Why can't EXT handle ANY audio without crackling?

[Germ777]

Weird !!!!!
I get up this morning and after an all nighter recording I get up to listen to my track in EXT and all I get is the Stutter from hell
I froze all tracks and I still get huge CPU spikes. I even turned all FX off and it still is insane
My projects in EXT were working fine yesterday and I even posted earlier in this thread about it and how great performance I got out of it.
This is really weird. I even got a message saying I should add more memory to this poor box
Well my PC is showing some slowing down too so I will give it a clean up and will post any results here.
Later;

[jens]

I even got a message saying I should add more memory to this poor box

that's just SFZ insulting you for not having more ram after it greedily ate all you got without making any use of it... luckily Rene fixed this er.. 'minor annoyance' when coding Dimension...

to get rid of the stutter you need to play your song back once trough all the stuttering (maybe turn the colume done) - after that eXT should play it back just fine...

[Germ777]

to get rid of the stutter you need to play your song back once trough all the stuttering (maybe turn the colume done) - after that eXT should play it back just fine...

Nope!
It got even worse!!! It even slowed down to almost half speed. This had never happened before. EXT had been extremely efficient and sturdy until now.
Could it be that the EXT family caught the Flu?
Anyway. Jörgen is probably going more insane over this than we are.

[jens]

Jörgen is probably going more insane over this than we are.

having witnessed his development for more than two years now I'm quite sure that in the end these problems will result in eXT becoming the most stable and reliable host ever!

[jens]

Nope!
It got even worse!!!

[original flipper]

HI

To add wood to the fire - one issue I have at the moment is with 1 particular large project with lot's of audio and plug-ins that goes about 90% on the XT CPU meter - after a n hour or so on repeated playback XT appears to gradually work it's way up to 100% CPU and starts to crackle.

I use several instances of RM4 and a few Synthedit vst's (as well as a whole lot of others) I think this is down to a memory leak with one of the VST's.

I wonder if this might be the case with other people?

Flipper.

[plastique]

Definitely happens here as well .
As this is not really analysable (not with the simple method of playing back and forth and watching task manager) there's not really clear what to blame so that's why it's not brought up here very often i think .
But yes , i have this very often here , scenario :

- hit a cpu/performance level where project gets unstable
- render down stuff to new tracks , disable VST/i until performance is better

It still reaches after a while a level again where you'd think : WTF ? I just rendered some stuff but still high cpu again ? With almost only audio trackks playing ...

[original flipper]

HI

I wonder if it would be worth looking at the plug-ins used by people - if this is a regular problem?

One particular plug-in that was absolutely KILLING my project recently was - Neodynium by Elemental audio?

Normally the plug seems OK (it's a demo anyway) but in this case it was taking like 25% CPU!

I do find RM4 tends to eat up quite a bit as well - but I do run several instances for lot's of layered percussion - probably not a good idea.

Flipper.

[Branis]

Anyone noticed that muting audio tracks isn't helping audio performance? It's like EXT is playing even the tracks that are muted, except that you don't hear them.

[jens]

yes, I noticed this myself - I have to dig out an older thread where I behaved out of stubborness&stupidity like an ass against Anselmoso when he criticized this same behaviour with muted channels on tracks... (I owe him an excuse) - yes eXT seems to waste a lot of resources on stuff that actually isn't doing anything...

[Mikael Adle]

HI

To add wood to the fire - one issue I have at the moment is with 1 particular large project with lot's of audio and plug-ins that goes about 90% on the XT CPU meter - after a n hour or so on repeated playback XT appears to gradually work it's way up to 100% CPU and starts to crackle.

I use several instances of RM4 and a few Synthedit vst's (as well as a whole lot of others) I think this is down to a memory leak with one of the VST's.

I wonder if this might be the case with other people?

Flipper.

Good you bring this up again. I have this issue aswell. Don´t think it has to do with any VSTi, as I have this when triggering external midigear aswell. Seems theres something wrong with XT (midi) and loop-playback.

[cocre]

I too get a crackle or two on occasion. I do not use midi except the midi patcher along with a midi foot controller to manipulate VST guitar effect parameters. The pops occur when I play audio files through an EMU sound card input strip set to receive audio from any WAV output (WinAmp, Media Player, etc.) This EMU strip is set as an input in eXT, so the audio files are run through eXT.

For the most part this works well, and up until a month ago I had few to no issues, then all of a sudden pops and crackles. I had to stop using Windows Media Player with eXT and go to WinAmp, but even here I get a pop every now and then. Also, Cakewalk's Guitar Tracks Pro became unusable using the EMU Wav insert as an input. It would start off with a few pops and build to solid noise. In GTP3 I now have to import the audio files and play them internally.

I wonder if a July Microsoft security update killed something?

[LIMITAPROACHINGINFINITY]

K, i think it is memory related. Because i added more ram and the cracles went away. But i allready had 256 and the audio was so short- it shouldv been able to handle it. Ive had full songs (audio) in sonar with 256 ram and not a single crackle. I think ext uses the ram inneficiently..

In other words- for some reason ext is using WAY more ram than needed for such small audio clips. 256 should be plenty for what ive been doing.

[jens]

that's interesting - I've got 768mb so there really shouldn't be any problems...

- but I think this would explain may problems - the increased cpu-consumption when playing back a loop for a longer-time, the strange thing with the inability of playing something back properly for the first time while verything is fine at the second time, etc.

I dunno if Jorgen programmed this part in Delphi or C++ but if it is in C++ there might be some bug regarding the garbage-collector so that ram isn't freed properly after being used for buffers... - just a naive thought

[Sturgeon]

Its starting to sound similar to this.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=93813

Jorgen fixed it v. quick then, so it must be more complex this time.

I have just cycled a song with 15 multi out 32/96 audio tracks and one vst (classic reverb), for 1.5 hours - task manager memory use stayed the same, so did cpu use.

My buffers are 576 and 10ms. If it is a memory leak it must be in something that I don't use - like SC drivers, vsts or something. Maybe there could be a sticky thread for problem vsts. WusikStation is fine for me but doesn't like Hyperthreading(and this may crash eXT). Anwida reverb lite v.1 had a massive memory leak/denormal problem on my old P3 machine etc.

I think a thread like this would help isolate problems and speed workflow for us and Jorgen. I may not have a problem now, but I know how fast it is to get one from some new vst or other kit.

s.