Can anyone answer this question speciffally?

silvertones
re why.
yes i know it defies logic mate.
frankly these types of things can be so difficult to pin down.
thats why i suggested posting the song project somewhere so other people can
look in detail at the traks and confirm or not the behaviour on other pc's.

mebe something is mucking with the video behaviour somehow.
another process or task interrupting.
i have a question btw.
i notice in your sig is BIG MONITOR.
do you have a seperate monitor hooked up to your laptop ??
lets hone in on this video behaviour.
you mention stickyness.
does it happen at the same time point each time ??
or its just random ??

heres my own view of possible reasons.
1. as i mentioned before the sound card sending play position ,
and the system not being able to keep up.
2, the project playing back from the internal hard drive ,
and the internal drive performance affecting things.
or win interupting to do something while the project plays back
off the internal drive. ive seen this many times.
but it normally occurs at high trak counts with high bit depths
n sampling rates.

or it might just be something funky n difficult to
hone in on.

could you please do a test useing powertraks.,
cos i'm really curious.
start with a blank project.
then record track after track useing the internal drive.
just record blank traks. or make up some ruff song idea.
tell me if you get the same sticky problem , and if you do..
tell me the track count where the sticky video problem starts occurring.
this might give clues as to your internal drive performance.
have you ever done a performance test on your internal hard drive ??
there are various drive utilities around to check on drive performance/thruput.
ie just keep it simple initially before moving on to other tests.
it might purely be internal hard drive performance.
as i said before , some internal hard drives have a problem keeping up.
so i suspect in the daw software itself, the way the daw is coded,
is to ensure at all costs the audio carries on playing back
sacrificing video performance.
ive seen such stickyness in various daw/pc combos.
but it normally occurs at higher trak counts.
for example an old pc i have here exhibits such,cos it has a crummy hard drive...
but the modern dual core desktop doesnt.
there is only so much developers can do in source code of course.
please run that powertraks test i suggested.
it should only take half an hour.

silvertones
just to confirm your situation.
you recorded in rb 5 AUDIO traks and got stuttering versus
audition 52 AUDIO traks, no video stuttering..correct ??
on the same lappie..correct ??
useing the same internal drive ?? correct ??
with the same sound device ?? correct ??
the audigy ?? correct ??

given the above is correct then lets look at your settings
for audio drivers in rb and audition and other settings in each.
pics of each would help.
1. what do your audio drivers and other settings say
in audition ??
2. same...what are they in rb and powertraks.

all i can surmise is that theres a setting in
rb audio preferences.
so if were me i would focus on whether there are any settings different in
rb viz audition.

this is a fruity problem..lol.

Manning,
Yes to all of your questions.
No difference in settings that I can tell although RB & Audition output buffer is the same Audition has an additional setting for the amount of buffers. RB doesn't have this. It must be preset.
Audition also has a wave cache that is configurable. There is a check box to use system cache that is unchecked. I assume RB uses system cache. At the moment the Audition cache is at 16384K bytes.
Watching task Manager as I removed tracks from the project the memory usage would drop. When I load tracks in RB the memory usage stays the same.
So Audition is loading the tracks into memory? & RB is streaming from the disc?

silvertones
how any daw loads traks is.. into small arrays of memory or buckets.
think of it as time slices being mixed before they are needed
useing look ahead techniques in software coding.
in summary whole traks are never loaded into memory...
otherwise in large trak count songs , users pc's would run out of memory.
(well except if one is useing a OS that supports large memory address spaces.
which isnt the norm. thgo this is rapidly changeing with vista and w7.)
this is to simulate a real time process.
ie its an illusion !

there are various buffer and other settings in rb and powertraks, ...
and if were me i would spend sometime with each and experimenting.
in ptw this is what i had to do to make an edirol work fluidly.
it was a setting.
frankly you just cant set settings at default and expect all to be kosher.
you still didnt tell me what audio drivers your useing in audition.
are they asio ?? mme ?? what are they ??
by the way do you have advanced audio/midi sync checked ??

I've not read all of the posts on this - there are many. so I apologize if you've already gone over this. I know from what I have read that you are opposed to upgrading your computer to "fix" this because you think this is a problem that should not be relevant to your computer.

however, I would like to offer the suggestion that your video card cannot handle the situation. I saw in one thread that you have an "nvidia" video card, but I don't see which model or how much RAM it has. I would suggest that maybe the video card is not refreshing its memory specifically under the circumstances that you are providing it with RB. That could be a problem with the code in RB, but it apparently doesn't affect many people and would appear to be only specific to your current configuration and maybe a few others. maybe some code that doesn't specifically refresh the RAM on the video card of your particular video driver?

if that's the case - then it's not likely that the programmers here are going to change the code based on something they can't duplicate (according to one post I read about this). so I would suggest that you consider upgrading at least your video card to see if this problem is resolved.

