Show Cue System

Hi,

A newbie to the forum so please be kind. Haha!

I've tried searching the forum for the answer but couldn't find specifically what I was looking for, so apologies if the answer is already out there.

I've downloaded the SCS demo and I'm blown away by it. The fact that it's so powerful, yet easy to understand and operate is of huge benefit to my theatre club... I'm hoping to persuade them to upgrade from our aging MiniDiscs onto a laptop and SCS! I have, though, a couple of questions:

1. I'm a big fan of using external hard drives for storage rather than the local drive. Are there any latency problems with playing cues that are stored externally?
I'm happy to use the local drive if it is preferable, and perhaps use the external drive for back-up/permanent storage of sound effects etc.

2. Firewire or USB sound card - which is better, or are they pretty much the same as far as performance with SCS goes?

3. Staying with the sound card ... can anyone recommend an external sound device with XLR outputs rather than jacks that is of a similar price to the M Audio Fast Track Ultra? I'm guessing the answer is no, as XLR connections tend to bump the prices up. I'm looking for a 6 output device. The XLR outs are not a deal breaker, I'd be happy enough with the jacks - the cable run would be so short I don't think there would be any 'unbalanced' issues.

Thanks in advance!

Hi TheSpyHusband . . and welcome to the fold!

There's a thread on this subject at http://www.showcuesystems.com/forum/vie ... ?f=1&t=958 that you might find useful. With regards to using jack plugs I think you'll find that any decent sound card has TRS balanced jacks.

Cheers . . . Martin

The M-Audio Fastrack Ultra has balanced 1/4" outputs (i.e. TRS). I bought one for a theatre group I support along with a short set of color-coded 1/4" patch cables to connect it to the mixer. Works great.

Bruce

TheSpyHusband wrote:I'm a big fan of using external hard drives for storage rather than the local drive. Are there any latency problems with playing cues that are stored externally?
I'm happy to use the local drive if it is preferable, and perhaps use the external drive for back-up/permanent storage of sound effects etc.

I prefer using the local drive, but you could run some trials with an external drive and check performance. Latency shouldn't be an issue as SCS pre-buffers part of the audio file in memory, but if your external drive connection is not fast enough, or gets overloaded, you could get the audio breaking up. But try it - you may find performance is perfect.

Thanks all, for the help. I could have spent hours researching equipment using Google but it is so much easier getting advice from real, experienced users. And, of course, the developer - thanks Mike!

Bruce, you're right - the Fastrack Ultra does indeed have balanced outputs. I don't know why I never spotted that? Probably just reading too fast!

Hi TheSpyHusband

I had the same thought as you regarding external drive and although mine worked perfectly well, in talking to my IT expert at work, for what I was doing he believed that it was much better to run from the machine HD and suggested we made a partion on it to place all the audio I was using. It also means it is one less item you have to carry around or to go wrong (good as a back up for long runs). But as I started with it did work fine.

And can I add it is the best move I made and the minidisc player now sits in a corner gathering dust. So make the move for you company your the one pressing the button so as long as the sound comes out the speakers it should make no difference to the listener, and as you gain experence you will fine it is so easy to do things like drop levels fade in and out etc and it will always be the same for every performance.

Cheers
Peter

I had an email today from a user who's been running tests with an SD card. Here are a couple of extracts from his email:

The E: drive never went over 15 msec response time – it was rock solid.

I am now convinced everyone should use solid state drives, probably not USB if you are using USB sound (whenever I use a USB thumb drive I hear lots of static). But either an SD card or an internal drive. It just makes sense – there’s never any contention for the drive, no worries about it spinning down, recalibrating, or anything else, except of course a bad block or fatal error, which I would trust is no more likely on a SD card. In reading up about them the only issue is they might not hold the memory more than 5-10 years.

This user was running SCS with ASIO outputs. Interesting observations and worth trying out.

I was the user running tests on an SD card. I have been having intermittent stuttering problems with ASIO audo. I tracked one stutter down to a 253 msec response time for the music track I was playing (as reported by the Resource Monitor). So I wrote a script to start up 3 processes that accessed different areas of the C: drive reading the files (using a unix find | wc ). This stressed the disk out to a max and stuttering occurs every 3-5 seconds, sometimes as long as a whole second. If I start up one more file copy of a 600 MB file, it is disgusting. Changing the buffering in SCS did not help - I am working with Mike to figure out how large the ASIO buffers really are - he is a great support person by the way!

