Bounce to disk: Dropouts

[Shooshie]

Well, it finally happened to me. I've read about this for years as it's happened to other people, but my bounces were all pristine. No problems. Yesterday I had a deadline to meet, and thought I had it in the bag until I listened to my bounces. Vocal parts were blanking out all over the place. I thought maybe it was due to overshooting the loudness; maybe DP's headroom doesn't translate well into 16bit bounces. I remixed and fixed all that. Still the same problem. Nothing I did would fix it.

Finally, I just recorded a 2-track, converted its soundbite in the Soundbites window, and dragged that to the Finder. Worked perfectly.

Has anyone figured out what's up with that? Bouncing in DP isn't the fastest thing in the world, but NOT bouncing is like chilled molasses. Can't do that! I can't think of anything I changed that would cause this. On the other hand, I haven't bounced anything for a couple months. One difference was that the project was all 24bit .wav, and the bounces were 16bit .wav. I usually work in 32bit wav, and bounce to mp3 with LAME. I haven't tried that to see if it corrects the problem, as I just haven't had time yet, but I wonder if format has anything to do with it. Very troubling.

Shoosh

[Shooshie]

Also, I've been having freezes in DP (not freezing tracks, but everything coming to a dead stop) which are inexplicable. Things just stop for maybe 5 minutes. Sometimes there is no beach ball or anything; just... nothing.

Yesterday, when comping takes, the first song or two went quickly. Then something happened, and every time I clicked on a segment in a take to comp into the final track, it just sat there for about 5 seconds. Then the segment would become highlighted, and I could move on. But EVERY CLICK with the Comp Tool was like that, and it had never done that before, not even yesterday morning. Just sometime about 11:00 a.m., it started doing that. I never found out why.

Restarting did not fix either problem.

Shooshie

PS: this file was from an auto-save backup. The original file was in the "Recent Files" list in the startup screen, and about two weeks ago it just vanished, along with everything in the list. I assumed the preferences just somehow got hosed, but when I could not find this file to work in, I got upset. Finally took the most recent auto-save and worked with it. And that's when all the problems started... well, after using it for a couple hours I started having the above problems.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I had some major problems in DP a while back. I don't recall just when but I DO recall why. It was right after I installed the Waves Gold package. Everything started sucking in DP. I removed the package and after some disk repairs DP returned to normal.

So I am wondering what plugs are active in you system. Not just the project, but active at startup. FWIW all things Waves are gone from my machine. Not worth the headaches.

[billf]

Regarding Waves, I have it on my system and don't have issues with it.

As for the bounce issue, I encountered that problem about a year ago. Unfortunately I don't remember how I resolved it other than having a vague recollection that it had to do with file format/settings. FWIW, the problem has never reappeared.

[Bowman]

Nasty, Shooshie. What a PITA.

The only problem I have had of this nature was losing the first 6 seconds of bounces in certain projects. As I recall, it started in DP6 and has given me problems intermittently since. Fortunately, it's only the first 6 seconds, not bits in between. Never figured it out. Fortunately, it hasn't happened for a while. The solution was, of course (though I don't need to tell you, of all people, this - just saying for the record), the workaround: skip the bouncing completely, set output to aux and record aux to audio file.

Hope you figure it out.

Bowman

[Tim]

Strange. Have you tried Loading the file into a fresh one?

[Shooshie]

Strange. Have you tried Loading the file into a fresh one?

I'll do that. Thanks, Tim.


Shoosh

[Basstrup]

Have experienced this recently in 8.07 - soundbites not starting at bounce start are cut in their beginning - like bad editing. Talked to MOTU support - no solution offered but "probably an issue with one or more plugins are causing this". Mix down to two track works fine.

[daniel.sneed]

Same thing here. Should I say nightmare?
DP bounce used to be very reliable, but now it's not anymore...

First *some* MIDI notes in complex lines were missing, a few months ago, but now the beginning of *some* small soundbites are missing in a low track count project.
I would like to get this sorted out, for bounce has a major place in my workflow.
This alternate bussing workaround is far out of my working habits with a daw.
Any help greatly appreciated.

Gasp! It reminds me of that (old) unreliable working CD burning feature. Never solved. Still out of order nowadays.

[Basstrup]

Make a new stereo bus in bundles. Make a new stereo audio tack - set input to the bus you just created - output is you current master bus. In Track Windows select all tracks (minus the audio track you just created) that's currently assigned to your master bus. Go to Audio assignments and select the bus you just created. Then personally I like to set the auto punch range to the length of the track (including reverb tails and such to complete silence) then arm your new track . Set dp to auto punch and hit record.

[daniel.sneed]

Well, I think I found the bounce-culprit, on my 5 years old MacBookPro.
And it is..... snare roll, please......Ozone6 on masterfader! ! !

I've been thru some testing:
- Ozone6 does induce *some* drop-out or clicks in *some* soudbites, and *some* MIDI notes.
- Even when bypassed, Ozone6 does induce the exact same problems. Isn't that weird?
- All is fine with Ozone5 with quite the same settings.

Sad to say I prefer Ozone6 sound and GUI over Ozone5. For sure, times are coming for a new modern computer.
I hope a brand new I7 will do the job with Ozone6. Who knows?

Thanks MLC for bringing your experience about some Waves plugins ruining bounce to disk.
Otherwise, I'd never had suspected iZotope plugs, but these are the facts.

Well, back to bounce now!

[mikehalloran]

Well, I think I found the bounce-culprit, on my 5 years old MacBookPro.
And it is..... snare roll, please......Ozone6 on masterfader! ! !

I've been thru some testing:
- Ozone6 does induce *some* drop-out or clicks in *some* soudbites, and *some* MIDI notes.
- Even when bypassed, Ozone6 does induce the exact same problems. Isn't that weird?
- All is fine with Ozone5 with quite the same settings.

Yikes!

I have not experienced this but there's always the chance I could.

[daniel.sneed]

Weird to see that both playback and rec in real time do fine with Ozone6 in my setup. It's only bounce to disk which is a problem.

BTW it's a problem only when *some* mixing and editing is present in tracks.
In any regular mastering session, that is to say a single soundbite with fades in and out, all is fine too.

[Phil O]

Bounce to Disk has had such a dubious history that I haven't used it in years. Just when it seems like it's been fixed, someone posts another problem. Perhaps the problem is MOTU's or perhaps it's third party software's, but I've resigned myself to using real time bounce (or whatever you call it) for the foreseeable future.

My thought is, with Bounce to Disk's reliability in question, one must audition bounces to be certain the bounce went well. So you're going to spend the time listening to the whole thing anyway. Why not just spend the same amount of time listening to the real time bounce? JMHO.

Phil

[daniel.sneed]

Thanx, Phil, but that back and forth bus re-assigning thing, unnecessary deleting extra audio tracks and exporting routine are no good at all in my workflow.
Specially when on a dead line with many different releases of a multiple tracks project (i.e. dance show).
Please, Motu, bring us back reliable BTD.