Just my 2cents.

Mr. Beagle,
I do believe you are probably correct. Toshibas are known to be quirky. RB may just be bringing out some quirk that as you say won't be addressed as it may only affect a few. I do have a suitable work around.
NVIDIA GeForce FX Go 5200--
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-FX-Go-5200.6944.0.html

I've been wrong once or twice before

so I don't want to make a categorical statement, but I'd be very surprised if a video chip capable of playing some pretty reasonable games would be at all stressed by RB's little updates. IMHO it is far more likely to be other I/O slowing the whole process down...

The answer will be found when we answer the original question.
"why does saving the song before playing cure the problem"

John,

I have been reading through you posts regarding your RB problem. It sounds very irritating. Just to get it clear in my own mind, what do you mean be "video/scroll stuttering"?

Do you mean that the cursor that indicates Now time (or song bar) moves aross the screen erratically while the song plays? If this is so, is the sound output affected at all?

Kind regards,
Noel

G'day John,
finally found some specs on your notebook - if the internal drive is original it is an 80GB Toshiba unit running at 4200 RPM (dunno 'bout cache - not listed) - this is a comparatively slow device. Were this my own machine I'd seriously look at a bigger, faster unit with some decent cache. Everything about the machine would improve and it would likely solve the RB issue too.

silvertones
with respect mate you ask for help ,
but then dont answer the questions ive asked.
such as your settings in audition and other questions.
so i'll ask again , what drivers does audition show for input and output ??
mme ?? asio ?? pics would help as would pics of rb settings.

lawrie.
yeh i wouldnt use a slow internal drive like that.
but i thought this had been answered and he upgraded it ??.
the other anomoly is that silver says he gets 52 traks in audition
useing the same config. without stutters.
which surprised me. with such drive.
i'd be surprised if the prob lies in rb programming code ,
cos other people dont seem to be getting the same prob.

Quote:

Manning,
Yes to all of your questions.
No difference in settings that I can tell although RB & Audition output buffer is the same Audition has an additional setting for the amount of buffers. RB doesn't have this. It must be preset.
Audition also has a wave cache that is configurable. There is a check box to use system cache that is unchecked. I assume RB uses system cache. At the moment the Audition cache is at 16384K bytes.
Watching task Manager as I removed tracks from the project the memory usage would drop. When I load tracks in RB the memory usage stays the same.
So Audition is loading the tracks into memory? & RB is streaming from the disc?

Manning,
No offense at all.
I thought I answered your questions. I'm not a beginner with computers. I've been using DAWs for over 10 years. Don't be offended either. When I say their the same their the same. All 3 cards as in RB, same sample/bit rate, WDM .
Why does saving the song fix the issue for the session? This is the answer. What's going on when you save?

Noel,
Yes the bar moves across the screen in a jumpy fashion. Saving the song first stops the problem for that seession/song.

Lawrie,
When I got the notebook the drive was bad. I replaced it with this:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=312

And replaced the memory with 2 1G sticks.

I do believe it's an oddity between the code in RB and the Vid drivers in my lappy that saving resets?

G'day John,
that drive should be fine...

silvertones

from the rb help file..
(press the help button in rb audio preferences)
------------------------------------------------------------

Note: When using MME drivers, Port number 1 is used
as a source of timing when syncing MIDI to digital audio.
If you are attempting to use two different brands of sound cards together
on one computer as two separate ports, there may be timing problems
if the cards have different DMA buffer sizes,
but it is possible you may not encounter any noticeable timing issues.
The multi-port feature is mainly meant for multi-port cards.
Feel free to try multiple sound cards, but your results may vary.
---------------------------------------------------------------

now i dont know if this is your problem mate.
and the effects of haveing 3 sound cards.
but i'm suspicious of an interplay tween your rb settings
in audio prefs, the sound card and the video subsystem in your lappie.
"something" obviously is stopping the vid subsystem from getting the info
for display. leading to stutters.

the other thing i would do is in audio prefs,
experiment with the buffer sizes.
try increaseing em n see.
i would really really go thru the audio prefs in rb trying different things
rather than just going with defaults.

Do remember from the past I've stipped this lappy down to bare essentials with no change:
1. internal card only
2. disabled all networking cards
3. stopped all startup programs
4. minimized processes
5. reinstalled the program
6. reinstalled vid drivers
7. played with audio settings until I"m blue in the face
8. reinstalled the OS
9. ran tests on the vid card, ram, HD processor all good
I sent you a PM BTW

silvertones
thnks for pm..reply sent.
well i wasnt aware you'd done all the above.
i'm stumped..lol.
overall if no probs in audition then i cant see why probs in rb.

