Tracks restarting often with loud fullscale POP! (solved)

[lebem]

So I'm running SCS on my laptop, (sorry, no dedicated show computers here though I intend to make my laptop one when I upgrade to a new laptop later this summer,) and I've been encountering a BIG problem.

I've yet to find a dependable rhyme or reason to when I have problems, but what occurs is I will hit GO, the cue starts gets maybe 2-3 seconds or less into the cue, there's a loud pop and then the cue restarts from the beginning. For cues that fade out before the end of the file, that is the end of it, however cues that are supposed to play out until the end cut off prior to the actual end of the file. The best I can guess, is that when playback glitches and restarts at the beginning, SCS keeps counting the playtime as though the playback hadn't glitched, so however many seconds played before the cue "restarts" are subtracted off the back end of the cue because the playtime counter reaches 0:00.0 based on when the cue first started not when it re-started a couple of seconds later.

Next some background, to the best of my knowledge I thought I'd disabled all power saving timers etc... So my CPU is locked to full speed, system doesn't enter standby, harddrives are supposed to remain spun up, and power management on the system's root USB hub has been disabled (the show files are on an external USB harddrive.)

I thought I had found and licked the problem on Saturday when I disabled power management on the root USB hub in device manager. Made it through that show without any problems but then it came back with my matinee yesterday.

Other things worth mentioning is that for now I'm using the internal sound on the laptop (I know it's crap, a proper interface is on my list of things to purchase when I clear my current debt load in the next month or so.)

So HELP!!!!! I don't have another show until Friday and really need to have this solved by then. Thanks!

[Mike Daniell]

A couple of questions:

• Which version of SCS are you using?
• What settings do you have under View / Options / Audio Driver?

Also, can you email me your cue file (the .scs file) and tell me which cue(s) you have problems with?

[lebem]

I'm running 9.5.3

I'll be able to get the other info to you in e-mail a little later today...

Thank you,
-Matthew T. Lebe

[Kalle]

I had the same problem with my IBM R series laptop and RME fireface400 card. If you discover what it was, let me know please. Thanks!

[lebem]

Kalle, in the end Mike suggested I try a couple of things... of the things he suggested I ended up implementing two changes.

1) I moved my production folder from an external USB drive (admittedly a slower drive than I would have liked, but I believe as fast as my internal not counting buss speed) to the internal drive.

2) I checked the option to "Force software mixing instead of hardware mixing" under View/Options/Audio Driver

I suspect it was the first action that solved my problem though I've not had time to experiment and confirm that. I also further suspect that my external drive was ignoring the "Never turn off harddrives" power management option and was in-fact spinning down when enough time elapsed resulting in the playback buffer running out prior to the drive spinning-up sufficiently resulted in the restarts and pops.

At some point possible later this week or early next week I'm going to experiment more to see if I can confirm my suspicions.

Hope this helps you and a big thanks to Mike for his rapid assistance dealing with this glitch.

-Matt Lebe