Posted
This is bugging me for quite some time and i cant find any consistency:
Last night i worked on an arrangement and SF would play almost instantly when hitting the space bar.
Right now, with exactly the same session, the lag is really obvious and W7 shows its "processing circle".
No other programs in background and exactly the same buffer settings.
The lag gets pretty annoying when editing quickly...
Tue, 2013-10-08 - 15:05 Permalink
Try the reset button on Audio & MIDI Setup window. This will recalibrate the timing with your DAW.
Thu, 2013-10-10 - 21:20 Permalink
ok cool. i'm pretty occupied atm. will try over the weekend and repoet back.
thanks!
Mon, 2014-07-21 - 12:40 Permalink
I still encounter the problem. Except, now its lagging all the time. No instant playback anymore whatsoever. This even happens with a totally empty session. :(
Resetting the Engine does not help at all. This is on SFE on W7 64bit with 32bit Engine. I wrote Andre about this. Maybe someone else has found a quick fix in the Prefs?
Mon, 2014-07-21 - 12:57 Permalink
The spinning wheel of W7 might indicate that something jams on your machine when playback is started. The long delay until Synfire receives a confirmation back from the Engine or DAW makes it think that host is utterly slow in responding, hence the lag of the graphics display.
Do you have network drives, sleeping drives that need to wake up, or similar things in your system? Anything that could cause your DAW to respond slowly?
Do you use a multi-client ASIO driver? Could this possibly jam the DAW, because it conflicts with other audio software also using the driver at the same time (including Synfire's Engine)?
Since you are seeing the spinning wheel on start, I'm pretty sure it's the DAW refusing to start immediately which causes this issue. We just need to find out why.
Mon, 2014-07-21 - 13:51 Permalink
I am not working with a DAW/drones atm. Its only Synfire with its engine. My DAWs (ProTools 10, Live & Reaper) dont exhibit the problem. My system is already optimized to work with ProTools according to Avids recommendations:
(http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/en_US/troubleshooting/en349411?popup…)
I´ll do some testing with my system prefs and report back.
Mon, 2014-07-21 - 16:59 Permalink
Hm, I did some system optimizations:
Disabled various drivers and functions.
Messed around with SFs prefs etc.
Now i dont see the "processing circle" anymore but SF plays back with some sort of pre-roll now?
I disabled pre-roll in the MidiKeys & Metronome options and set it to "none" in the MTC & Sync tab.
SF still plays back with 2 counts of pre-roll.
Mon, 2014-07-21 - 17:18 Permalink
A little preroll is required to synch with the Engine, although it should not be that much visible.
Most importantly the spinning circle is gone now. That will make a difference. Synfire recalibrates the transport from time to time. The faster the Engine responds on start, the tighter it will set the timing between the programs. You can not really influence this tuning, although a Reset in the Audio & MIDI Setup window might help (transport button).
Mon, 2014-07-21 - 17:48 Permalink
Hm. The lag is rather obvious. When watching your tutorials (arranging a song pt 2) there is no lag or preroll whatsoever.
I attached a video. Maybe this clears things up a bit and we can find out if it is what it is or if there´s something wrong with my setup.
Tue, 2014-07-22 - 14:00 Permalink
Well, the spinning circle is back. (Video attached) I worked the whole night on different arrangements. This morning all of a sudden the global rack was empty. No plugin (3xKontakt, 1x Omnisphere) was loaded. Also, the backup of the racksetup was empty as well. I managed to re-collect all sounds. When starting to work again, the spining circle of annoyance was back. There was no change in the system whatsoever. Thats kind of what I mean with frustrating: There is no apparent reason for this behaviour. Nothing changed on my end. But the system still behaves differently :(
Tue, 2014-07-22 - 15:52 Permalink
Thanks for the videos.
True, it works more responsive on OS X, but that's because audio is deeply integrated with the OS. The pre-roll in your video isn't too dramatic, as long as the music is in synch. I'll have a look at the code and see if the frequency of recalibrations could be increased.
This morning all of a sudden the global rack was empty.
Hm. That frightens me. I've not seen this yet. Are you sure? Could it be you filtered the rack modules by selecting an unused engine tab? This will also make it appear empty.
If it comes up empty, it must have been saved empty. Did you accidentally load another rack before quitting? Or hit File >> New? If so, your rack is still on disk. You just need to open it.
Tue, 2014-07-22 - 15:56 Permalink
Concerning the spinning circle, is there any heavy MIDI CC data in your arrangement? It needs to be pushed to the Engine before playback starts. This can cause a delay.
If so, try muting that instrument and see if the circle disappears. Thinning out MIDI CC might then help.
Tue, 2014-07-22 - 16:24 Permalink
Hey Andre. I sent you another video via mail. I´ll attach it here for your convenience.
It seems to have smth to do with the global rack. If the rack is empty, playback is instant. If I just add one empty track via doubleclick, playback lag is back.
It also happens with a totally empty arrangement. So CC data seems not to be the problem here.
Re: The disappearing racks. It did not happen for the first time. I just quit SF, rebooted the computer and there was not plugin present in the global rack anymore. But this is actually not as frightening as the fact that also opening the tonights backups of the racksetup resulted in an empty rack. None of the backups would give me back my Omni & Kontakt multis. I tried all 10 of them.
There´s a workaround though: I´ll just save every global rack in its respective project folder and make a safety copy.
Tue, 2014-07-22 - 17:03 Permalink
I´ll just save every global rack in its respective project folder
That's not a workaround, it's recommended. You can share the rack with multiple projects, but keeping a copy of it with each project ensures you can restore an old project later at any time.
I just quit SF, rebooted the computer and there was not plugin present in the global rack anymore.
Just the plugins not loaded, or all rack modules gone, nada?
Tue, 2014-07-22 - 17:27 Permalink
Just the plugins not loaded, or all rack modules gone, nada?
Just the Plug Ins not loaded. Rackmodules and descriptions still available.
Wed, 2014-07-23 - 10:59 Permalink
I just quit SF, rebooted the computer and there was not plugin present in the global rack anymore.
Did you know there is an item Rebuild Rack on the rack's utility menu? This will also reload plug-ins. If any error messages occur, you will learn why plug-ins don't get loaded.
Wed, 2014-07-23 - 21:18 Permalink
Cant wait. After a restart the lag is back on again. I´d test a beta build immediately if you want me to...
Wed, 2014-07-23 - 22:20 Permalink
Here's a trick that should work as a workaround:
- Set the device latency of "Internal GM Synth" to zero.
- Save the device
- Restart Synfire.
If you find any other devices with latencies > 50 ms, do so for them too. Also check if you have those in your arrangement rack.
Of course, when using these devices, you will experience out of synch sound. I assume however that you will not use the Internal GM Synth anyway, because of its awlful latency, so just don't assign it to any of your global instruments and you are fine.
Wed, 2014-07-23 - 23:11 Permalink
- Set the device latency of "Internal GM Synth" to zero.
Where exactly would I do that?
EDIT: Hm, In the global device descriptions the latency is already set to 0 for Internal GM Synth.
Any other place I might want to look at?
Thu, 2014-07-31 - 18:11 Permalink
I assume the patch Synfire just downloaded does not solve this issue, right? Is there an ETA for the next update?
The workaround unfortunately did not work. I´m back to laggy again. Whats interesting is, that it seem to get better , the longer Synfire is running. I left it on for a couple nights and in the morning playback would be snappy and tight.
ReBoot ---> back to Lag-Land