Help troubleshooting persistent audio glitches
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 45 posts since 18 Dec, 2014
Hi, I've been using DAWs for years but am new to Tracktion. I'd love to be able to rely on it for all my recording, but so far I don't feel I can because I am getting persistent and unpredictable audio glitches.
Sometimes everything plays just fine. But almost every time I play back, even simple two-track projects with no plugins, I get pops, drop-outs, and other similar audio glitches. Latency has no effect on this - I can set anything up to the max and still get them. Resetting audio devices doesn't help either. Freezing tracks doesn't help. The number of tracks is not a factor. I can get perfect playback, if the stars are right, on 8+ track pieces with multiple plugins and automation, but most of the time there are glitches on everything I do regardless of complexity.
I don't get these glitches on Logic, which is my other DAW. I wanted to leave Logic for Tracktion, due to its simplicity of operation, but the audio just doesn't seem reliable enough and I don't know why.
My system is a 2012 Mac Mini w/i5, running 10.7.5, and only 2GB RAM, but as I say Logic (exp 9) handles that fine and I can run down to 32 sample latency on Logic, whereas on Tracktion even 1024 gives problems.
The default no. of 'cores to use' seems to be 4. I *thought* my system used 2. Not sure if I should even change that. My interface is an Allen & Heath Zed R16.
Any advice? I feel like unless I can sort this out, I've wasted my time and money on this otherwise promising software.
Thanks in advance,
Nathan
Sometimes everything plays just fine. But almost every time I play back, even simple two-track projects with no plugins, I get pops, drop-outs, and other similar audio glitches. Latency has no effect on this - I can set anything up to the max and still get them. Resetting audio devices doesn't help either. Freezing tracks doesn't help. The number of tracks is not a factor. I can get perfect playback, if the stars are right, on 8+ track pieces with multiple plugins and automation, but most of the time there are glitches on everything I do regardless of complexity.
I don't get these glitches on Logic, which is my other DAW. I wanted to leave Logic for Tracktion, due to its simplicity of operation, but the audio just doesn't seem reliable enough and I don't know why.
My system is a 2012 Mac Mini w/i5, running 10.7.5, and only 2GB RAM, but as I say Logic (exp 9) handles that fine and I can run down to 32 sample latency on Logic, whereas on Tracktion even 1024 gives problems.
The default no. of 'cores to use' seems to be 4. I *thought* my system used 2. Not sure if I should even change that. My interface is an Allen & Heath Zed R16.
Any advice? I feel like unless I can sort this out, I've wasted my time and money on this otherwise promising software.
Thanks in advance,
Nathan
Last edited by nathanscribe on Thu Dec 18, 2014 3:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mac Mini (late 2011, dual i5 2.3GHz/8GB 1333/OS X 10.9 Mavericks); Harrison Mixbus/Logic Express 9/Tracktion 6; Allen & Heath Zed R16 over FW
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 45 posts since 18 Dec, 2014
I should also add I've turned off bluetooth, wifi, dropbox and google drive - all the things I know have (at least possibly) contributed to audio glitches in the past.
Mac Mini (late 2011, dual i5 2.3GHz/8GB 1333/OS X 10.9 Mavericks); Harrison Mixbus/Logic Express 9/Tracktion 6; Allen & Heath Zed R16 over FW
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- KVRAF
- 2417 posts since 17 Jun, 2003
If this was windows, I'd take a crack at this, but not sure where to start on OSX...
Is it definitely a 2012 i5? Not an i7? Specs for an i5 say they were dual core
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP659
Definitely try changing the number of cores. Not sure I've ever seen tracktion detect the wrong number of cores before, but maybe there;s a bug in the detection code somewhere that you're hitting (you can just change it back, if it makes no difference)
Can you turn off speedstep on the processor? Not sure how to do that on a mac, i'm afraid ...
Is it definitely a 2012 i5? Not an i7? Specs for an i5 say they were dual core
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP659
Definitely try changing the number of cores. Not sure I've ever seen tracktion detect the wrong number of cores before, but maybe there;s a bug in the detection code somewhere that you're hitting (you can just change it back, if it makes no difference)
Can you turn off speedstep on the processor? Not sure how to do that on a mac, i'm afraid ...
"my gosh it's a friggin hardware"
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- KVRAF
- 2348 posts since 9 Oct, 2008 from UK
I'd definitely try changing the cores figure. You can always change it back.
[W10-64, T5/6/7/W8/9/10/11/12/13, 32(to W8)&64 all, Spike],[W7-32, T5/6/7/W8, Gina16] everything underused.
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- KVRian
- 755 posts since 4 Jun, 2004
I seem to remember there were lots of audio problems with 10.7 when it came out. Don't know if they ever got resolved but I skipped it altogether. 10.6 and 10.9 seemed to be more stable for audio. Is there any specific reason you didn't upgrade?
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 45 posts since 18 Dec, 2014
@ frankgv: I kept 10.7.5 mainly because it was stable with Logic (which I was then my only DAW) and various other bits of software, MIDI interface drivers etc.
As for the glitches: I changed cores to 2. My mac is definitely an i5.
Result: using a couple of my own projects, and also the 'synthetique' demo project, first playback on each glitches about as bad, maybe worse, than before. BUT subsequent playback of an open project seems OK. I just have to play it all through once first.
Not really a practical solution, though at least it's some comfort!
As for the glitches: I changed cores to 2. My mac is definitely an i5.
