Subject:Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Posted by: Mrwatermonkey

Date:9/17/2002 2:04:45 AM

I just got Acid 4.0 and it is skipping during playback. I mean really bad. To the point where I can't do anything else. But it renders without a problem. I currently have dual Xeon P4 2.0 ghz processors, 1gb of rambus ram and the soundcard is a Layla 20 bit. It runs on Windows XP Pro. Now I know it's not my system specs. The current song is 19 tracks of vocal samples and som midi. I have done 40 track songs in Acid 3.0 without any type of problem. I even had no problems on my old 550mhz P3 system. And I can't take the 4.0 files into 3.0 so I am pretty much screwed. The memeory indicator in Acid 4.0 tells me I never use more then 28mb of RAM. It is really slowing me down. We are almost ready to release our first album. Any help would be greatly apprecciated. =/

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: algorhythm

Date:9/17/2002 6:15:23 AM

and what audio drivers are you using? ASIO or Wave?

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:9/17/2002 1:50:44 PM

Have you done a disk defrag recently (preferably before you installed ACID 4.0)? Think I've seen a post before where someone was having similar trouble until they did a defrag.

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Mrwatermonkey

Date:9/17/2002 1:53:06 PM

Wave drivers and it's a fressh install so there is no point in defraging it. =/

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Mrwatermonkey

Date:9/17/2002 8:30:31 PM

Is there anyone else having this problem with 4.0 skipping during playback? If I play a song for 10, 15 seconds it will start to skip and gets worse until i cant hear any sound at all. If i stop playback in the same spot and hit play again it plays fine and then does it again after another 10, 15 seconds or so. Its not skipping like when a cd skips, the file keeps playing its just cuts off and back back on again. Like someone hitting the mute button 5 times a second. Its driving me crazy!!!!!!Ive tried setting as windows classic wav driver and asio driver for my echo layla card. and asio seems to skips alot worse. Ive tried playing it off of two different drives one which is a 10,000 rpm cheetah which has no problems with playing back multiple files. It must be a program glitch because the cursor doesnt move smoothly when this happens it jumps around. Anyway, Id really aprreciate any help thanks!!!!!

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: buffalosnout

Date:9/18/2002 9:45:44 AM

I have experienced something similar to the skipping you have described. What worked for me was to convert all of my one-shots to loops. You will have to play around with the time stretch feature in "properties" to get it to come out to the correct length and speed.

Once every file in the project was of the "loop" type, the project played back flawlessly.

We may be experiencing different issues, but I hope that this helps.

On your other matter: I, too, found myself having to go back to 3.0 because of a 4.0 problem, but I had already saved my project (my bad) in 4.0. My tedious work-around was to load up both programs and rebuild the 3.0 version by switching back and forth to 4.0 to see what files were used, what the volumes were, etc. It took about an hour, but it was worth it.

James

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Mrwatermonkey

Date:9/18/2002 11:10:56 PM

bump

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Jacose

Date:9/18/2002 11:24:16 PM

yeah, this is really ridicoulous.....

I have the same problem, really.... It got a little better after I uninstalled 3 and 4, then cleaned the registry, defragged and reinstalled 4, but it still happens in various (strange) circumstances....

I really hope 4.0a solves the problem....

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Mrwatermonkey

Date:9/21/2002 10:13:17 PM

4.0a did not fix this. I am pretty disappointed. I think I am going to take it back to where I bought it and demand a refund. =/

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Mrwatermonkey

Date:9/26/2002 2:05:24 PM

This is still happening. Anyone else have a clue?

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:9/26/2002 3:40:50 PM

On top of what's suggested at MusicXP.net:

Out of these 19 or so tracks, exactly how many of them are disk-based, i.e., playing back from your hard drive? Loops always play from RAM, One-shots play from RAM only if it's 3 seconds or less (longer than 3 and it plays from the hard drive), and Beatmapped tracks always play back from your hard drive.

If this be the case, you'll probably want to limit yourself to about 4 or 5 disk-based tracks; bounce down if you have to. You may have gotten away with this in ACID 3.0, but that might have been because the audio fidelity is better in ACID 4.0 than in ACID 3.0 (if you haven't noticed), maybe because better audio=more CPU power and more complicated computations going on.

You can also try to chop up long disk-based tracks and turn them into Loops by setting the Loop Region over a specific part of the track (once it's soloed) and use CTRL+M on your keyboard. You might have an easier time with this by using Options>Preferences on the menu bar and under the Audio tab, increase the right value under Open files as loops if between (seconds) setting. (The max is 300 seconds, or 5 minutes.)

I've got a 29 track, 24-bit/44.1 kHz project that has four long One-shot tracks; the rest are Loops and a couple short One-shots. Only one assignable FX. Plays back fine using an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 using ASIO. (WDM works fine too.) I'd be willing to share this project to see if it skips on your system. Be all accounts, it shouldn't, since I have a much meager system than yours. (A single PIII 800EB MHz w/384 MB of PC133 SDRAM on Windows XP Home.) However, it's huge at around 128 MB. It's not a problem for me, as I have broadband and enough space on my Web server. Let me know either way.

Iacobus

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: spesimen

Date:9/26/2002 7:29:59 PM

not sure but it might be an echo thing.

works well for me with the mme drivers but with ASIO i get lotsa clicking and skipping, using a Gina24. both 4.0 and 4.0a..

hmm.

Subject:RE: Acid 4.0 Skipping on Playback

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:9/26/2002 9:08:32 PM

I do know that if my Audiophile's ASIO latency is set too low, it'll start to skip and stutter with a busy project like the one I mentioned. I usually just set the latency a little higher and it's fine. (This could be self defeating in some cases, especially if one tries to record using VSTi's and the latency is set too high.)

Iacobus