To PreLoad Whole File or not to PreLoad

[Eric Snodgrass]

I'm running SCS 10.3.1 on a Compaq desktop loaded with Vista Home Basic SP1, with an M-Audio Delta 1010LT card. There are no other programs running in the background or stealing resources. The computer is rarely hooked up to the Internet. I'm unsure of the amount of RAM at the moment (I'm not near the computer).
I've used this computer successfully for a year without problems. Now I'm experiencing a bit of a problem.

I'm doing a musical where the music is all 2-channel stereo tracks. Playback is simply output to 1 and 2 of the Delta card. There are roughly 17 cues in the show. Only four of them are manual. The rest of the cues are autofollows, with each cue set up to start 0:00 after the end of the previous cue. All of these cues are music cues, with the times ranging from 45 seconds to 8:30 minutes. Most of the files are .aif files, with resolutions of 24-bit, 48kHz.
So what's the problem? Well, occasionally, when a cue ends and another begins immediately there is a noticeable "tick" sound right as the new cue begins to play. The sound isn't in the files and it doesn't really sound like a low-buffer issue. I'm wondering if, using such big files, I should tell the program to Pre-Load each file. Since I can't find much information on exactly what is happening when checking "Pre-Load Whole File" I'm only guessing it preloads the whole file into memory.
If this is indeed the case then I can see where it might bog down system resources with such large files. Should I instead simply increase the Pre-Buffer length to get more of the file into memory? Increasing latency isn't really an issue with this show. Once the first cue of the entire autofollow sequence is started, the show basically runs itself (there are no sound effects - it is simply music for a rock opera).

[Mike Daniell]

I don't suggest you pre-load whole files. You guess correctly that this causes entire files to be loaded into memory.

The first thing I'd try is to not use the SCS Internal Mixer, and use the SCS defaults for buffering. See this posting for more information.

If that doesn't help, can you include short fade-in and fade-out times for your cues? By 'short' I mean something like 0.1 second.

[Eric Snodgrass]

I'm going in early today to attempt your suggestion to not use the internal mixer.
I'd already considered doing the quick fade-in, fade-out, at no more than .1 second. I'm not sure I could go any longer without hearing the results.

If neither of these things works then I'll attempt to edit the files together to make a few very long files. I've already used the program to play files as long as 28 minutes, so I know this will cure the problem if nothing else will.

I'll post my results.

[Mike Daniell]

Something else that occurred to me is to increase (if necessary) the 'Max. No. of Audio Files to Pre-Open' to at least the maximum number of consecutive auto-start cues, plus 1.

You say that you only have 4 manual start cues and the rest are auto-start 0.00 seconds after the end of the previous cue. So if you have, for example, up to 6 auto-start cues following a manual start cue, then set the 'Max. No. of Audio Files to Pre-Open' to 7 or higher. The reason for this is that SCS opens and pre-buffers a part of several audio files, and when a cue ends SCS looks for the next file or files to be opened and pre-buffered. However, SCS defers this action if another cue is currently playing, unless this would defer pre-buffering the next cue to be played. So what may be happening is that if you have 'Max. No. of Audio Files to Pre-Open' set at the default value of 5 and you have more than 4 consecutive auto-start cues, then SCS has to open and pre-buffer a file while another file is playing. By increasing 'Max. No. of Audio Files to Pre-Open' as suggested above you can ensure that pre-buffering never takes place while a file is playing.

Edit: Make that 'plus 2', not 'plus 1', or SCS may still try to pre-buffer a file when it is about to start the final cue in a sequence of auto-start cues. So in the above example, set 'Max. No. of Audio Files to Pre-Open' to 8 or higher.

[Eric Snodgrass]

Good to know about how SCS pre-buffers. That information might come in handy in the future.
However, in the present I don't need it because what worked for my situation was switching away from the SCS internal mixer. The show I'm currently doing has the shortest file at about 11 seconds - all the rest are at least a minute-and-a-half, with a few longer than 8 minutes, so I don't think pre-buffering more files would have been the answer. I do see how that would come in handy if I had a load of short effect files to be played in rapid succession.

[Peter Jackson]

H

[Peter Jackson]

Hi Eric
I have just read about your problem in the forum and I know it was a couple of months ago but I had a similair noise on track start and discovered that if you turn off all 'Windows' operating sounds it cured the problem, so it might be worth trying if you haven't already.
Regards

[Eric Snodgrass]

Thanks, Peter, but I learned to do that years ago when I first started to edit audio on an ASIO-based DAW.
Switching away from the internal mixer was the solution to the problem described in this thread. Once I did that it was smooth sailing for the rest of the run.