Now while no one is going to stress their disk out like I did, the problem is that occassionally the sytem will access the disk. And SCS might too. And in very rare cases, that seem to happen a lot on laptops, the disk access time is very slow. I find it hard to replicate - sometimes takes many hours. So that is why I created the stress test. So now I can easily try out solutions.

The one solution I found was to use an SD card. I am currently using a class 2 card, which is the slowest. I transfers 10 MB/sec with a 13 msec access time. The access time is constant, even during my stress test, and it never stutters (well maybe once in 20 minutes?). I bought a 8 GB class 10 card online for $10 US that I plan on using from now on. Using a second disk drive (will a partition do the trick, I don't know?) seems to be a BIG win, no matter what kind of drive it is. This eliminates any contention with WIndows which you just cant ever totally stop. Also laptop drives sometimes do strange things I hear, e.g. take a while to resume, perhaps some power savings things?, recalibrate? all are rumors, but for $10 I will eliminate the local drive from the equation. ALthough it has a much faster transfer speed and much lower minimum latency, the speed is not required and the MAXIMUM latency is the KILLER for sound programs.

I have a Forcusrite Scarlett USB audio box, which had problems losing SPDIF clocks on an HP desktop but is solid on my laptop. Except if I use a USB thumbdrive - then I hear static. Not sure if that is buffer underrun or just electric noise or what. On a desktop I have the same problem with a USB network interface thingy until I moved it to the front of the computer with the sound box plugged into the back. So beware of using multiple USB devices.

I am going to run these tests on my desktop machine to see if it is just the laptop drive or a generic problem. And work with Mike on buffer sizing if that is possible. All the tests above were done with default buffer sizes (200 msec) and changing them to 5000 did nothing - as we suspect those are not really in effect in certain ASIO cases.

I am interested in other people's experiences and comments, and will be happy to share more of mine.

Great advice, folks.

The good news is we're going ahead with the purchase of SCS and will hopefully be able to use it for our up-coming pantomime. At the moment we're going to be using our existing laptop until we can buy a dedicated machine. I don't foresee any problems with this as it is only a year or so old, runs Windows 7, exceeds the minimum spec for SCS and is only really used by the club secretary for typing minutes at meetings and for email. I'll make sure the power settings etc are disabled so no chance of the hard drive going to sleep mid-show!

I have every faith in SCS working for us - if the demo is anything to go by - I can use it in our pantomime rehearsal period to test the performance of the internal drive. I like the idea of using a USB flash memory stick/SD card for the files, and it makes sense in that there are no moving parts, although I always have a fear of losing the memory stick, or it bends and jams in the socket etc. Rare, I know, but these things happen. All in all, I suppose it's what works out best for every individual user.

I will let you know how I get on!

One more quick question, if I may...? When purchased, I will download the files to my home computer. Can I then install it on the club's laptop without connecting to the internet - ie, transferring the files with a memory stick, or do I need to do it online?

Congratulations on your SCS purchase and welcome to the fold . . . you've probably realised by now that there's a lot of really good people on the forum with a heap of experience with the product, and of course Mike is always there when the going gets tough!

I will download the files to my home computer. Can I then install it on the club's laptop without connecting to the internet - ie, transferring the files with a memory stick, or do I need to do it online?

Yes you can do that . . . I always prepare my Cue Files on my desktop and then transfer them (via a USB back-up drive), along with the latest downloaded SCS version/drivers etc., to laptops for performances. I have a couple of dedicated laptops that never connect to the internet.

Good luck with your first SCS production . . .

Cheers . . . Martin

Thanks, Martin. I've been looking at computer playout for months and I kept coming back to SCS. For me, SCS was the easiest to set-up and use and had the clearest on-screen display. Everything else I looked at (including the industry leaders) were just too complicated for our use. And, yes, the help has been invaluable!

Just realised that I wasn't very clear in my question... when I said 'files' I meant the installation files, ie - the actual SCS program. I'm assuming I can download the licensed version (which, I'm guessing is a zip file) to my home computer and then transfer that zip file to the laptop and install as normal?

