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View Full Version : SS repeating while linked to SAC



Harold Thompson
07-15-2008, 02:31 PM
Last weekend while mixing some large (40 track) sessions I noticed that occasionally SS would repeat about 500 ms of audio on playback. On further investigation it seems that the SS cursor was about 500 ms ahead of the MT data after the repeat occurred. The quality of the sound was still fine, and this doesn't affect the "build mix" operation, but I got several "What was that?" comments from the clients. This has never happened until I started using SAC as my mixer. It isn't a killer issue, but I thought it might need looking into. Has anyone else had this type of problem?

Harold Thompson
Blackwater Recording, Inc.

Bob L
07-16-2008, 12:13 AM
With SAC beating up the CPU and SS set for mixdown with heavy loads of plugins and processing, perhaps you are straining your machine past its limits.

SAC would be more intended for use during recording and monitoring, but I would still say the mix should be done completely in the SS virtual environment.

And monitoring would be handled by one stereo channel in SAC with no other SAC loading going on at the time.

Bob L

Harold Thompson
07-16-2008, 05:35 AM
And this is exactly what I am doing.

Bud Johnson
07-16-2008, 07:58 AM
FWIW, I too get this when playing mixes running lot's of plugs in SS through SAC. Of course I don't need to be playing through SAC, It's just funner! It goes away when I playback through SS alone, as it always was. If I disable resource intensive plugs in the SS mix, I can play through SAC without issue.
I see this only as an issue when overdubbing on a session partially mixed. Very minor though.

Harold Thompson
07-16-2008, 09:28 AM
Yeah, I guess I could go back to my Soundcraft, but I sure would like to be able to just sell it and be done with physical consoles. I don't mean to imply that this little problem is a deal breaker, but it would be nice not to have it.

Harold Thompson

Harold Thompson
09-28-2008, 09:34 PM
Here's and update for this issue.

I first thought that I had a problem for heavily loaded mixes, but I'm now seeing skips with the MT load in SS showing only 10%. This is becoming a more serious issue than I had originally thought. Overdub interruptions are the main problem at the moment.

Anyone else having trouble with this?

Harold Thompson

Bob L
09-28-2008, 11:34 PM
What favorite latency causing plugins are you using?

Also... check that you have SAC and SAWStudio at the same priority level... and you may find you cannot use realtime or high priority and must stay on normal... each system is different.

Bob L

Harold Thompson
09-29-2008, 06:57 AM
The only buffer withholding plugins that are in use are the Sonoris compressor and the Levelizer.

Regarding the priority. When the SAC link is activated in SS the priority options are greyed out. The only option is force single cpu and this does not help.

My system will only run SAC in real time priority in order to not have any dropped buffers. I think it may be the video card that may be causing this problem. I have a Matrox PCI Express card. The Matrox cards have always been good for me in the past, but I'm beginning to think that this one may be a problem.

Harold Thompson

Bob L
09-29-2008, 07:43 AM
Well... the forced realtime priority may be causing the problem... I am exploring a fix for the possibility that in such combination, the SS engine thread may be forced under the screen redraw threads of SAC which could cause a processing dropout when the screen redraws are intense in SAC... for instance while switching mixers or changing F-Keys with large Z Mixer displays.

Bob L

Harold Thompson
09-29-2008, 07:48 AM
That sounds like it will be helpful, but in my case the skips happen while nothing is changing except the cursor moving across the screen. I'll do some further testing and get back to you.

Harold Thompson

Bob L
09-29-2008, 12:13 PM
Well... if you are forced to run SAC in realtime priority, make sure you also set SAWStudio in realtime priority... something in your system is causing the SS threads to get stepped on... which would cause the glitch in its ability to get the data processed fast enough and therefore SAC will loop around on old data.

Bob L