Phantom SoftEdge and corrupted audio

[Ian Alexander]

In narration sessions, I use the Frontier Tranzport in the booth to control SS. On two recent occasions, I've come out of the booth to discover a giant SoftEdge that starts in the top left corner of the active track and hits the bottom of the track at twice the length of the apparent recorded audio.

SS_Giant_SoftEdge.jpg

Everything recorded after that time on that track is corrupted and doesn't show up on the MT. Here's a sample:

Screwy Audio.wav

So far, this has cost me only about half an hour total, and I've quickly re-recorded the mangled material. But I'm concerned about this happening in a longer session with a client directing. Recreating every take would be impossible. The worst scenario is this happening during a live recording of a concert, etc.

There is no indication of any change in the audio in the headphones, which are fed from RME's TotalMix app.

Windows 10 Home v. 21H2
RME Fireface UCX
SawStudio v. 5.8a

Windows has had cumulative updates around the middle of each month this year. If I try to unwind an update, I have no idea how long I'd have to wait to feel confident that the problem is solved. (Yes, I know I should be using LTSC, but it's almost time for a new machine, so probably not worth the effort until then.)

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[jmh]

Did you try clear softedge? I think it is the menu when you alt-click a mixer (don't quote me on that I always have to take a couple of stabs at it) or right click the track name. I think you can turn off auto soft-edges in one of the menus too.

[jmh]

If that is one region, and you had the whole project marked including a now deleted region beyond and hit 'x' you could have made a fade that looks like that.

[Bob L]

The playback of that file suggests that your buffer setting is too low and the machine cannot keep up with the audio interrupts... if it is an RME card... make sure you are using the ASIO driver mode and you should be able to bring the buffer size down low... like around 64 samples... this sounds like Windows driver Multimedia with buffers set way too low... WMM would need around 1024.

Softedges can be cleared by right clicking on the Mutitrack region and using the menu option to clear the softedges.

Make sure you do not have a default softedge value set in that menu... there should be no softedge unless you manually set one in most situations.

Bob L

[John Ludlow]

Hi Ian - Just spitballing here, but when I listen to the wav, I notice two things. The first is that your voice seems to be slower than I would expect (you'll have to tell me if I'm right...). And the second is that there seems to be regularity to the distortion. That, combined with the fact that it has initiated softedge would lead me to suspect that it's not SS doing it to you, but rather an external piece of hardware. The obvious one is the Tranzport, of course.

But the frequency of the 'stutter' is reminiscent of a keyboard when something leans on a key. Presuming that nothing has fallen on your keyboard in the interim (like - every time it happens) it occurs to me that, when keyboards get old, sometimes (albeit rarely) they start squirting out characters all on their own. Or at least - that has happened to me. I don't replace my keyboards until long after the paint has worn off the keys such that the letters are no longer recognizable. My W7 keyboard has 15 keys that no longer have any paint on them, and several others that are on their way. But... it still works, and I'm a touch typist, so...

So here's my off-the-wall test, and potential solution. If you have a spare keyboard, substitute it and wait for it to happen again. If it does - you can go back to the old one and cross this off the list. But, if it doesn't, you'll have solved it. If you have a second machine, you could plug the (potentially) offending keyboard into it and leave it for a few days with the active cursor in Notepad. If you come back at some point and there is repeating text in the Notepad window on that second machine - then you'll know for certain.

And - you can continue to hunt for other solutions in the meantime. After all - you don't really care what the problem is, you just want it resolved.

******************

Whoops! In the meantime, Bob has posted. He's got a lot more experience with this sort of thing than I do - so he's probably right. Still...

[Ian Alexander]

I appreciate the replies. Here is more info:

This happened when I was in the booth recording narration, hit Stop on the Tranzport, figured out the copy or had a sip of water, then hit Record to continue. There was nobody at the keyboard to mark an area, hit X, or anything else. The Tranzport needed new batteries recently, and I can't recall if this phantom behavior has happened since, so maybe that's it.

The RME Fireface UCX is a USB device. The computer is a 2018 laptop with an i7 and 16GB of RAM. I'm using the ASIO Protocol with buffers at 1064, 6-In, 4-Out. This computer, with a Fireface UFX+, recently recorded 19 tracks at 96/24, at the same buffer settings.

The keyboard is quite old, so it could be generating phantom keystrokes on its own. I can leave a Notepad window open over the weekend.

I use right-click in the track name field all the time to clear entries and remove silence, but I'd never noticed the SoftEdge commands on that menu. Over regions on the track itself, I think it needs to be ALT-right-click. I usually navigate to the splice and hit X again to clear SoftEdges. No default is set. Often, after these phantom instances, the keyboard, the mouse, or both, lose function, at least in SS, so I can't clear the SoftEdge with any method.

Thanks

[Ian Alexander]

It just happened again - I think when I hit << twice in rapid succession on the Tranzport. I was able to clear the SoftEdge, not with the X, but using the right click menu on the track name field. Navigation on the track is affected: I can tab to the right from splice to splice, but Shift-Tab goes back past dozens of splices, to a splice at 5m 35s. I cannot get the MT to play with the space bar, a right click on the track, or a left click on the play button in the MT control area. Update: I can get the MT to play, as long as I put the cursor before 5m 35s. Playback stops at 5:35. If the cursor is placed after that point, when I press the space bar, the cursor jumps to 5:35 and stays there. I can double click anywhere in the MT timeline and the audio file will play in the SF view. This time, there is no corrupted audio, and additional recorded audio sounds normal. I don't know what would have happened if I had continued to record without deleting the SoftEdge. If I put the cursor in the short region last recorded, Shift-Tab will move the cursor to the beginning of that region. Pressing Shift-Tab again, though, returns the cursor to 5:35.

I'm mystified.

[jmh]

Ian,

If you open the soundfile in a fresh edl does it playback un-corrupted?

[jmh]

...also there is the backspace key to delete audio back to cursor in record mode or to last start. You can have some funky things happen if you delete some portion of audio - I remember I recorded something, did a few edits - then hit the deleted back to cursor which I forgot was before (filewise) several regions I had intended to keep. Things went haywire including a nonsensical wav image. Of course the real rub was trashing a good track. I guess the record transport was open and armed while I was editing regions.

Could the tranxport (don't know what it is) have a macro that could call the backspace key with or without a modifier?

[Ian Alexander]

The wavefile sounds good for the most part, but there are two sections that are slow and garbled. It doesn't seem to matter whether SS has the offending EDL, a new EDL, or no EDL open. The same sections of the file are corrupted.

I don't know what's under the hood in the Tranzport. It could be that one of the commands includes a backspace or an X, or that pressing buttons too rapidly causes trouble. Taking my time certainly can't hurt.