Does Adobe Audition load and use DX/DXi?

No Mac it does not. Are you thinking that the known issue of not releasing DXi on closing a song may be related?

No, I was thinking that might be at least one difference between the two programs. Now I'm thinking that there may be something going on with a DXi synth and the way RB/PT addresses things there.

Or maybe a "rogue" VST plugin...

There appears to be no way to have RB not load a default DXi. Unless you uninstall all of them.

silvertones
reply sent in response to your pm.
prefs>>midi , make sure no default synth is selected
from what i can see (plus clik ok n save as seq) .

Still trying to determine why save cures the problem.
If I open a song and hit save it takes 48 seconds to save. If I hit save again it takes 15 seconds. Something is definetly happening during this first save.

Maybe if you hit Save and haven't *changed* anything in the actual file first, the program knows that and only reassigns the name header data for the same file.

Maybe.

No what I mean is if I open the song do nothing but hit save it takes 48 seconds. Hit save again 15 seconds.

I'm going to jump in about Audition because I use it a lot, I'll let the analysis as to whether or not this means anything at all to your problem go to all the other pro's trying to help you. Audition uses temp files to keep a copy of a track file each time you make an edit. I used to think PT/RB was very slow compared to Audition until I realized how this worked. If I've edited and mastered a 15 track song in Audition, the work flow is very fast compared to RB until you're done and want to save the session. Then you get a box saying "flushing files" or something like that for each track and it can take 3 or more minutes to save your session because it's going through that routine for each edit you made for each track. RB either doesn't create all those temp files for each edit, or it handles it completely differently. What that looks like to the user is do an audio cut and paste or grab a track with the mouse and slide it along the timeline in Audition and it's immediate while in RB those two functions takes like 30-40 seconds but go to save and RB saves in the same 30 seconds or so while Audition takes 3 and sometimes even 5 minutes. If someone is like me, I want to keep all the original raw audio tracks in one folder and keep all the individual mixed and tweaked tracks in another folder along with the final stereo mix. In order to do that you have to go through that "flushing files" dance for each track and follow the prompts so any time you saved during the mixing process is given back during the saving process. In actuality both programs work at about the same speed when you include the save times it's just that Audition allows for a much faster work flow while you're doing all those edits which is why I use it for final mixing and mastering.

Bob

Interesting

RB (and PT) keep those edits somewhere too.
You can see the evidence in the undo routine, but I think they get ignored during save.

remember..
daws rely heavily on hard drive performance as one major factor of many.
seek times and many other factors like rpm n cache etc etc.
then there is memory speed as well as processor performance.
lots of things.
altho expensive the new i7 processor quad with hi performance drives is thrilling lots of daw
users , cos it outright smokes. try rb or ptw on one as a test if ones useing an old pc.
watch your jaw drop in amazement (as well as your bank account..lol.)
people are saying heavy projects that used to consume high 70 per cent are dropping into the high
teens. but i'm waiting frankly cos of price.
i bet the rb generation process would be lots faster on an i7 system.
a well as trak consolidates n mixdowns n seq saves n loads etc etc
with top notch drives.
best bet run a trial on one. n measure real world differences.
anyone useiong one ??

i7 laptops are now starting to appear...wowser.

Have tried rolling back the nvidia drivers to older versions? Or to the latest if you don't have them?

G'day John,
just had a thought - actually I was reading an old article relating to server performance and it reminded me of your problem.

Can you turn OFF hyperthreading in your notebook? If so you may find a noticeable improvement.

Lawrie,
How's things?
I turned it off with no improvement so turned it back on. Now I may have stumbled onto the answer but need more time to confirm. I did tried this way in the beginning and it didn't help. Maybe I just found the secrete hand shake. In audio Prefs I set I/O threads to "discreet thread-normal priority" . Rebooted and have been playing a number of songs with no problem. When I move back to "main thread" it stutters. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Before you give me the dickens I did try this before.

G'day John,
all good here mate, thanks.

FWIW hyperthreading is usually not beneficial. Glad you seem to have found a workable solution.

Can't duplicate the problem, and it sounds like it might be a hardware-specific issue or video-driver-related issue. I've probably mentioned this before, but I would recommend trying a smaller Track Buffer Size in the Audio Prefs and see if that helps.

Jeff

I solved it by doing two things.
1. Using a discrete Thread with normal priority
2. Disabling Hyper Threading.
Doing either 1. or 2. did not fix. Had to be both.
I ran the Juke box for six hours and it never missed a beat.

(Post deleted, there was an old email in my box, and I thought you were saying it happened again, sorry)

Nope. With these settings it's been perfect.