Hi,
another phenomenon that I couldn’t solve yet is a weird kinda distorted sound if a bass heavy sample like a kick is playing for the first time after a tiny break of about a second. Have a look:
It’s the very same sample, so it should be the exact same sound everytime it plays, but this isn’t the case.
What could cause this and how can this be avoided? Is this a bug or did I miss something?
So it’s a sample in the Renoise sampler?
Keep in mind some vsts and also vstis do not like Renoise’s auto suspend option, or require the static buffer option, e.g. Zebra 2. Valhalla plugins do not work properly with the auto suspend option. Such immediate, not proper powering-up of a vst could indeed cause such shown differences.
Maybe you can nail down the problem to a single track example song and post it here? Maybe by removing devices, you will already find the issue…
Yes.
Yes. TestB.xrns (56.8 KB)
As you can see there’s only the kick sample. No VSTs, no native effect devices, nothing. The weird phenomenon is still there. If you put a spectrum analyzer in the track effect chain you can additionally see what’s going on. In this case it only affects the first hit because of the tiny break between the last and the first hit. Anyway, the cause is still unknown. It’s definitely not caused by any VST or effect device. And it’s not the first time that I’m facing this. In 99% it affects bass heavy kicks samples. Either it’s a bug or a scientific phenomenon I don’t know about.
Hm can’t replicate, can you record it?
I also don´t get any distortions here.
Don’t know if it works, but here’s a shortened version as zipped mp3. Compare first and second hit through SPEAKERS. The “distorted” sound is not audible through headphones. But as you can see above in the GIF, there’s indeed a hit that’s very different (spreading throughout the whole frequency spectrum) from all the others. It sounds like there’s a second kick playing in parallel for a millisecond. If you press Q (note C4) quickly for several times, the first hit sounds different than the rest, too.
Download is not working it’s not loading the file.
Ok, last try: SndUp | TestB
Sounds exactly the same through speakers. Is maybe something clipping in you audio chain? I have such an issue when I go with 100% volume into my interface and I have to set it 95%.
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Maybe something weird with the audio driver, lost buffers? ASIO2all? Hm, no idea…
Looks indeed like a short spike or expected jump in the audio buffer. But can’t hear that here, surprisingly
Ah, I think I see what you mean. That’s something weird with the release phase of the sample (there is none). A quick fix is to add a volume ahdsr module, set attack to 0, sustain to 100 and give it a tiny bit of release like 40ms.
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Thanks for your ideas, guys! 
So I’ve tried several things, but the issue still persist. I’ve tried several settings of several audio drivers (@ffx ASIO4ALL v2, too), I’ve tried AHDSR in sample modulation, I changed the sound card settings and I checked the system settings. I think the culprit is the sound card (SoundBlaster Z) and I already could reduce the audibility of the “effect” by changing some settings. It’s almost inaudible now, but the overall sound is different, too (therefore I will have to recheck some mixes). Anyway, graphically it’s still the same (see GIF above). There’s still something happening what shouldn’t. Weird.
Volume is at 35%, both headphones (Focusrite Scarlett Solo) and speakers (SoundBlaster Z). This phenomenon is only audible through speakers.
Thanks! Unfortunately this didn’t affect the first hit, but all the others.
But didn’t you see it in the analyzer?
Is it on both channels / monitors?
mic up your speakers and record the output.
the other thing you could do is check the back of your speakers to see if the bass knobs are turned up at all.
the other other thing you could do is render the sequence and then play it outside of renoise to see if the problem really is renoise and not just a problem with your speakers.
Which analyzer is this? Maybe this is a problem with the analyzer?
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It’s mono, so yes. 
Checking the render is obviously the best method to recheck if the problem is still there. And btw, there are no knobs at the back of my speakers, there’s only a connection for the speaker cable.
It’s not really an analyzer, it’s MEqualizer. But it shows exactly what I can hear through speakers including all the tiny deviations. Every Melda product that has a frequency view shows exactly the same. I also checked with Voxengo SPAN and TDR Prism, and indeed in this case there’s no difference graphically. Nevertheless I still can slightly hear a difference, but only through speakers. Through studio monitors and headphones there’s no difference. I’m running only the speakers via SoundBlaster Z, this has to be the culprit.
Sample the sound or the renoise output for us! In the render we would see if there is really something in the audio, or by sampling the renoise app output stream, I can do it with jack on linux.
It might be a dual problem, and thus so hard to diagnose. I.e. what if both your affected sound card has a fault - i.e. entering suspend state when there is no sound output for a while, maybe it can be disabled - and then also the analyzer has a quirk that after silence it would also suspend and the first transient after some time is not calculated right. Then the audio (renoise’s part), could be blameless, no problem, just in the analyzer and your card.
It’s a freaky problem I admit…would drive me nuts, as well…