Cut-Off fades / Audible Volume Steppings

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Cheetah
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Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 4:52 am

Cut-Off fades / Audible Volume Steppings

Post by Cheetah » Sun Jun 05, 2011 6:07 am

Hello everyone!

I'm a complete newbie with SCS, so maybe I've missed something in the documentation. I've got two problems using fades on a cue. Generally, fading in and out are horribly unprecise.

For test purposes, I'm playing a single sine wave, to which I've added a short fade-in and fade-out time (.2 seconds). To rule-out any performance issues, I set the file to pre-load. I tried playback through the onboard soundcard and my Marian Marc 8, using both WDM and ASIO4ALL. Using software or hardware mixer does not make a difference. Obviously I'm using the "SCS internal mixer", or I couldn't use ASIO.

Now, I am experiencing two things

1) I'm not getting a continuous fade-in and out, but the volume increases in rather coarse steps - which somehow makes that feature unusable for short fades for me. The effect happens on all devices, but is worse when using WDM drivers than when I'm using ASIO. Volume seems to change only once per buffer fill? This is okay if you fade over 20 or 30 seconds, but makes short fades impractical. What can I do to improve this?

2) Fade-Out is always cut off early resulting in an audible "click" at the end of the playback. This happens on all devices, too. But playback cuts out earlier when using ASIO. Funny thing is though, on ASIO, it cuts out at the same time DURING the fadeout ... but the fadeout itself starts earlier. Also, despite the fade-out time set to the same value as the fade-in time, and the curve set to "linear" on both, it seems the volume does not go down with the same speed as it goes up.

Gah. It's hard to explain :) I used a second computer and recorded the output. I've attached a screenshot with the resulting waveforms with comments ... maybe that'll make it clearer :)
Attachments
fading-issues.jpg
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Mike Daniell
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Re: Cut-Off fades / Audible Volume Steppings

Post by Mike Daniell » Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:46 am

I suggest you try the SoundMan-Server option now available in a Release Candidate for SCS 10.8 - see this topic. The demo version of SoundMan-Server only supports 2 outputs but this should be enough for you to test the fades etc. If this looks like a promising solution then Richmond Sound Design are willing to provide a 15 day temporary license to enable you to test using all 8 outputs.
Mike Daniell
Show Cue Systems Pty Ltd
mike@showcuesystems.com
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charlier
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Re: Cut-Off fades / Audible Volume Steppings

Post by charlier » Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:57 am

Mike Daniell wrote:I suggest you try the SoundMan-Server option now available in a Release Candidate for SCS 10.8 - see this topic. The demo version of SoundMan-Server only supports 2 outputs but this should be enough for you to test the fades etc. If this looks like a promising solution then Richmond Sound Design are willing to provide a 15 day temporary license to enable you to test using all 8 outputs.
I was going to be so bold as to suggest this as well, although I'm not really very sure it will help that much as it looks more like a driver issue but there's no harm in trying! Try the demo version of SM-S and then if it seems to be helpful, email me the machine ID for your computer which SM-S will report to you when it initialises and the particulars of your venue/production/company/location and I will email you back a temporary license dongle file. Good luck!
Charlie Richmond - SoundMan-Server developer
Richmond Sound Design Ltd.
charlie.rsd@gmail.com

Cheetah
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 4:52 am

Re: Cut-Off fades / Audible Volume Steppings

Post by Cheetah » Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:35 pm

Mike Daniell wrote:I suggest you try the SoundMan-Server option now available in a Release Candidate for SCS 10.8 - see this topic. The demo version of SoundMan-Server only supports 2 outputs but this should be enough for you to test the fades etc. If this looks like a promising solution then Richmond Sound Design are willing to provide a 15 day temporary license to enable you to test using all 8 outputs.
I'll gladly do that if it helps you pinpointing the problem. But let's say it works ... and it all tests successfully with the sound server on a temp license. How do we proceed from there?
Last edited by Cheetah on Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Cheetah
Posts: 18
Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 4:52 am

Re: Cut-Off fades / Audible Volume Steppings

Post by Cheetah » Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:48 pm

charlier wrote:
Mike Daniell wrote:I suggest you try the SoundMan-Server option now available in a Release Candidate for SCS 10.8 - see this topic. The demo version of SoundMan-Server only supports 2 outputs but this should be enough for you to test the fades etc. If this looks like a promising solution then Richmond Sound Design are willing to provide a 15 day temporary license to enable you to test using all 8 outputs.
I was going to be so bold as to suggest this as well, although I'm not really very sure it will help that much as it looks more like a driver issue but there's no harm in trying!
Sure, if it helps debugging the problem? Although I don't think it's a driver problem ... or at least not exclusively, because I tried it on two soundcards using two different driver architectures.
Try the demo version of SM-S and then if it seems to be helpful, email me the machine ID for your computer which SM-S will report to you when it initialises and the particulars of your venue/production/company/location and I will email you back a temporary license dongle file. Good luck!
Thanks for the offer, I'll try with the demo first and get back to you if it looks like further testing makes sense.

charlier
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Re: Cut-Off fades / Audible Volume Steppings

Post by charlier » Sun Jun 05, 2011 9:10 pm

Cheetah wrote: Thanks for the offer, I'll try with the demo first and get back to you if it looks like further testing makes sense.
You bet! Always here to help (currently in London...) Good luck!
Charlie Richmond - SoundMan-Server developer
Richmond Sound Design Ltd.
charlie.rsd@gmail.com

Cheetah
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Joined: Sun Jun 05, 2011 4:52 am

Re: Cut-Off fades / Audible Volume Steppings

Post by Cheetah » Fri Jul 01, 2011 4:39 am

I've had the chance to try the sound server now ... and results are interesting. Fade-in is smooth ... fade-out is entirely cut off. Which means ... it does fade in my test signal just fine. Fade-Out just doesn't happen, the sample cuts out way before the fade-out point. Again I'm using a 5 second sine wave test sample.
So while the "stepping" in fades is gone, that seems to be another issue alltogether.

I've been able to reproduce the "stepping" in fades on three different machines now, all with totally different sound hardware and drivers. So this is definitely not a driver issue, but either an issue with BASS or SCS itself. To me it looks like fades are generally broken when using BASS as a backend. The artifacts caused by the coarse stepping is tolerable in very slow fades, but it's painfully obvious in short fades under one second.

Is anybody except me able to reproduce these problems (can be easily done by sampling the master output and looking at the waveform in any audio editor), and if yes, are there any plans to getting this bug fixed?

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