Same problem here. When it reaches about 50% of ‘cpu usage’ it is stuttering, you can hear that horrible crackling sound. Unacceptable. The thing is that it was all right in R2.8x and now it is not.
Windows 7, 64bit, I7, 16gb
UPDATE: Just checked in R2.8x and apparently it is stuttering too.
Luke, do you use 64bit?
Win7 64bit + Renoise 3.0b6 64bit.
UPDATE: Just checked in R2.8x 64bit ver and apparently it is stuttering too.
I have experienced that different drivers (DirectSound/ASIO) can perform quite differently.
Which audio driver have you got selected in the Renoise prefs - is it the same in 2.8 and 3.0?
Have you tried switching to a different driver, or to increase the latency?
BTW I tried this on a Core i7 Snow Leopard system, too: The same result. From ~50% on there will be recurring audio slowdowns with stuttering. And very often this happens when a 32-bit-bridged plugin comes in, but only on the beginning. And it seems to be quite independent from chosen latency!
Hi taktik and others, this song is a perfect example for the slow downs I am talking about: If I go to position 25 and loop it, I hear horrible crackles altohugh the cpu is around 41%.
Much more crackles are audible in the Edit and the Mix tabs. They almost will disappear if I switch to Sampler. Also even with 16ms latency and 33% cpu and still have sometimes little crackles. So still the gui can destabilize audio and also audio is not stable. Also tried different fps settings, no change. This time also 32bit vs. 64 bit no changes.
Diabling/enabling scopes makes no difference, too.
EDIT: If I disable the convolver in the “rev” send channel, the crackles will disappear in edit view. But why it does also disappear if I switch to Sampler?
With vsti’s in this song or without?
Without most plugins since I did not install them. I can remove all tracks except bass and reverb send, the crackle still is there.
Ok, because on my system everything is fine. i7 on windows 7 64bit (cpu usage ~20%). Seems to be a mac specific problem?
macbook pro, core i5, r3b6, tried via internal audio and external (20ms buffer/48khz) - NO ISSUES AT ALL.
p.s. Also I’m running this on the external "27 inch screen.
p.s.s. Why you are using that FLAC sample compression??? I see no reason for using flac samples at all.
UPDATE2!
when switching convolver to mono mode - no issues, back in stereo mode - crackle issues again.
UPDATE!
Ok, I’ve tried 88khz at 10ms latency on external audio card, looped 25th pattern and here are the nasty crackles comes in @ 45-50% cpu load. Also clicked different tabs, crackles gets much worse. But the issue can be solved turning off the convolver dsp. Turn off that convreverb on send - no issues, turn on - there are CRACKLES.
So i guess its a convolver issue.
Hey atarix, it’s no my song. FLAC doesn’t stress the CPU at all while playing since it’s decompressed on load.
So I conclude you have also crackles if going down to 10ms latency? Can you test if the crackles go almost away if you switch to sampler tab?
Ive tested with different buffer settings and there are still crackles. If i press to sampler tab there is a little less crackles but still unacceptable. I guess the issue is with the convolver DSP. May be its an issue with custom IR loaded into it, may be an issue with convolver sample freq conversion algorithm, i don’t know, I’m not so savvy in those things.
p.s. a little update, I’m on osx 10.9.2, not 10.9.1
Hm I believe these are more than one problems: On the one side, there is something going wrong with the convolver, on the other side audio starts to be unstable from 40% cpu on OSX, and also dependent on -some- gui drawings (e.g. not the scopes etc).
press stop button twice , resets audio engine …might work
Convolver indeed creates a few CPU spikes with very large IRs at low buffer sizes. Will check if we can improve things here a bit.
taktik, why does the stuttering go away if I go to sampler?
EDIT: Hm, sadly no real change in b7: Until 14ms, the above song will crackle a lot at that position. If I go to sampler tab, the crackles disappear now completely! Shouldn’t run a single instance of convolver with 8ms like other convolver do, too?
