Perfectly sync sample notes with audio output

Help, Support & Bugs
1

Pulled Renoise onto a laptop with no plugins or anything else installed, just wanted to throw down quick things with the included samples and instruments.

First noticed this when I loaded the Bass AM Talk.xrni with the phrase looper … when I click play, I don’t hear the audio until 2 beats have passed visually. What?

So threw a kick on another channel in the main view. Doesn’t seem to matter what samples I load, visuals are off by 2 beats.

I’m not doing anything crazy here. Latency is set to 20ms, but it doesn’t seem to matter what settings I’m tweaking, I can’t seem to get the audio output to align visually with Renoise steps. The Sync offset setting does nothing, +/- 100ms or at 0.

What am I doing wrong? How do I get the audio and visual aligned? I don’t care about VST MIDI or external routing, etc. I just want basic sample audio aligned with the track notes.

Thanks

2

post moar info;

what OS, what version of Renoise, perhaps you can share a demo song so we can test on our setups/see what is wrong?

I think there were issues with certain Mac distro’s and laggy visuals, perhaps this is the case here?

3

It’s an Acer Predator Helios Neo 16 i7-13650HX w/32GB of memory on up-to-date Windows 10 Pro running a fresh install of Renoise 3.4.4, no plugins installed.

On default open, if you add:

  • Inst. > Bass > AM Talk.xrni to 00, and then add a C-4 note on Track 01
  • Inst. > Drums > Kick Generator.xrni to 01, and then C-4 note on Track 02 every four from 00 to 60

Is the setup I was testing with, no other changes.

Is there no timing adjustment for playback to synchronize the visual to audio that isn’t based on external gear or plugins?

I keep my installs extremely light, so there’s not much else on the laptop, no anti-virus software, etc.

4

what audio drivers are you using, does it matter if you change drivers? Asio should be best. Does it change anything if you lower/change the latency, sample rate?

Btw I can’t replicate the behavior according to your description, though don’t have the am talk instrument, so I substituted it with another bass sound, but I don’t think the sound setup is the problem here.

5

Perhaps in naivety I was really trying to avoid connecting an external audio interface, in part because I didn’t want another piece of gear in the office, and also just wanted to use my bluetooth headphones in case I need to switch to a call or phone audio in the moment without switching headsets. I also didn’t want to drag one of my few physical audio cans into the office just for this.

Yes, after throwing an old Focusrite Solo 1st Gen on, the issue is gone, visuals and audio sync up fine.

Anyone know if ASIO4ALL might be okay for this as well? Seems the simplest solution for keeping my bluetooth headset connected. If not, maybe Voicemeeter Potato will allow me to reroute audio.

Really wish Renoise as a DAW with sample-based roots had a latency parameter to adjust for it so it could be used in a more versatile way in a world where on-board DSP is no longer the norm.

For anyone else deeply familiar with Renoise that happens noticed that the AM Talk instrument has QA in the FX column of each note, just wanted to mention to that I removed all of them during testing as well so it wasn’t a factor. In either case, it was all audio with the visual delay, not just that instrument.

@Jonas, I appreciate the feedback. I had hoped there was a solution without a physical audio interface and separate cans, and if the possibility still exists, I’d prefer to go that way. Obviously the audio quality with physical IO is better across the board, but wasn’t what I was after in this case. If I have to have a physical interface to use Renoise this way, it means I can’t use it when I travel, as I’m already packed to the gills and have to bring back things from the US each time. Customs is trouble enough as it is, they’ll charge you for any uncommon gear they find they think they can ding you for, which sucks.

Any way, thanks.

1 Like
6

Internal soundcard with asio4all driver and normal headphones should be just fine. I think bluetooth drivers / headset is the problem here.

Not related to renoise, but on my tablet I also encounter latency issues when using my bluetooth headset while trying audio apps. Never really dove into fixes for it though, might be something for it?

7

@Jonas So, it seems like I have a working solution after playing with things a bit. I don’t know that it is 100% perfect, but any visual latency is substantially improved and still allows me to use my bluetooth headset.

