PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Anyone still get stuttering with 2016?

I have a new I7 laptop (Geekbench 5900) and build 429 has improved the stuttering but I still get it with multi real style songs when the chord page refreshes and sometimes at the start of a song. I can prevent the page refresh by shrinking the bar size so there is only one page but that's not a practical solution.

Here is what I have tried, these are all various suggestions I have seen.

Laptop is dedicated to BIAB and is running literally NOTHING else other than BIAB 2016.
Virus protection is disabled
I am using an external synth so latency is zero but it doesn't help to go up and up to 1000.
Using MME and the laptop audio driver (not MS Soundmapper)
All tracks are frozen
Option "speed up re-generation of real tracks" is NOT selected. I cannot run like this indefinitely!
bbw.exe is set to high priority in task manager and is run as administrator.
User account control is set to "never notify"

I have emailed all this to tech support but I wonder if anyone else has, or has solved the problem

Thanks
Tony

Tony
I am also aware that PG Music are familiar with the issue. However, I'm not aware that there is a workaround available yet. Let's hope the next release might sort this out.

I was getting a major stuttering on my laptop when I used the external USB drive, what I ended up doing that solved it for me was going into Device Manager, selecting Disk drives > Properties > Policies > and changing the Removal Policy from Quick Removal to Better Performance the stuttering I was experiencing is now completely gone.

Might be worth checking (I'm sure you already have), but in general do (not using BIAB) music files play ordinarily without stutter, e.g., mp3 / wav through media player or the sound off a youtube vid etc., does it get worse if you move your mouse when playing or anything like that ?

I don't know about other music files but when playing a BIAB song it stutters once when I click on the top of the metronome window to re-position it. However I think BIAB has always done this so it may not be a 2016 issue.

Tony

Hi Tony,

For that kind of audio stutter (Eg. clicking on a window bar to move it), you can usually prevent it by increasing your audio latency setting:

1. Click on Options > MIDI/Audio Driver Setup...

2. Type in a bigger number for "Driver Latency" (Eg. 500 - 1000 should be good enough... but this can go higher if necessary)

3. Click [OK]


Note that this only works if you are using an MME audio driver instead of ASIO, although the behavior you are describing is usually an indicator that you are using an MME driver. In the setup window (opened in step 1 above), there is a button in the bottom-left that says "Audio Settings...[MME]" or "Audio Settings...[ASIO]". If that says [ASIO] then the Dirver Latency setting won't have an effect.

Hi Tony,

I have this kind of issue too with BiaB 2016, but only on songs where I have filled the notation and lyrics lines (a new 2016 feature). When the chord pages change, I get a "clac" and a short delay then the tune continues.

I almost eliminated this issue by unchecking the case "auto adjust #rows" in the options but I still have it sometimes.

Pascal

Hi Blake

You may not have noticed the following in my original post.

So I have already tried your suggestions.

Also the build 430 list makes no mention of improving a stuttering problem so I assume this hasn't been addressed? In any case I am no longer an "early adopter" of BIAB downloads.

Tony

Have you tried ASIO? There is ASIO for all, but it was not the best ASIO a few eyars ago, or an external sound card?

A USB sound device can only be a few bucks. Things are improving all the time, but last time I investigated a year or two ago, on board sound for laptops was not that good.

I have the same issue. The song has a short pause each time the chord page refreshes to the next group of visible bars. I have tried the fixes mentioned but it still happens. I am not using layers and it's just the default chord sheet. I have done a factory reset also. At first I thought it might have been the two instances of Amplitube 64 bit bridged on the guitar tracks but after removing them the issue remained.

At this point it's just annoying as I export all my BIAB tracks to my DAW and the WAV files are not affected with the pause. The 2014 version worked fine and the problem only showed up with the 2016 upgrade. I am sure PGM will get it sorted out but It is a problem that should be addressed sooner than later.

I stopped using ASIO years ago because it introduces lots of other issues like latency. Also the advice from PG is to use MME for my problem.

I have tried using an external SoundBlaster USB sound card but it doesn't help.



Thanks for confirmation of the problem. It is definitely something to do with 2016 and happens on two quite different computers. One workaround is to use the 2016 feature that allows you to shrink the bar size until the whole song fits on one page - bingo, no refresh needed so no stutter! I still sometimes get a stutter at the start of a song with multi RT songs.

There is no mention of the problem solved in build 430 and it is too soon to know if there is any difference.

