Stutters And Drop Outs Causing Losing Timing Problems

Help, Support & Bugs
1

hi
Im running renoise 1.9 reg on an ibook G4 (OSX 10.4.11, 1.42Ghz, 1Gig SDRAM)
i have built a large RNS files for live performance (currently 600 meg and growing) .

I am working on a single hour long RNS file rather than building several small RNS files for each song individual song of the set, so when i perform live i can save on loading time between songs and just run through a single RNS (great, thanks to the speed change command!)

BUT!

i seem to be having problems and wondered if anyone else has experienced this (?) . . .

The song often “glitches” or drops audio for a few milliseconds .

I first thought this is due to the latency . but as the processor is running at approx 20% for the duration of the song (never exceeding 30%), and i have tried various latency settings including the maximum 93 milliseconds but latency settings make no difference .

it seems to happen when a new sample enters the song, or when a couple of large samples start to play for the first time together . if i leave a single pattern running it gradually sorts itself out and stops stuttering/dropping out)

is it due to the speed at which my computer is trying to load these sounds from my HD or load into RAM ?

ive no idea about how renoise technically goes about playing or reading these large files, but as the first performance of my live set is due in a couple of weeks im very keen to find a solution to this problem as soon as possible .

Has anyone else encountered this when using a large RNS file or when using large samples within a song ?

i am running about 8 tracks within the file, though only about 4 are active at any one time . each track is monophonic (single column) and sample based .

im using an edirol UA-3 USB soundcard (i know its cheap) and am also connected to a Midisport 2X2 usb midi interface.
the RNS file and the samples i have used (which are now within the RNS file) are all located on my ibooks internal drive and are not from an external hard drive .

I cant seem to work out how to avoid this problem .

sorry for the long explanation . .

im also only using the built in renoise plugins, no third party or anything else. . it glitches and drops out during parts of the song where only small drum samples are being used as well as during the sections where the longer samples are utilised . . and each time i run through the song it seems to dropout/glitch at different points .

could it be that my ibook needs a good spring clean ?

any help or advice on how people dealt with similar problems would be very much appreciated . thanks :)

2

Renoise currently stores all sample memory in RAM, so if your song is getting to huge for your installed RAM, the OS will start to swap memory (including the loaded samples) from/to your HD from time to time. As this swapping takes a while, these are the clicks you hear.

You could try to:

  • Buy/use more RAM (as much as you can get) to avoid swapping
  • Clean up your HD (so that the swap file can be created and used more efficient)
  • Use less samples (throw away everything you don’t need - try the “delete unused samples” options in the Renoise edit menu first)
  • Keep samples as small as possible (remove stuff from the end/outside the loop which you dont hear)
  • Split the song into more smaller songs (if your Live set allows this).
  • If you have time to do so in the gig, “preload” (simply play back) the new parts you want to play before really playing them back. This will move all samples you currently need into memory, thus the second playback should not click then.
3

just a picky note about this:
this function is actually named “delete unused instruments”, and it actually does not delete unused samples within used instruments.

For me it would be really helpful to have another “delete unused samples” option which does exactly this: delete unused samples regardless of if they are part of used instruments

4

Add with that “DFD” streaming. At least you have swapping activity on disk fully in own hand instead of letting the platform jump into conclusions at the wrong moment.

5

many thanks

im re-editing and scaling down the song now . . .

peace

hino