Thanks for checking this problem out. BIAB will be playing and then about 3/4 way through a 120 bar song, it stalls and cuts out for a few seconds and then resumes? I'm running BIAB 2016 through a new HP laptop, 12 gig memory, Intel 5 processor, Windows 10. In advance, thanks for your input!

As a diagnostic measure, let's rule out BIAB first. Go to Preferences icon, RealTracks. There are several checkboxes about fast generation and similar. Change those, restart BIAB, and report back.

It could easily by other causes and I have several suggestions. You may have malware. You may have tons of junk software the vendor loaded on. Your wireless network etc. may be the cause. But first, tell us what you are using as a sound card and as many other details of your BIAB settings as you can, such as, is DXi checked?

Hi Matt, Thanks for your response. I am using BIAB 2016 on a brand new HP laptop, 12 gig ram, pentium 5, Windows 10. I am using BIAB in a little garage band scenario: BIAB on laptop connects via usb to an Allen & Heath Zed 10 FX mixer, then out to powered pa speakers. At about bar 80 on any given song, the sound cuts out and abruptly restarts about 5 seconds later. The sound card appears to be Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth with a driver latency at 104 ms. I am also using a VSTI bass plugin for the bass track: SampleTank 3 PBass. Unfortunately, I am not adept at the nuances of setting this type of thing up. For example, I don't know where to find the DXI you spoke of, or even what it is. I went to the preferences / real band settings, but I did not see any settings for speed or performance. Also, I have searched for any sign of a sound card control showing up from the A&H mixer, but no luck. Due to the newness of the computer, I't doesn't seem like that many junk programs could be running. My wireless connection is through our house modem fed through our cable company, Charter Cable. The internet works fine on the laptop. Thanks again for checking this out!

Ok. Since it does this on any song, that rules out the unlikely corrupted song.

it sounds like you are using the laptop's built-in sound card. Almost anything you could buy and connect by USB would be an improvement. As an example, look at a Focusrite 2i4.

New laptops are very often loaded with bundled junk software (known as crapware). Sometimes a spike appears every 30 seconds, for example. Try downloading the free DPC Latency Checker. It has great instructions on the website. It says it isn't accurate for Windows 8 (hence also 10) but it still works to show spikes.

Don,

In addition to Matt's comments...

Does this happen at all tempos or is it more likely to occur at fast tempos?

I find myself wondering if maybe playback is catching up to the on-the-fly track generation that BIAB employs.

To test it out, right-click on the chord sheet, select song settings and disable the 'Fast Generation' option that I've number #2 on the image below.



Regards,
Noel

Bad choice of a synth and horrid latency numbers. Latency should easily be under 10ms. 5ms is even better and easily achieved with a good interface running ASIO.

I'd suggest looking to see if the sound card you are using supports ASIO and if so, try that. If not.... look into getting an interface that does run ASIO.

My guess is that the system is doing all it can to keep things running and somewhere around M-80 it gives up, stops the playback and reloads it's buffers. A quality sound card/interface running ASIO won't even break a sweat running a 20 track half audio and half midi project.

I use a focusrite saffire and have run combo projects upwards of 24 tracks and not a single hiccup. The interface and driver mode DO make a huge difference.

Another item to check is your Anti-Virus software (presuming there is something installed).

Try this:

Disconnect from the Internet (turn-off the Wireless LAN)
Disable Anti-Virus (usually right-clicking on the icon in the system tray)

Play the song. See if it has the issue.
If it does, then start Task Manager (Right-click on task-bar), Select the Details tab, and sort by CPU column, then play the song again and see which process (if any) is using max CPU time when the problem occurs.

These tips might help narrow down the cause.

HTH
Trevor

If you try VideoTracks route and have trouble distinguishing which process is actually causing the issue Process Explorer may help -
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processexplorer.aspx

This little app is quite handy for such tasks. It gives a lot more info than the regular Task Manager Processes tab.

Thanks for posting the link, rharv. That's an excellent piece of diagnostic software.

I don't know if this is related, but I have an HP desktop with similar specs to your laptop. I have a Focusrite 4i4 interface.

I've noticed that if I leave a USB drive plugged in when I'm using RB, somehow during the polling of USB devices my focusrite gets disconnected from Real Band and the sound stops.

It isn't affecting windows in general, just RB, because if I close RB and reopen, the device works again until the next time the system does whatever it does.

If I don't have any USB drives plugged in, it doesn't happen.

Pat, two things, each related to power.

First, check your Windows Control Panel, Power Options. Make sure you make a custom setting to have everything powered on fully, especially the USB. No timeouts on USB.

Your last sentence leads me to think you may be exceeding the power (amperage, in this case) for the USB port. Use only a port on the back of the case (connected directly to the motherboard) for your audio interface. Connect any non-audio to another port, and experiment with a powered USB hub. The Focusrite 2i series are bus powered, aren't they? They need sufficient amperage. There is a way in Device Manager to check power draw, but it's quicker to just do a couple of experiments.

Thank you very much for your response! Matt, Noel, Guitarhacker, Videotrack,Rharv, and Pat. I learned a lot from you.

I had a similar problem when I first starting using BIAB. I am a total rookie compared to some of the others on this forum. However, the problem was so stupid I'm surprised I didn't catch it myself. I was us the computer's onboard power (battery) and for some reason it couldn't keep up. As soon as I plugged the computer into the wall the problem went away. Just sayin'.........

Hi Don4music,

Welcome to the forum.

You may want to try rendering the Hi-Q bass to an audio file then disabling the Hi-Q bass and substitute the rendered bass audio file.

Although you have a powerful computer, using the synth likely is using a lot of resources.

Despite the fact that you have a high end computer and ample RAM it may very well be that your computer is choking in trying to process the BIAB instrument tracks ( essentially audio files ) and especially if there is an additional imported audio track. Similarly if those instrument tracks are "midi " the built in midi processor?synthesizer can't handle a massive flow of midi data.

I'm surprised you don't get some warning message.

Time to buy an external midi/audio processor because

Midi/video/audio processing eats up computer resources.

I concur with digital audio and video stressing a computer. MIDI, though, does not (unless you are running multiple huge MIDI software synths).

Thanks for your " fix up ". You made a very important note i overlooked in my long distance analysis of the possible reasons for audio cut out during his playback.

I was thinking of my own midi/video/audio recordings/playbacks using DAW's such as Logic Pro or Cubase or Digital Performer i do have a huge number of tracks running MIDI software synths ( AU - VST plug-ins ) in addition to AUDIO and VIDEO.