audio stuuter and pan?

[graemeftv]

I have been using scs 10.2.0 on a pretty basic spec laptop and found the audio no prob from either a usb external card or the internal audio.
using the pan controls to send fx to certian outputs. Never been more happy to pay for a bit of software than scs

now building a bespoke scs pc! running latest verison of scs
with 2 gb ram
asus mother board
fresh install of windows xp sp2 and NO junk running in the background!

tried 2 different sound blaster sound cards. and finding when 1 audio track is playing - fine but when you set another cue running it makes the first one blip just a bit. changing the settings on the internal mixer on / off selection and buffer times helps slightly.

the main thing i dont understand is the older version 10.2.0 pans and level changes no problem and there is no option to turn internal mixer on or off
on latest version its also not great that the pan function doesnt work with internal mixer off, but also that the pan control stays in view and can be adjust but having no effect - all a bit confusing.

iam going to try installing scs 10.2.0 on my new build pc and see how we get on with the buffering/ stutter problems.
any suggestions?

[Mike Daniell]

Stuttering is usually due to 'buffer underrun', where the playback buffer is not filled quickly enough. The most common cause of this is the small playback buffer that is specified when using the SCS Internal Mixer, which in fact is the BASS Mixer add-on. The option to turn off the internal mixer was added sometime after 10.2 - not sure when - as a work-around for this stuttering problem. By turning off the internal mixer and increasing the playback buffer size to 5000ms, all users who followed this recommendation have reported stuttering fixed.

The Internal Mixer was added in SCS 10 to address some limitations that were in SCS 9, including the pan function limitation. This is basically a limitation imposed by the BASS audio library and their 'solution' is to use the BASS Mixer add-on (implemented as the SCS internal mixer). So with SCS 10.2.0 your pans worked OK because you were using the internal mixer. The latest version of SCS should also enable your pans to work if you use the internal mixer, but if you disable that (to fix the stuttering issue) then unfortunately you may lose pan control if you specify speaker outputs other than the default speakers.

I didn't realise the pan control was enabled even though pan itself was disabled.

Could you email me your cue file (the .scs file)?