FR - Lower priority GUI

[chinadrum]

Something that is very annoying (primarily in live situations) is the clicking and skipping that happens whenever the GUI tries to redraw part of the screen or popup help, etc. This happens at pretty much any latency - getting worse the lower it goes (I like to run at around 10ms).

A great feature would be a GUI that would let the user view settings and perform other tasks without affecting the live audio output. "Smooth" scrolling is one of those things that is way too screen intensive to have enabled. I don't mind if the screen is slowed down during a high load period, but it definitely shouldn't cause the audio to crackle and drop out.

I understand that some VSTs have their own drawing control, so it isn't possible to fix that in Tracktion. But, basic Tracktion operations like dragging a volume slider or zooming/scrolling the track view should be lower priority tasks.

Even better would be the ability to drag/insert a new track (away from the current play cursor, of course) without skipping, clicking or stopping record/playback!

I don't know whether any of this is possible unders Windows or Mac, but it sure would be nice.

[semiquaver]

It seems like it would require a pretty serious overhaul to the engine as it works that way even when CPU use is low. I would love to see some improvement there unless it seriously rediced T's efficiency which seems exceptional.

[koolkeys]

I wonder if this is in any way a video card issue? I only ask because I don't personally notice it. That doesn't mean it's not happening, just that I don't notice it.

Did you try to make your operating system give priority to background tasks? If not, then maybe you should try it. Or if you have, maybe undo it. In Windows, MIDI is considered a background task, as well as other audio functions I believe. But video is given priority usually.

Again, just an idea, but I'll have to see if it happens on my system tomorrow. And I have both Mac and PC, so I'll try it on both. If it is indeed a global problem, I do think it would be cool to have those options.

Koolkeys

[titanium]

I wonder if this is in any way a video card issue?

PCI latency can suck the life out of your machine. The issue is discussed in detail here.

PCI latency is how long a card can grab the bus. While a card has the bus, nothing else can get to it. Graphics cards are notorious for this, many drivers set their latency to the maximum of 255.

Free utilities are available here and here.

[amoebe]

Jules has said many times that the Tracktion GUI has a very low priority. Since both V1 and V2 use the same graphic engine I think clicks and pops orinate somewhere else.

[rich_h]

On my old machine I had a second PCI graphics card driving a second monitor. Whenever the mouse went on to that monitor, crackles and glitches galore resulted, so graphics cards (even AGP ones) can affect data transfer across the PCI bus.

[Solafide]

chinadrum,

Are you using a P4 with hyperthreading enabled?

If so disable Hyperthreading in your bios and see if your problems go away. Things run MUCH smoother for me without hyperthreading - and all the crackling is gone.

[chinadrum]

chinadrum,

Are you using a P4 with hyperthreading enabled?

If so disable Hyperthreading in your bios and see if your problems go away. Things run MUCH smoother for me without hyperthreading - and all the crackling is gone.

I'm using a Pentium-M 1.7GHz Thinkpad laptop, it has an ATI graphics chip built in. I just downloaded the PCI latency change tool and it seemed to stop the occaisional clicking! The ATI was set to 255, so I dropped it to 80 and the clicks went away.

BTW, the windows WDM drivers for my laptop click no matter what I try, but ASIO4ALL now works like a charm with the PCI latency adjustment.

[gandalftheblack]

I only get drop outs when i'm scrolling tracks up or down, everything else seems ok. Is this normal, or is this a problem with my setup?