I can use 7 instances of RaySpace convolver plugin with 6ms, but not one from Renoise convolver? Hm…
Some comparison to Logic 8:
I can use 9 instances of rayspace In Logic 8 64bit using 256 samples latency. And I could use additional ~8 or more instances, WITHOUT any crackling!
See here:
Attachment 4791 not found.
So Renoise vs. Logic: 7 vs 17 ?? Sorry, there is a performance problem in Renoise Mac. But I will stop now reporting this.
I know, it’s an older thread, but it seems some people have to learn more about audio buffering…
These glitches and crackles are a result of too small audio buffers. It doesn’t matter how mega fast your CPU is, if your soundcard’s driver have poor audio buffers. The buffers are needed for processing the audio signal, before it goes outside your soundcard, when playing the song in your DAW in realtime, as if it were a realtime audio rendering. The informations will be pre-loaded into a buffer. From there it wil be processed by the CPU. The CPU is taking the pre-loaded informations out of the buffer for processing, while new informations will fill the buffers. The bigger the prohect, the more devices, VST’s, are used in the project, the more information will arrive the buffers the same time. But if the buffers are too small and completely filled with informatons for processing, they can’t load more further informations until the already loaded informations are processed by the CPU. These informations then will be dropped (lost). This information loss causes gaps in the singal and that are then the glitches and crackles you hear. It’s like a glass which is filled up to the top with water. If you then pour more water into the already filled glass, the water will spill over and will get lost. Same happens with the audio informations. This are so called “buffer overruns” or “buffer overflows”. If you then set bigger audio buffers, then more informations can be pre-loaded and processed by the CPU and cause also less glitches and crackles. But is has the disadvantage of bigger latencies because it takes more time to fill up the buffers with infos. But apart from this disadvantage it then has the advantage, that you need less cpu for the processing, because with bigger dada packets which arrive the CPU more infos can be processed by the cpu at the same time.
Now you have to make a compromise: smaller buffrs with less latencies, but may get gliches and crackles, or bigger buffers with more latencies, but without any cracles and glitches…
And: who really needs to work with just 3 ms of latencies? You don’t really notice the diffferences between 3 ms or 5 ms or even 8 ms, while playing your instrument live. Normally the human hearing doesn’t really notice big differences between zero latencies and up to 8 or 10 ms. And for audio processing it also doesn’t matter as long as you don’t work with live setups on a stage. Even with top end hardware, which the pros use for their live setup, you get some latencies, but a good player can learn, to compensate these latencies while playing live on stage.
I have a setup with 256 samples for my audio buffers (ca 5 ms of latencies). On bigger projects i even use 512 samples (ca 11 ms latencies). But these latencies are not too big, so that i was able to learn to compensate these latencies while playing my keyboard.
I use the 64bit version on a quad core
It also depends on the VST’s you are using. Most of older 32 bit vst’s were designed for just one CPU core (because multicore CPU’s were not yet available at this time). So they also will be processed by just one cpu core, not necessary if it’s a multi or single core CPU. And if you have a lot of such plugins inside your project, it can be that they all use the same CPU core for processing, and the dsp meter shows 50%, even when just one of four cores is used. Because these plugins can just use 1 core.
Could this something to do with the 32bit audio bridge? Maybe this is the problem, that the bridge consumes a lot of cpu that is not shown in the cpu meter… I
And it doesn’t have much to do with bridging them to 64 bit. I’m also using a lot of 32 bit plugins via the internal bridge in 64 bit Renoise and never had any issues, on the contrary, in my opinion the Renoise bridge is the best working i ever used. Never had problems with bridging in Renoise. But very often in other DAW’s and their internal Bridge. In my setup they use nearly the same CPU power as in 32 bit Renoise without bridging. The differences of more CPU conumption when bridging normally is so small, that you even can’t notice it.
This bridge is also extremely slow when restoring presets as I reported here
Never noticed here with bridged plugins.
No no no.
Its the gui. reported many times in here.