Subject:Delayed track placement after record

Posted by: incandenzaga

Date:11/8/2002 9:11:29 AM

I've noticed a peculiar problem where, after installing Acid 4 things are fine, however after a period of a few weeks, after recording a track, Acid's placement of it will be a approx a half second or so late. Consequently, I have to slide every track I record to get it in sync with the rest of the tracks.

Even with no plugins inserted the problem happens.

I'm running a 1.6GHz Dell with 768MB RAM. Machine is only 5-6 months old so I wouldn't think fragmentation would be a prob (I use a separate 80G drive for capturing audio files - the OS and apps sit on the C drive). XP with Echo Darla interface and latest ASIO drivers.

Has anybody else seen this?

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: aek12

Date:11/8/2002 10:10:57 AM

Hey, I have had this problem for a while and the forum really hasnt helped me thus far. I have an Intel 1.8Ghz with 768MB RAM. Running XP as well. I am using a creative Audigy EX for my sound card. I frag all the time. I shut down all plugins (even track eq) during recording. For me this problem doesn't happen all the time it seems like it is more likely to happen the longer I am on ACID. I am running 3.0. One thing that seemed to help a little for me was changing all my projects to 48 and 16 bit, because of the way the Audigy samples. Might want to look into your sampling rate.

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: spesimen

Date:11/8/2002 1:27:25 PM

i've had the same problem using a gina24 (also from echo) and asio drivers. using MME works fine though, you might want to try and see if that helps..

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: Outlaw

Date:11/8/2002 2:55:16 PM

Hey that delay does it happen with audio or midi??? i had a similar problem but it was on my end with midi. Acid had its sample rate to 44.1 ,i had the card set at 48 when it played or recorded the vsti it did everything fine but when it played back the recording was ahead about a second or so and sped up. so when i changed the sample rate to match Acid's setting problem gone hope that helps

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: incandenzaga

Date:11/8/2002 5:00:29 PM

I mistated my card - I have a Gina24 also. I've checked my sample rates and everything's at 44.1, the way I like it. The delay is happening with audio - I haven't tried MIDI yet (just dipping into the whole VSTi world - just bought Lounge Lizard - I'm sure I'll be back with questions on that topic).

I think I've figured it out though - when i increase the buffer size to something large, like 4096 or 8192 the delay kicks in. Bring it down to 512 or 256 and it's not there (or at least less noticeable). This is a little vexing in that I often get quite a bit of stuttering when I start building up a lot of tracks. I find the only way to get around it is increasing the buffer size.

Darn.

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: SonyNateM

Date:11/8/2002 5:06:27 PM

You might try using the Classic Windows Wave Driver interface instead. There is automatic latency detection and compensation used when recording through MME/WDM drivers. In addition, if detection doesn't work perfectly, you can manually fine tune the correction that happens yourself.

HTH,
Nate

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: incandenzaga

Date:11/8/2002 6:23:16 PM

Wow, you were right - switching to WDM *does* help.

I'm left scratching my head though 'cause I though ASIO was supposed to be "the s**t" in terms of performance/responsiveness/minimal latency etc. Am I missing something?

On a related note: what's the impact of using a VST synth (e.g. Lounge Lizard) that supposedly takes advantage of ASIO with Acid that now seemingly requires WDM to perform adequately?

Are there any online references that sort out this whole ASIO/WDM/VSTi conundrum?

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: pwppch

Date:11/9/2002 7:51:01 PM

When using ASIO, turn off automatic latency detection from the audio prefs page. If you still have offset problems, then adjust the setting manually.

You are right though, ASIO is on the mark sample aligned by definition. Something is wrong here....

Peter

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: DjXSoundz

Date:11/9/2002 7:57:59 PM

I had that in acid 3.0 it sux!!!! when i did a sys restore it didnt do it anymore. i guess it was just cuz my computer was too screwed up

DJ XSOUNDZ

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: aek12

Date:11/13/2002 10:08:06 AM

Nate, could you ellaborate? I have disabled the atuo detection and tried to fine tune, but still seem to have the problem. One thing that I have noticed is that sometimes after a take, if I save the project, it will not have the latency problem for another take or so. SO I end up saving after every take (but again, it does not help every time)... Any other ideas or explanation?