I'm assuming I can download the licensed version (which, I'm guessing is a zip file) to my home computer and then transfer that zip file to the laptop and install as normal?

Yup! . . . that's what I meant . . probably wasn't too clear with my reply . .

Cheers . . . Martin

Cool, thanks!

Here's some more info on SD cards. While the most probable "failure" is a lost card or a bent pin, what I plan on doing is having the music also on the main C: drive, and have two cue files, one for each drive. So you can quickly switch between them. You can also have a backup SD card and copy music to it in a few minutes.

I received my new class 10 SD card today, 8 GB for $11 US from amazon.com. It is awesome, living up to its specs of 20 MB/sec transfer, basically twice as fast as the class 2 card. And the latency is half - around 7-8 msecs. I ran my disk stress test again and the latency usually remains at 8, sometimes peaking at 11. That is compared to a few thousand for the C: drive. There's absolutely no stuttering when running from the E: drive, and constant stuttering from the C: drive, as the disk request queue gets back up 5-10 deep. SCS is the only process using the SD card and so there's no contention.

I searched on Google for MTBF and they are over 1 million hours for SD cards. They are good for about 10,000 insertions. I plan on leaving mine in the laptop most of the time.

When I preloaded my music tracks into memory (with the SCS options), there was no stuttering when I ran my disk stress test. So I plan on doing that as well. It doesn't matter what drive you use then, however, if you have long tracks SCS will not preload them, and so I plan on using the SD card for simplicity and just in case I goof and one track is not preloaded.

note: I think this stuttering only happens with the internal mixer and asio drivers, where the buffering is not set-able, or at least it is questionable whether the settings really work or not. I changed the buffer to 5000 msecs and there was no change in stutter.

Regarding using a separate partition on the computer's main hard drive to store and play music from - I gave this a test drive. I created a 40 GByte partition on my local hard drive and mounted it as M:, copied all my music there, and create a cue file to play from there. I then played a playlist track from the M: partition and ran a disk stress test (3 processes running thru the C: drive reading files). I got the same stuttering problems I had when the music was on the C: drive. In looking at the WIndow Resource Monitor, the C: and M: drives share the same disk queue and the response times for files on the M: drive were up in the 1000-2000 msec range, just like the C: drive. So at least on my laptop, and in my experiment, there was no benefit from using another partition. Perhaps some disk controllers might behave differently, but I would strongly suggest you verify things with the Resource Monitor as a sanity check.

When I use an SD card instead of the C: drive, I can't get the music to stutter as much as I try to torture the C: drive and computer. I imagine a separate disk drive would also behave like the SD card, so long as it had its own unique disk queue and didn't share one with the C: drive. Using an SSD drive is probably the ideal solution, as they are larger and faster than SD cards, but I find the SD card sufficient and don't feel like trying to install a new drive in my laptop.

Reminder - the problem with Windows is that even after you shut most things down, there's still going to be some random OS activity that is going to access the local disk drive, every once in a while. Or on laptops, the drive might spin down, or take a nap it seems. And so when SCS tries to read the drive, it may end up experiencing a large latency in rare circumstances. In most cases, SCS will be using a large buffer (e.g. 2-5 seconds) and can easily tolerate the latency. But in some cases, e.g. for me I was using an ASIO usb sound box, the buffering is small, on the order of 200 msecs and cannot be increased. And so every once in a while, like once every few hours or days, you hear a stutter. Which was very scary - did I really hear that? would it occur in a live show?

Another cause for large latency I think I was experiencing was that I was setting up SCS to pre-load tracks. But my cue file was long enough that it didn't load them all up. So while going thru the cue file, SCS would eventually have to pre-load some of the tracks near the end of the show. It tries to do this when other tracks are not playing, but in some cases I was running thru the cues quickly and it might not have been able to. And if it attempts to preload a long file (e.g. uncompressed WAV file of 20-50 Mbytes), it can take a second to get it from disk. This can be problematic if you are playing a background track or just starting up a new track. At least I think that was what was happening.

If you are experiencing stutter on Windows, I strongly suggest you learn to use the Task Manager and especially the Resource Monitor, the latter allows you to monitor disk activity, including response time, disk queue length, and what processes are reading/writing what files. I think most stuttering is the result of disk activity and this is one way to figure it out. Of course if its not disk activity, then this won't help.