Problems when soloing audio tracks

Matcher · Post by **Matcher** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:28 am

I have a project that has audio and MIDI tracks and VI tracks, and everything plays nicely until I solo an audio track or two. Not long after the soloing the audio starts to stutter and sounds like it's strecthed to something like a half- time tempo. There is no other way out of this but to close the project.

What could be causing this?

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:32 am

Wow. That's a nasty one, but I have no idea what could be causing it. What's your buffer set at?

Do you have a lot of chunks open that each are housing an active Virtual Instrument track? If you use lots of chunks in the same file, you should off-load your VI's to a V-Rack, because EVERY VI is always active. That still wouldn't account for the strangeness of pushing up the load when you solo a couple of tracks.

Check out the routing of your tracks when you hit Solo. Because of the way DP allows you to basically set up two whole configurations and then A/B between them using Solo as your switch, sometimes you may have some unexpected things set up to go ON when you hit solo. Maybe even some VI's hidden in a folder. Yet again, that doesn't sound like the problem.

I'm thinking it may be time for you to create a new file, then to load the Chunks you want into it. Or worse: you may have to create a new file, new tracks, and drag the soundbites into it. It sounds corrupted. If you don't find an answer, that may be the last resort.

Try some things: deleting prefs, purging the undo history, deleting unused soundbites, re-creating your fades... I don't know. I'm shooting in the dark here, hoping someone else will come along and have more solid ideas.

Shooshie

Matcher · Post by **Matcher** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 2:47 pm

I have the buffer at 512 but I changed it to 1024 but it didn't make any difference. This is a single sequence so there are no other chunks open. I also checked the routings after soloing, nothing changing there.

I looked at the audio performance meter and it shows some really weird behaviour. When I play the sequence the meter goes to 30-40% and jumps randomly to 100%. This doesn't affect the playback in any way. Then when I stop the playback, the meter goes to 90-100% When I start the playback again, DP struggles to get it running, the audio is stuttered and slowed down. Then DP shows the error message that the CPU has overloaded. Then when I select to continue, everything starts to run smoothly again.

I don't know if I'm hitting the limits of my MBP 2,16GHz C2D with this 24/ 44.1 project, it has:

7 mono audio tracks
4 stereo audio tracks
1 stereo Aux track
1 stereo bus
1 stereo master track
5 MIDI tracks
Bassline
Modulo
Stylus RMX

4 MW compressors
2 MW eq's
3 Plates
Multimode filter
Pattern gate
Delay
Preamp-1
Pitch correction on 4 mono tracks (the problem existed without the pitch corrections)

I have an external FW800 drive for bigger projects, but at least I thought the internal 5400rpm drive should handle smaller track counts. I'll have to move the project file to the external drive and see if it helps though there is no actual indication that the drive is too slow.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 7:10 pm

That should not be pegging your meter. Not even close. I don't know how big a drain is Stylus RMX, but the rest of that stuff I've done on a G4 Powerbook 800MHz with 500MB RAM, minus the the pattern gate and Preamp-1. You're not even close to the limits.

On a G4 Dual 1GHz tower (a snail by comparison to your MacBook Pro) I've run upward of 70 channels of audio, and 40 channels of MIDI. (not VI's)

Honestly, you're not close to the limits of that machine.

Shooshie

Mr_Clifford · Post by **Mr_Clifford** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:32 pm

Hi Matcher,

I get the same thing when I'm running my TC Powercore plug-ins as insert
FX on audio tracks. It's easily fixed by opening the windows and selecting 'always run in real time'. So I assume it's something to do with the DP 5 plug-in re-rendering.

Try it on your plug-ins and see if it helps. Although for me it only ever does it with the TC ones (which can't be pre-rendered anyway because they're running from an external processor).

Matcher · Post by **Matcher** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 2:21 am

Thanks for the tip, but it didn't work for the bundled plugins. I checked every plugin to always run in real- time but it didn't make any difference.

I've also tried to load the sequence to new project but that didn't help either. Time to export all the MIDI and audio and import the files to a new project.

Mr_Clifford · Post by **Mr_Clifford** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 4:33 pm

Try having a look at your audio settings. The page that has work quanta, pre-fill for quick start etc. It might be something to do with that.