Double hit on click tracks (solved)

[darrenmckane]

I'm running a show where the audio is recorded in 5.1 with a click track on the center track for the live musicians. Most times all plays fine, sometimes the click (M-Audio output 3 of 8, via firewire from a very profesionally stipped down windows XP desktop) plays with a second image of the click just after it like a heart beat. The gap between the first and second click varies from play to play and, as I have said, normally it plays without this problem at all. I have reduced the number of files it's buffering ( from 15 to 5 ) and this so far has seemed to help but flitting around the playlist I can still make it produce the problem. Musicians (I like them but they have their own world) don't seem to like "clickclick" instead of "click"
Have we had this before?
Do we have any Ideas?
The show has months to run so any ideas will have time to be tested (just don't f**k me over with something that makes my show stop)
darrenmckane@gmail.com
or watching this thread
Thanks

[Mike Daniell]

Could you email me your cue file (the .scs file) and tell me a cue on which this occurs?

[richard.marrett]

I'm the MD on this project to which Darren is referring, and created the files in 5.1 for the show. My hunch about the problem (which is intermittent on different files, so can't be inherent in the actual tracks) is that the tracks within the multi-channel wav seem to sometimes get played out of phase, as there is a noticeable change in the quality of the other channels often when the centre (click) is affected.

[Mike Daniell]

OK. What I'd like to find out is: (a) what sound card you are using, and (b) what output assignments you have in the Production Properties. Also, the settings you have under General Options / Permanent Options / Audio Driver would be useful to know.

[Mike Daniell]

Thanks for the cue file. I've emailed you a detailed reply, but for the benefit of other users the "double hit" is caused by having two SCS output devices refering to the same outputs on the same multi-channel card, and playing the cues to both of these outputs. Thus, every track (including the click track) is played twice to the respective physical device outputs. Normally the duplicate playback is tightly synced, so you don't notice the dual-playback, but it appears that sometimes the playbacks are not quite in sync. This could be due to other overheads in the way you have set up your cues, as explained in my email.

The solution is simple - just remove completely the second SCS device and references to it. Your click track (and other tracks) will then always play to just one multi-channel output device and you therefore will not get any "double hits".

[darrenmckane]

Thanks Mike