Counter and Audio Out of Sync [SOLVED]

[wilcofan]

Hello all,
First, hello, I'm a new owner of DP8 as of this weekend.

For the first two days I had no problems slaving DP8 to my external sequencer. Play, stop, locate, tempo changes, all were working. Better than I'd ever seen a DAW and sequencer play together.

Keep in mind, I had only a single audio track. However, the metronome in DP8 was tracking with the metronome on the sequencer beautifully.

Then I added a virtual instrument, stock Proton, messed with the plugin, and all hell broke loose. All kinds of funny behavior. Metronome playing at a different tempo, turning on and off, becoming unresponsive to being turned on and off.

So I backed up a few steps, took out the instrument and MIDI track, but still the problems remained. There I started to read about funny metronome behavior from users here all the way back to DP7 and earlier.

With that I tried making my own click audio on a spare audio track. To my amazement, even the audio will not play in time. The counter is, and throughout all the behavior, tracking the tempo and position properly. (just like other users have seen) However, the audio does not match the counter.

Since then I've trashed the prefs. Problem persists. Even the audio is dropping out now and then!

I have no plugins on any tracks. As far as I can tell, I don't even have a master fader track. (unless it's automatically created and it's hidden from my mixer view)

Tonight I will try to reproduce the behavior with MTC instead of MIDI clock. From my initial efforts to reproduce this reliably, I can see why MOTU have yet to fix it. It's terribly random in it's effects. Then suddenly things will jump back in sync.

I can point to one suspicion: WHILE IN EXTERNAL MIDI SYNC, DP8 IS CONFUSED AND RANDOMLY FOLLOWS SLIDER TEMPO. The tempo that the audio plays to is the one set at the slider tempo, prior to going into external sync.

Any info would be greatly appreciated! I'll keep you posted. (and MOTU support)

Bobby

[MIDI Life Crisis]

First off, welcome to DP and MOTUNation.

Let's start with your RAM. 2GB is a very small amount of RAM and I suspect your troubles start and end there. By the time the OS and any other programs are running, you're probably down to 1GB of functional RAM and virtual RAM (using hard drive space) kicks in. That will slow things down to a crawl.

After that, you don't say what you've loaded into the VI and how that is organized. Large, scripted instruments as well as multiple instruments on the same channel will also be problematic.

Multiple instruments (even from the same VI) should be spread out over several channels so that the multi-processor can be most effective. Here's a good discussion on the topic:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 26&t=53498

Then you also want to look at buffer size (you can search the forum for that) but generally smaller buffers for tracking, larger for playback, depending on various aspects of the project and the machine in use, etc. YMMV).

One other thing, try deleting the DP and audio preference plists (with DP not launched) and see if that resets the metronome.

But I would start off by getting as much RAM as you can. 2GB simply is too little to do any serious work except for MIDI only, and that only includes the simplest VIs.

[wilcofan]

I'll check the ram usage tonight. Thanks.

(No page outs = no problem with ram)

[MIDI Life Crisis]

(No page outs = no problem with ram)

I don't know what that means but I do know that 2GB simply doesn't cut it working with audio and most VIs.

[wilcofan]

In the activity monitor app, PAGE INS are normal. It doesn't mean you are running out of ram. It means the apps running are periodically taking a break and putting some of what's in memory down to disk.

PAGE OUTS are the indicator. If the apps call to the disk, it's because they're out of RAM.

And that you should buy more RAM.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

OK, don't believe me. Good luck with that.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

ps - You're welcome.

[James Steele]

I'm in Tapatalk so can't see signatures but if 2GB is TOTAL RAM in the Mac, that is indeed terribly small. I don't know what MOTU's minimum specs call for for DP. It might not be the cause of the problem, but I'd never dream of trying to do anything in DP with only 2GB of RAM in the Mac.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Here are the specs from the MOTU site...

RAM
2GB required
4GB or more recommended

Meaning that you need 2GB just to run the program.

Here is the sig:

DP8.05
Mac Pro 8 core 2.8GHz
2 GB Ram
OSX 10.6.8

Regardless of what the Activity monitor says, the simple fact is that more RAM is needed. You could probably "get away" with just MIDI but VIs and audio are just not gonna be happenin'


As Ripley would say...

[James Steele]

8-core with 2GB? Yep that's not good. Again, can't say for sure that's related, but really not adequate RAM for DP use. Minimum specs aren't practical usually.

[Shooshie]

Why should this even be an issue? RAM is cheap. Get some more!

[MIDI Life Crisis]

PAGE OUTS are the indicator. If the apps call to the disk, it's because they're out of RAM.

And that you should buy more RAM.

As long as the o/p believes that this is all he needs to know, he'll not start to solve the problem.

That's why. <sigh>

It's like blaming the answer to the problem for the problem. Catch 22.

GET MORE RAM.