When I downloaded and installed the ASIO4ALL driver, it showed all of my WDM Devices, with a few enabled by default, including the ‘Realtek HD Audio output with SST’ and Mic input. The ‘Realtek HD Audio 2nd output with SST’ was off, and the ‘Intel Smart Sound Technology for USB Audio’ had a red X through it and couldn’t be enabled. I did not hear audio from anywhere when I set Renoise to ASIO4ALL.

I saw one forum response somewhere that indicated using the ‘Realktek HD Audio 2nd output’ worked for them, and 30+ people saying it worked for them … but it did not work for me. If I had it enabled, I would hear no audio anywhere. Explicitly disabling 2nd output and switching to ‘Realtek HD Audio output with SST’ would get audio from the laptop directly, but not my Bluetooth headset or anywhere else.

I exited Renoise and ASIO4ALL, and while going through sound settings realized I had enabled the Realtek ‘Stereo Mix’ under Sounds > Recording. I disabled it, and then brought Renoise and ASIO4ALL back online. This time the ‘Intel Smart Sound Technology for USB Audio’ was available, though still off. As soon as I turned it on, I was getting audio through my Bluetooth headset. I didn’t find any documentation or forums mentioning this solution, but it seems like there may be a couple of different methods that work depending on the laptop, what drivers are installed, and other factors.

I’ve got the ASIO4ALL Buffer Size set to 256 and Renoise Sample rate set to 44100. Yes, there is some very slight fuzz, but I didn’t expect perfection out of the audio with this, just a way to play quickly without any headache or swapping things around. Renoise option ‘Linit to stereo in/out’ seems to reduce the fuzz even more, and I’ve also now disabled ‘Automatic Plugin Delay Compensation’ and ‘Enable overload prevention’, since I’m not using any plugins nor worried about CPU overload with basic samples. Maaaaaybe I’ll throw an internal delay or filter on a track or two sometimes, but I don’t expect to be using compression, limiting, or reverb for now. If I need that I’ll move the song onto a nas and open it on the studio box.

One thing that might be making a difference here is that I’m using a basic set of Yealink BH71 cans with a 35mm driver, but through the included Yealink BT51 adapter. It’s still Bluetooth, but I’m not sure if driver selection in ASIO4ALL, functionality, or just audio quality might be affected by using a pure Bluetooth connection - in case anyone else finds this and wants to try the same thing.

So conclusion: working solution, but with some caveats and details.

Thanks for the help and ideas around this!

8

I ran into at least lower audio quality using a Behringer U-PHORIA UMC404HD with an iPad Pro and Loopy Pro through a RREAKA USB Hub (fried my Kingston Nucleum in the process while testing when I was stupidly pulling and pushing 1/4 cables out of the Mackie ProFX12v2 I was routing external gear through to figure out why), but got amazing audio quality in and out switching to an RME Babyface Pro fs.

While I still need to figure out how to get Loopy Pro to stop clipping/fading initial audio while recording secondary tracks after the first, timing across everything seems very good - including using Loopy Pro as the master clock and running MIDI out through an Elektron Digitakt to a Korg Kick. I’m not running into the issue with vocals, but maybe it’s just less noticeable in that case.

I had been using my Yealinks and Bluetooth for that as well during test, as I was running Discord in a group session, and while I didn’t hit audio latency issues in that case that were obvious to me, I’m not certain if Bluetooth is still potentially a problem in that case.

If you’re interested and I figure out a solution (which I plan to play with soon), I can let you know if you think anything would prove helpful. As a potential solution for at least some of those cases, I notice more mixers and audio gear are starting to include Bluetooth interfaces directly, which may take that latency out of the equation, though not sure. The Tascam Model 12 for instance has Bluetooth 5.1 (I think) now, though I’m not 100% certain that works for headphones out or is only for input sources. Still, might be something in that vein with an external DSP processor and built-in Bluetooth that would work better than a direct Bluetooth connection.