Result: using a couple of my own projects, and also the 'synthetique' demo project, first playback on each glitches about as bad, maybe worse, than before. BUT subsequent playback of an open project seems OK. I just have to play it all through once first.
Not really a practical solution, though at least it's some comfort!
Mac Mini (late 2011, dual i5 2.3GHz/8GB 1333/OS X 10.9 Mavericks); Harrison Mixbus/Logic Express 9/Tracktion 6; Allen & Heath Zed R16 over FW
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alejandrozalaquett alejandrozalaquett https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=58330
- KVRist
- 233 posts since 18 Feb, 2005 from Chile
Try increasing the audio cache size on the General Behaviour window
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 45 posts since 18 Dec, 2014
Changing the audio cache size doesn't seem to have any effect either... I'm rapidly exhausting all the things I'd usually suspect, all the usual audio settings.
Could ReWire have anything to do with it? Do I just not have enough RAM for this?
Could ReWire have anything to do with it? Do I just not have enough RAM for this?
Mac Mini (late 2011, dual i5 2.3GHz/8GB 1333/OS X 10.9 Mavericks); Harrison Mixbus/Logic Express 9/Tracktion 6; Allen & Heath Zed R16 over FW
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- KVRAF
- 2417 posts since 17 Jun, 2003
Running out of ideas, but you've turned off the Energy saver type stuff in OSX, right?
Set the computer sleep and display sleep to "never", and unticked "put the hard disk to sleep if possible"?
The fact it works on the second time you play a project back makes me guess it's loaded the audio etc into RAM at that point, whereas previously it was reading it from disk ... bit of a long shot, granted
You've got a decent amount of disk space left, right?
Things I might try, if it was me (long shots) would be going to the audio devices tab, and choosing "Reset Audio Settings" and if that makes no difference, then go to the general behaviour tab, and play with the size of the "Audio cache size". On mine that's set to 6.0 seconds per file, and i've not modified it
Also go to the "CPU usage" icon in the top right of the edit screen, and check whether you've ticked "Low Latency Monitoring" in there. It's possible that's on, and you're monitoring at a latency lower than you think you've set on the audio settings page, and lower than your hardware can handle
Worth a shot maybe, anyway
Set the computer sleep and display sleep to "never", and unticked "put the hard disk to sleep if possible"?
The fact it works on the second time you play a project back makes me guess it's loaded the audio etc into RAM at that point, whereas previously it was reading it from disk ... bit of a long shot, granted
You've got a decent amount of disk space left, right?
Things I might try, if it was me (long shots) would be going to the audio devices tab, and choosing "Reset Audio Settings" and if that makes no difference, then go to the general behaviour tab, and play with the size of the "Audio cache size". On mine that's set to 6.0 seconds per file, and i've not modified it
Also go to the "CPU usage" icon in the top right of the edit screen, and check whether you've ticked "Low Latency Monitoring" in there. It's possible that's on, and you're monitoring at a latency lower than you think you've set on the audio settings page, and lower than your hardware can handle
Worth a shot maybe, anyway
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"my gosh it's a friggin hardware"
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 45 posts since 18 Dec, 2014
All the energy saving settings are optimized for audio, there's almost half a terabyte of disk space left, low latency is off, resetting audio settings makes no difference, CPU usage is in single figures, and as far as I can tell changing the audio cache size makes no difference.chico.co.uk wrote:The fact it works on the second time you play a project back makes me guess it's loaded the audio etc into RAM at that point, whereas previously it was reading it from disk ... bit of a long shot, granted
You've got a decent amount of disk space left, right?
Just switched the machine on, loaded up the Synthetique demo track as an example, played once through, got glitches every second or two, played again, smooth as the proverbial infant derriere.
Your suggestion about it reading from disk but then having it loaded ready to go makes sense to me as an idea, but I don't really know how this works technically.
Either way, playing once through is not something I want to have to do every time I open a project...
Anybody else any thoughts on this? I'd love to get this sorted, Tracktion is otherwise turning out nice. :/
Mac Mini (late 2011, dual i5 2.3GHz/8GB 1333/OS X 10.9 Mavericks); Harrison Mixbus/Logic Express 9/Tracktion 6; Allen & Heath Zed R16 over FW
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- KVRian
- 755 posts since 4 Jun, 2004
Have you looked at the activity monitor? Repaired permissions? Enabled app nap? (no idea if that will help, though).
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- KVRAF
- 2348 posts since 9 Oct, 2008 from UK
Have you put "optimise mac for daw" in Google? It brings up a few.
[W10-64, T5/6/7/W8/9/10/11/12/13, 32(to W8)&64 all, Spike],[W7-32, T5/6/7/W8, Gina16] everything underused.
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- KVRAF
- 3477 posts since 27 Dec, 2002 from North East England
Quick note that all dual core i5 processors I'm aware of use Hyperthreading (unlike the quad core i5s) so the OS should indeed see 4 cores. The 4-core default you're getting in Tracktion is almost certainly correct and indeed optimal.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 45 posts since 18 Dec, 2014
Is that just the option on Tracktion's Settings page? There's nothing else buried in the system anywhere that would need doing, is there..?TSC wrote:Also try disabling ReWire - I have come across a few systems where it can cause problems - give it a go and see if it helps
Mac Mini (late 2011, dual i5 2.3GHz/8GB 1333/OS X 10.9 Mavericks); Harrison Mixbus/Logic Express 9/Tracktion 6; Allen & Heath Zed R16 over FW