cue repeating or skipping

singingdog · Post by **singingdog** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 2:50 am

Hey Mike -et al, Unfortunately the problem with the IBM/Maudio Audioplhile firewire card reared it's head -during a show. Ouch! The 1st Q -skipped- basically sounds like you've taken a small section and looped it- the SM and operator decided to stop the show and start over. This time without a hitch. Therefore very unpredictable problem. If you want more specifics on the computer system in question I can forward them to you. It would be helpful for all of us to be heading towards specific SCS hardware combinations that are rock solid as I think in most instances it's the relationship btwn. Windows/the Hardware/SCS that is the culprit.

Mike Daniell · Post by **Mike Daniell** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 9:55 am

Not good. Seems like the problem that I thought was fixed by adjusting pre-buffer and/or playback buffer sizes. When I was testing that scenario one contributing factor was the computer being idle for some time (eg ten minutes) before playing the cue. This could explain why the problem didn't occur when you restarted the show. From earlier discussions I had with the audio library developer, I may have to look to using some way of avoiding DirectX. I regret that won't help you with your current show.

If anyone else has had this problem which was not fixed by adjusting the buffer sizes (or some other way), please advise what hardware combination you are using. If you did have the problem and were able to fix it, please advise how you fixed it.

Mike Daniell · Post by **Mike Daniell** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:03 am

Looking back over my emails with the Audio Library developer, the cause of the problems I was able to reproduce on my laptop was traced to ZoneAlarm. If you have this or a similar product, or any virus checking software running, try disabling it or preferably closing it altogether. The Windows XP firewall doesn't seem to cause any problems afaik.

JIsgren · Post by **JIsgren** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:29 am

Mike,

I am having the same problem with skipping and repeating cues. It is verry frustrating since I can not reproduce the problem. It seems to happpen if the machine has sat fro awhile before the next cue plays. I will try increasing the prebuffer and stopping any other processes tonight and see what happens.

I am using a comapq laptop connected to a firepod

Sinorm · Post by **Sinorm** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 4:48 pm

I had an interesting bug happen during our show tonight (possibly related to this). It appeared the first second (what I have my buffer set to) of each cue was being skipped. Closing and repopening the program fixed this problem.

I had SCS open for a couple days on my laptop, going in and and out of standby, so I don't know if this would have lead to the problem.

Mike Daniell · Post by **Mike Daniell** » Mon Apr 03, 2006 8:25 pm

I haven't come across Sinorm's problem before. Just clarifying the issue, are you saying that you started SCS a couple of day's before the performance and then went straight into the show without closing and reloading SCS? And then when you did close and reload SCS it functioned OK?

On the general issue of skipping and repeating I am looking into a possible solution.

Sinorm · Post by **Sinorm** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 5:38 am

Mike Daniell wrote:I haven't come across Sinorm's problem before. Just clarifying the issue, are you saying that you started SCS a couple of day's before the performance and then went straight into the show without closing and reloading SCS? And then when you did close and reload SCS it functioned OK?

Yes, that is exactly what I did. I'm using my personal laptop for the show, and I always just put it in standby, I never actually shut it down. Since I was doing the show every night, I didn't bother to close SCS.

Mike Daniell · Post by **Mike Daniell** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 6:49 am

Sinorm, JIsgren, singingdog and anyone else who has experienced this problem, can you tell me exactly what settings you have under the View / Options / Audio Driver?

Sinorm · Post by **Sinorm** » Tue Apr 04, 2006 4:43 pm

I have "Use Software Mixer" checked, and both pre-buffer and playback-buffer set to 2000ms (So it might have been 2 seconds that were being cut off the beginging, honestly, I can't say for sure).

JIsgren · Post by **JIsgren** » Wed Apr 05, 2006 1:32 am

I will have to confirm the actual settings tonight, but the only setting I have changed from default is below.

It was skipping, looping track with both buffers set to 500ms -- usual problem, a cue would skip or loop if the system had sat for 5-10min.

For Sunday's performance I made the following changes:

Set both pre and playback buffers to 2500ms
Turned off the McAfee On-access virus scan
During the lull times in the performance I would cycle back and forth between several cues just to keep the system "awake"

I did not have any issues during this show. Since I change three things, I can not say which fixed the problem. If I have time this weekend before a show, I wil try to test each one individually to see if I can determine which one is the fix.

Besides this issue the software has been a lifesaver. I could not have done this show manually or at least I would have had to just output the sound-effects to teh FOH and send it to the 5 speakers I have buried on stage. I will put a show report on the main forum some time this week.

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