, please,  please, fix turning on/off input monitoring to have seamless audio playback?

Thanks a bunch for any attention directed to this request.

I don't remember seeing this request listed in this thread. The thread is long, and I didn't re-read all of it, so forgive me if this has already been requested and is being looked at by Cakewalk. :)

Hmmm... yes. Seems X1 has taken a step backwards here.
 
8.5.3 just makes a click as the signal comes and goes, but playback of other tracks is not disturbed. X1b actually pauses for a moment. Yuck.