Se Connecter:     

Forum: General Discussion

Sujet: Audio playback issue

Ce topic est ancien et peut contenir des informations obselètes ou incorrectes.

Hello

Im having an audio playback issue when out gigging and have narrowed it down to my laptop. I recorded a bad segment of audio last nght using the record facility in VDJ so i know its a source issue and not related to my soundcards etc

I suspect either a HDD of Ram issue. Im not that savvy on when it come to I.T so if somebody could give an over view of what the process is when VDJ loads and plays a track and potential areas of fault, it would be very useful

The issue usually crops up after a coule of hours and is intermittent. I can load and play a song with no problems but later play the same track with an dit sounds terrible.

I know all the tracks are fine as i have played them before without any problems.

I have a recording and will find somewhere to share it and post a link, its a mild stutter

Acer extensa
dual core centrino
1gb ram
Xp (stripped down)

it has been suggested my laptop is not up to scratch now but if that was the case surely i would encounter more than just the odd intermittent issue

link to audio file - http://soundcloud.com/dave71/audio-issue
 
Posté Sun 04 Dec 11 @ 6:29 am
Well for starters you'd be better off all round if you fitted some more RAM.

The fact that the symptoms appear after a few hours could point to heat issues. If the computer gets too hot, it can affect all sorts of things.

The delay in occurrence could also mean that there's a memory leak somewhere. The lack of RAM will only emphasise that.
 
Thanks for that. I use a laptop cooling pad all the time but will look into more or new ram anyway

cheers
 
well a memtest (memtest86) came back fine

i have ordered more ram and will fit that asap

trying to recreate the problem is a pain, ive had my laptop running in my warm office for several hours without the cooling pad. Im monitoring task manager as i go just incase anything pops up there

cpu spikes at about 56% when loading tracks
 
I think i have just nailed the problem. A little embarrassing!

After 6 hours of sitting in autoplay there were no signs of any stuttering, laptop was nice and hot task manager was not displaying any issues.

I adjust the pitch on a track with key lock enabled and "there she blows" background stutter. reset the pitch and its fine.

This little problem has had me baffled for 3 months now.

I will have 3 gig of ram by tomorrow evening so that will help. My OS was installed by an IT friend of mine so its stripped down with all the settings optimized for performance etc.

Will see what happens at my next gig.

i have recorded a snipet with no pitch correction then with http://soundcloud.com/dave71/audioissue.

so would a lack of ram cause this?
 
If you are getting stuttering when adjusting the pitch with keylock on, then this is probably because you are using advanced/quality master tempo setting and your computer is not fast enough to cope.

If you are running an older version of VirtualDJ, then the advanced master tempo in this had very high system requirements. If you upgrade to the latest VirtualDJ v7, the new quality master tempo will provide both better sound quality and also lower system requirements.

If you are already running VirtualDJ v7, then your computer may have performance issues - Please see: http://www.virtualdj.com/wiki/Performance%20Issues.html
 
Basically using key lock, which is a very common thing to use, shouldn't be blowing the thing up.

But when listening to your sample, you are pitching the song up pretty much, eventually to keep your key locked it would mean the algorithm will be taking out frames which will never be very nice for your sound quality.

So in your last example its hard to determine wetter its the huge pitch versus key lock or a performance issue, in your earlier example I do hear some timing being slightly messed up (the groove doesn't feel 'right').

But for this, its not fair to discredit your soundcard and just forcus at your laptop. VDJ's behavior, stuttering and timing will be affected by the performance of your drivers. Key lock is a DSP intensive action not particularly on memory (besides the fact that a GB is kinda little).

What soundcard are you using and what drivers?
 
Thanks for the replies.

I am running vdj 7.0.4 and have my laptop setup for maximum performance (done by fellow Dj and IT specialist) but will check the performance thread to see if there is something else that im missing in VDJ

I am able to adjust the pitch with no stuttering if i switch the keylock off, as soon as i enable the keylock it stutters. A key locked pitch shift as little as 1% causes the stutter.

I have the problem using either my external denon hc4500, numark djio or internal soundcard (all with latest drivers)

Somebody has pointed out that my processor is at the bottom end of the scale as is my Ram so these two things factored together wont help.

Update

I have just been through the performance thread and everything seems fine there. Now the Master Tempo is not something i had investigated and to be honest im not that savvy with IT so i have kind of left things alone. I tried setting the master tempo to Advanced Streatching and ran the procedures as before listening for stutter. The advanced stretch has improved the output quality in comparison with before but not provided a clear solution. the entire track sounds "garbled"

have run the dpc latency checker and just using the onboard soundcard there are no yellow bars let alone red.

Our IT guy at work has suggested it may be simply that im running out of ram so VDj is having to read from the Hdd.

Still waiting for the post man with my extra ram. I had considered installing an SSD but my laptop is 3 years old now so a new machine is the way forward.

In addition i have all my music stored on my internal Hdd but have just tried the same track from an external usb device - there is no difference. i know the track itself is fine.

Dave
 
Update

I have recieved an installed my additional Ram and am now up to 3Gig. The ram is installed and working perfectly

Stuttering issue is still there when using pitch adjust, keylock with master tempo on fast stretching. However, changing the master tempo to advanced stretching is far better now so i guess its a fix.

i have just launched task manager and with 2 tracks playing at the same time with +10 pitch and keylock enabled, cpu is spiking at 11% with 4% being the average

thanks for al the replies and info, much appreciated

Dave
 
I have noticed a similar issue with my XP machine. AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.4Ghz, 3.5G RAM (4G installed, stupid XP) Win XP 32bit. I am using a Mixtrack Pro for my sound source and controller. I have 3 internal drives, one for the OS, one for Audio, and one for Karaoke/Video. I spent a few months trying to identify my occasional "warble" in an audio track. It was really evident in something with a long acoustic note, like a piano. I could play the tracks with no issues in another player. I re ripped the track several times trying different encoders and straight wave. Just this past weekend I made the connection to the scratch settings. Because I would use the scratch mode of a jog wheel to speed through a track, then turn it off when playing the track (stupid me keeps touching the platter while playing the track), the feature would not always be in use.

I was going through some karaoke tracks that ripped bad and had garbled graphics. While doing this, I had audio on another deck in automix. Sure enough I heard the distortion. I made the connection to scratch mode. I have switched latency and fast stretching settings, and have not noticed the sound problem. I may try the ASIO driver mode to see if the problem exists there. At no time during any of this did my CPU pass 12% mixing both decks and beating up the platters (I can not call what I do scratching, more like pain and hardware abuse).
 


(Les anciens sujets et forums sont automatiquement fermés)