Tony

Jeff, I know that PGM are aware of the problem and are working on this. Maybe next release should lick it.
Trev

I'm sorry to disagree, but ASIO does not introduce latency. if using ASIO driver mode introduced latency compared to MME, then either:

1) your soundcard did not have well written native ASIO drivers
2) your computer has some drivers installed which cause dpc latency spikes
3) you added something extra at the same time which caused extra latency (like adding plugins)
4) your ASIO hardware buffers were set too high (possibly by default and you didn't change them after switching to ASIO driver mode)

#4 is the most likely scenario in most users' case when ASIO has higher latency in a music software program than using MME driver mode.

ASIO, by spec, HAS to be lower latency than MME driver mode. if you're interested in reading through the spec, the Steinberg 2.3 spec is here: ftp://ftp.evl.uic.edu/pub/INcoming/cristian/CL%20CPC/pa/src/hostapi/asio/ASIOSDK/ASIO%20SDK%202.3.pdf

When you switch to ASIO driver mode, you must also be careful that your soundcards' software does not have the hardware buffers set to something which is too high. the hardware buffers are set in the soundcards' software (which can be accessed by BIAB or other software programs directly, usually). When setting the soundcards' buffers to 128 samples, your total roundtrip latency shouldn't be more than 10msec total. this is a completely workable roundtrip latency.

This is true for ALL soundcards, however, as I said above, the drivers for the soundcard must be well written ASIO drivers in order for this to happen.

I own a MOTU MK3 Ultralite. it can use USB or Firewire (400). I can get down to 64 samples without popping/clicking or stuttering on my computer which gives me a little over 5msec round trip. VERY low latency.

understandably, the MOTU is out of reach pricewise than a lot of users can afford. however, I also have a backup soundcard which is a Presonus Audiobox USB which can use the 128 samples easily. they cost about $100.

I'll probably get bashed for this, but soundblasters are NOT the best soundcards for recording. they're great for playback, so if all you do is playback for backing tracks or if you're using them for listening to music, they're fine, but not so much for recording.

NOTE: I understand this may not be the problem from the OP since it has been stated that PG is aware of a latency introduced between 2014 and 2016, however, what I am addressing is the quote above just to clarify for everyone reading that ASIO driver mode itself does not introduce latency just because it's ASIO.

NOTE2: sampling rate of the recording will also affect latency. the higher the sampling rate the lower the latency. 44.1kHz is the CD and Wave file "redbook standard" so that's what most people use (including BIAB), but most modern RECORDING soundcards are capable of higher sampling rates usually up to 192k, which will give you much lower latency. it will also, however, put a higher tax on your computer system which will increase the likelyhood that you will experience pops/clicks and stuttering the higher you go.

We are fortunate to have Beagle posting here, and all should heed his advice. He is a welcome fixture on the SONAR forum.

thank you so much Matt!

My post http://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=329734#Post329734 is a demo of how the screen updates are incorrect, but does show stuttering as well. I didn't highlight the stuttering because, at the time, I had a mess of other applications up (FPGA development environment, several different browsers with multiple tabs, spreadsheets, virtualbox running linux) and all of this on a Celeron laptop.

Generally, I don't experience the stuttering. I'm also using MME on a laptop with no external sound device. MME picked because setup was easier on install going that path (I think I picked ASIO drivers during setup - was asked some questions that I scratched my head over - backed out and picked MME which involved no setup/additional install - and continued). Although my perception has always been that a well written ASIO driver is better.

It should be mentioned that the user (Tony) is using an external MIDI synth, not the usual soft synth Dxi setup. We're not sure why this issue is happening on his machine, and we can't duplicate it, either with soft synths or an external MIDI setup.
So we plan on sending Tony a test version to see if it fixes it, and at least provides us some diagnostic info.

Tony has a fast machine (Geekbenchy=6600). We've tested on fast and slow machines (Geekbench=1,000) and also can't duplicate any problem.

There are issues with some video cards and video acceleration, where they take over the whole system during redraws, and if that is the case disabling video acceleration makes the issue go away. info here: http://www.wikihow.com/Turn-off-Hardware-Acceleration

Also, if Tony is running from a USB drive, he might try this:
"was getting a major stuttering on my laptop when I used the external USB drive, what I ended up doing that solved it for me was going into Device Manager, selecting Disk drives > Properties > Policies > and changing the Removal Policy from Quick Removal to Better Performance the stuttering I was experiencing is now completely gone." (tech info: that restores write caching to the drive).

I have always run with Write Caching off for regular hard drives, for data safety. The only time I am willing to turn it on is for SSD drives.

Good point Matt. I was just repeating a user's post that solved his problem, and I've never needed to do that myself. It would be useful as a diagnostic test, and it also just applies to that specific drive.

Right - I just thought it would be useful to you to point out that my machine has always run BIAB fine with write caching off (although my boot drive and my BIAB program drive are SSDs). My Geekbench single core score is 4400 (bad only because I use the Intel CPU graphics).