Tracktion Software

metamorphosis · Post by **metamorphosis** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:29 am

Hiya-
having problems with straight audio playback in Tracktion 1.6??? which don't seem to be occuring in other hosts- was wondering if anybody else could shed some light-
essentially if I line up twenty tracks with audio objects on each, play them back with asio drivers set to same sample-rate etc as auio objects, tracktion can only play back 10 of them at once before beginning to stutter-
I've tried this on the 10krpm HD, and on the 7krpm HD.
All tracks are 24-bit, mono, 96khz, on defragged NTFS partitions.
And yet in something like audacity, I can play them realtime, all at once, with no stuttering using the very same audio drivers & hard drives-
Using no effects on any of the tracks- not even panning-
The problem seems to be in tracktion-
realtime priority mode and similar stuff is turned off-
has anybody else encountered this?
Question
m@

mandolarian · Post by **mandolarian** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:19 am

Well on my humble box with 7200rpm I get around 50-60 tracks before I see the dreaded

in the CPU meter and the st-st-stuttering st-st-starts. The

is T's way of saying 'Disk Not Streaming Fast Enuf' or some such.

Are you seeing the

when it stutters? And what latency are you using?

Is this just 20 raw, discrete tracks? Or do they lots of edits in a few or more?

metamorphosis · Post by **metamorphosis** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 10:37 am

Hi Mandolarian

-
I start to see the exclamation once it hits 11 tracks- latency is 1024 samples (default for motu 896hd@96khz) - tried raising latency, no effect-
And yeah, just discrete tracks-

Another thing:
I get a cpu bar spike whenever I scroll up/down/left/right/in/out - I have a geforce 2 gts with latest drivers and it seems strange that it's using so much cpu for visual stuff - still -
no scrolling when I did the testing- so that can't be affecting it-
as I said, tried it on two different drives on two different HD controllers - are you using T2 or T1?
Thanks,
Matt

p.s. also tried on my shitty 'games' yamaha card with directsound driver, no difference I think.

AD80 · Post by **AD80** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:36 pm

Try zooming all the way out so you can see the entire edit ( F5-F8 ). Sometimes if you're zoomed in too much it'll eat more cpu for some reason.

lharless · Post by **lharless** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 7:46 pm

i trust you've done the usual, optimizations? background services, turned off the un-neccessary services? unplug your wireless card or unhook your network cable and disable the adapter.

that's all i can think of right now. i've done them all and i can run tons of tracks. i can run about 50 plugs of all types and not a stutter. when im mixing down, i set my latency pretty damned high. i'd go pretty high with that if i were you. it's going to mean that you can get more done. with a higher latency, your meters are going to be slower, butyou can get a pretty great idea of what's going on if you're aware.

out

Beno · Post by **Beno** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 8:51 pm

Hmm. No problems here. In testing I ran 36 track 96k sesssions (testing dual ONYX mixers) without problems on a P4 2.8 GHz with a single ATA100 drive. It was definitely at the limit of that system but it kept up.
Ben

braj · Post by **braj** » Thu Aug 04, 2005 11:26 pm

I want dual ONYX mixers

I just ordered a $35 behringer POS. Damn financial realities!

metamorphosis · Post by **metamorphosis** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 3:24 am

Try zooming all the way out so you can see the entire edit ( F5-F8 ). Sometimes if you're zoomed in too much it'll eat more cpu for some reason.

Cool, thanks AD80 - will try that next time I hop on - but I doubt it'll be enough to fix the problem I'm talking about - I believe tracktion chews through a fair wad of cpu in it's vga rendering - which is why having it zoomed out would have less cpu impact, because then it doesn't have to change screen views (scrolling-while-playing). Will give it a go though.

i trust you've done the usual, optimizations? background services, turned off the un-neccessary services? unplug your wireless card or unhook your network cable and disable the adapter.

that's all i can think of right now. i've done them all and i can run tons of tracks. i can run about 50 plugs of all types and not a stutter. when im mixing down, i set my latency pretty damned high. i'd go pretty high with that if i were you. it's going to mean that you can get more done. with a higher latency, your meters are going to be slower, butyou can get a pretty great idea of what's going on if you're aware.

Yeah, all the usual done - thanks - I am wondering - are you hyperthreading?

Hmm. No problems here. In testing I ran 36 track 96k sesssions without problems on a P4 2.8 GHz with a single ATA100 drive. It was definitely at the limit of that system but it kept up.

Cool - are you hyperthreading and/or using T1? Thanks heaps all of you-
Cheers,
M@

Beno · Post by **Beno** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 7:51 am

No on hyperthreading. Are you?
Ben

Distorted_Mastermind · Fri Aug 05, 2005 9:08 am

How much memory do you have? What is your processor speed? The answers to those questions could help a great deal. Also the number of effects plugins would be good to know.

Madness · Post by **Madness** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 1:19 pm

Are you running an SATA hard disk?

If so, on older chip sets and with certain graphic card combinations you might manifest playback issues. Try play back from an IDE, if the problem goes away then you need a work around. give me a shout and I will point you to a fix.

Mauvehead · Post by **Mauvehead** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 8:06 pm

lharless wrote:i trust you've done the usual, optimizations? background services, turned off the un-neccessary services? unplug your wireless card or unhook your network cable and disable the adapter.

This is probably a stupid question, but can disabling the wireless and network cable really make that much of a difference? I keep reading this "tweak" on several different sites. What is the real CPU tax from the network stuff amount to? I have a newer Toshiba 3.33 P4 laptop with 1024RAM. Will I benefit much from disabling my wireless, etc when running T2?

valley · Post by **valley** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 11:13 pm

not a great deal I'd imagine.

Network devices, just like any other hardware device will trigger interrupts which stop the COU from doing the things you want it to be doing. How much of an issue that is, compared to say a video card, is an issue for the individual.

metamorphosis · Post by **metamorphosis** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 11:15 pm

Distorted_Mastermind wrote:How much memory do you have? What is your processor speed? The answers to those questions could help a great deal. Also the number of effects plugins would be good to know.

Hi Mastermind-
plugins irrelevant as I'm not using any on these tracks-
proc-speed: 2.4ghz, 1gb ram. Everything is optimised.
Thanks,
Matt

metamorphosis · Post by **metamorphosis** » Fri Aug 05, 2005 11:17 pm

Beno wrote:No on hyperthreading. Are you?
Ben

Yeah - will try without hyperthreading at some point and see whether that makes a diff-
are you on t2? Cheers- M@

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