delay to start playing

The place for general discussion of Cakewalk Pro Audio.
Jimmy

Post by Jimmy » Sun Dec 07, 2003 8:17 am

When I press play, it takes few seconds to start but plays normally. Is this correct?
I am using a PIV 2.4, Win XP,1 Gig DDR, Sonar 2.2 XL, 7200rpm 60 gig HD. , Audigy2 Platinum.
My latency is set to 100ms cause I am mixing. 15 audio tracks, 10 midi tracks and a dozen pluginsin real time. My CPU usage approx 35%. Can anyone help?


kentothink
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Post by kentothink » Sun Dec 07, 2003 2:21 pm

depending on what you have your playback buffers set for and your i/o buffer, you may have a delay on playback. you will also notice that you probably have a delay in when you move a slider to when your ears hear it move! somebody correct me if i'm wrong on this one?

GretscGuy
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Post by GretscGuy » Mon Dec 08, 2003 5:52 pm

and a dozen pluginsin real time -

Try taking out the plugins and see if the dealy goes away. I'll bet that's where the issue is. Inserted plugins (like the way you use them to mix) add a delay to the track. Sonar is smart and adds a latency to unprossesed tracks (so everything lines up).

If they didn't have this automatic compensation, you would have to add in a 'dummy' plugin to adjust the dry tracks to match the latency, Two plugins on one track and one on another and none on another would mean a bunch of different dummy loads adjusted to fit the latency!

We just have to deal with with a slight start in dealy time. I would bet your plugins are causing it. If the issue is just taking a few seconds to start playing, it's really not that big a deal.

Good Luck!

Jimmy

Post by Jimmy » Tue Dec 09, 2003 5:40 pm

Thanks for your advices. kentothink, can elaborate a bit more on the buffers. To GretscGuy, how do you apply a dummy plugin?

GretscGuy
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Post by GretscGuy » Tue Dec 09, 2003 7:49 pm

Jimmy,
You don't add a dummy plugin. Back in the bad old days, if you wanted to use an effect on a send (non destructive) you would add a plug that would casue a little bit of latency to the uneffected tracks as well.

The reason? The effect in the send would play back a bit later than the rest of the tracks. You had to sync eevrything up manually. Today, bus speeds, clocks and the ammount of ram we use has grown so much. Using a plug here or there is really no big deal. In fact, most programs automaticly adjust for this when used as an insert.

Some new pieces of gear still require you to add this dummy plug in certain cases (like when using a send). I own a UAD-1 and there is a 'Dealy Compensation' plugin that must be applied to all tracks not using the send to sync everything up.

I know that UAD-1 manual is availible on universal audio's website, and it explains this very well. You may want to take a look at it even if your not interested in the card. It explains the concept well.

As far as latency -

Let's say you are playing an instrument (let's say an electric guitar for this example) into your pc. You have Sonar up and your 1959 Les Paul is plugged right into a direct box and then into your mixer and soundcard.

You insert a British Amp from Cakewalk's FX plugins hit a chord and .500 ms later you hear it come through. The sound is GREAT, but late.

Well sir, you are experiencing latency. Latency is the time it takes for your sound to go from your pickups to your pc soundcard then to cakewalk then back again. The plugin will increase this just a bit.

It can be extremely frustrating, but is very easy to fix.

Cakewalk sets up to be the stable. The folks who build it have to make sure it will run on a vareity of systems (and soundcards) so they set it up as a safe install. It would probably run fine on a 900Mhz PC with the minimum requirememnts set up this way, but those of us who built audio pc's (or have fast clocks and a ton of ram) don't have to settle.

By configuring your system latency, you can increase your system performance dramaticly. The first thing to do is ALWAYS update your drivers. This is the cause of 80-90% of the problems people run into when something won't work. It's easy to do and will solve most of your basic audio problems.

Second - Your soundcard has latency settings as well. Try to use a small bufffer size (if possible). Small buffer sizes give faster responces, larger sizes give safer results. If your pc doesn't crash or freeze up and your running at fast, that's great! (mine runs that way) you will find this will work when you have well above the system requirememnts. The machine is easisly handleing the systems load.

There are some great articles on the web (go a google) on this as well as great articles monthly in Electronic Musician (my fav), Recording and EQ. Mix is a good mag, but is usually too high budget for me.

Hope this helps

Jimmy

Post by Jimmy » Wed Dec 10, 2003 5:33 pm

Thanks GretscGuy for your reply.

GretscGuy
Posts: 434
Joined: Sat Oct 18, 2003 1:26 pm
Location: Massachusetts USA

Post by GretscGuy » Sun Dec 28, 2003 3:59 am

Just a thought. Are you formatted for NTFS or FAT32? FAT32 has been known to cause delays in audio playback.

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