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: SonyNateM

Date:11/13/2002 11:59:33 AM

aek12,

There is nothing in ACID that would explain the behavior you describe. Each record is independent of others, and there is nothing "building up" that is written out when you save your project. What is the behavior you see when allowing ACID to autodetect latency? Does it vary? By how much?

Nate

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: aek12

Date:11/18/2002 8:16:21 AM

Nate,
as incandenzaga stated: "after recording a track, Acid's placement of it will be a approx a half second or so late. Consequently, I have to slide every track I record to get it in sync with the rest of the tracks." This is very common with my recording of tracks in acid. Also, when I am recording the track I will know it is going to be out of sync because when I press record, the song starts playing ahead of where it should be. Then that is where the file ends up lining up to. When that starts happening, i usually, move the curser back a few bars to try and compensate for the lag error. Maybe nothing in acid explains my issues as far as "my saving issue" goes, but that is what seems to happen to me and somewhat help... Maybe just a bad coincidence. As a default I always allow acid to detect latency, and those are the effects I see. Misalignment does seem to vary but that depends on variables that I have not been able to figure out yet. Forexample, I recorded the same vocal track about 6-7 times in a row (different recording tracks). The first 3-4 were dead on timing wise. then the rest were off and I had to manually go in and line up the wave forms. Really tedious and annoying (not to mention killing a productive moment). Is there somethign basic I am missing? I have upgraded all my drivers and try to kill most other software when recording. I have tried to increase the buffer in acid, but to no avail...

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: Spirit

Date:11/18/2002 9:31:24 AM

I have a similar problem to this as well. When I record MIDI parts back in as audio I can't get it to sync. I've played with all the auto and manual adjustments to no effect - it just won't align.

I emailed SoFo three times including multiple zoomed screen shots showing the different offset amounts depending on the settings. I never got a reply to any of them which I think was extremely poor.

It seems obvious that they have no idea what the problem is or how to fix it.

This is the primary bug which drove me back to 3.0g

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: Spirit

Date:11/19/2002 7:48:42 PM

*bump*

No more comments from SoFo about this then ?

Hmmmm...

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: aek12

Date:11/20/2002 8:15:39 AM

Nate, Any ideas????

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: SonyNateM

Date:11/20/2002 10:37:28 AM

Well,

Spirit: Are you using ASIO drivers when you bounce your MIDI track into ACID? Because of the explicit amounts of latency defined in ASIO the autodetect and manual compensation settings do not apply to your recording when using this driver model. Switch to use the Classic driver and you should be able to manual adjust and correct the latency you are seeing. If you have tried this, please, give me explicit examples of what your results were. What driver model were you using? What were it's buffers set at? Was automatic compensation turned on? If not, what did you set the manual compensation at? Did changing it make a difference? etc etc... The specs on your system, sound card, and what gear you are using would help me out as well.

aek12: your problem is unique and completely unrelated to incandenzaga's or Spirit's in the sense that you are seeing playback start at the wrong location. This is likely related to the numerous other problems with the Audigy's drivers that have been discussed on this forum in the past and mentioned in the ACID ReadMe file. The latest drivers from Creative should take care of it (and have with this card in all of our testing systems). However, if they do not, further tweaking/troubleshooting might be involved. Personally, I would start pulling other audio cards, swapping slots, email Creative and get the info on how to pull every single thing that applies to the driver out of the machine, reinstall clean, etc. From what I have seen with the Audigy's that we have in house, I see no reason that you shouldn't be able to get this to work with some tweaking.

HTH,
Nate

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: Spirit

Date:11/20/2002 10:44:33 AM

SonicNateM, I was using ASIO, cycled through all the options and had screenshots at each major variation which I sent to SoFo.

So thanks for your simple advice, I'll give it a try. Shame I didn't realise/was told this before.

Subject:RE: Delayed track placement after record

Reply by: aek12

Date:11/20/2002 11:46:05 AM

Thanks for the reply Nate. I will do that asap and get back to you to let you know so you might be able to advise others in the future.