Media Player Drop Outs?

I’ve been making progress with Cantabile 3 Performer and going through all my songs creating my live show setup. While programming all my songs to play back audio and do midi automation for my guitar I’ve noticed that I’m getting drop outs in the audio media player. It’s usually (roughly) at the same point a minute or so into the first song played during any given fresh start then it doesn’t really drop out again. I have noticed that it will drop out audio every once in a while but not as frequently as when I open or re-open Cantabile. I read @brad ‘s book and was able to make most the adjustments for best performance but some of the deeper file adjustments were out of my league and I didn’t want to screw up my comp. My laptop is new and the specs are:

EUROCOM SKY X7C;17.3” FHD 60Hz Matte; 330W GTX 1060; 6GB DDR5; N17E-G1;100x124mm;MXM3.1
3.6GHz Intel Core i7-9700KF;8C/8T;12MB L3;14nm;LGA1151;95W
32GB;DDR4-2666; 260-pin;SODIMM;1.2V;CL15;KINGSTON HYPERX Windows 10 Home Edition, 64-bit
M.2; 250GB SSD; SAMSUNG 860 EVO; SATA3; MZ-N6E250BW
1TB;7200pm; 2.5in 7mm; Seagate BarraCuda Pro; ST1000LM049
1TB;7200pm; 2.5in 7mm; Seagate BarraCuda Pro; ST1000LM049
M.2 2230; Intel AC-9260; 2x2 AC+BT; Gigabit; WLAN

Any thoughts?
Thanks
Leroy

No takers on this one? I would really like to figure out why I’m getting audio dropouts.

Hey Leroy,

I can suggest you use the Profiler to examine CPU loads of it all and search for the event near your glitch. View>Profiler. Beyond that you could send the log files to Brad for a look see.

Dave

I’ll check it out thanks!

Hey Leroy,

what audio interface are you using? Audio interface and driver settings are (amongst others) key determining factors for any drop-outs or glitches.

Specs-wise, your system should be more than capable of playing audio - but of course it would be interesting what your song files are doing beside playing autio files. Maybe something is happening within the rest of the song (plugins) that is overtaxing the system, thereby affecting the overall output. As soon as something in your audio chain is stressing out your system so it doesn’t deliver the next audio block in time, there will be glitches in output. Very probably the source of your glitch isn’t your media player, but something else happening.

That’s why @dave_dore’s pointer to the Profiler is spot-on - you can find out if something in your song is creating buffer underruns.

Cheers,

Torsten

My interface is a Presonus Quantum 3 2626. I’m running it at 44.1. I’m using Cantabile to play back media players which are a few audio and one midi for a tempo track. Also I have bindings for my set list to automate my guitar FX. I’ll check out the profiler tonight.

So I just ran the Profiler and when I had a drop out it showed nothing in the Profiler. So I opened up my task manager and Cantabile was maxing out my CPU. Cantabile was going between 60% and 80% CPU. It was never like this before. I was using about 6% CPU recently. Next I opened up my DAW Studio One 5 and it was maxing out my CPU as well. What the heck is going on here? Something has recently change on my PC. My custom power plan is still activated. I just don’t know what may have happened. :rage:

I just sorted out why my CPU was high. I thought maybe because the Profiler showed nothing that it was my Presonus 2626 interface. I read online that clicking on the “Enable optimized PreSonus power plan for Thunderbolt audio streaming” might fix the drop outs but no my CPU went through the roof! But… I’m still getting drop outs…

Hi Leroy,

Not sure what’s up but there is a tool that can help diagnose latency problems here:

https://resplendence.com/latencymon

It might help figure it out. I heard where some Win10 updates caused strange CPU load changes on some laptops and PC’s so that might be it.

Dave

You run it with all the apps closed except it and with the current audio interface and driver plugged in. It will tell you what process and/or driver is causing the dropouts.

And you could also check your Windows update history to see if it coincides with the current trouble starting up.

I ran LatencyMon and it said everything was good. I watched this video and made all the changes that needed to be done, it seemed to make a little difference with the occasional spikes I’m getting in the Cantabile Profiler and it looks like the page faults are down too. Unfortunately I’m still getting drop outs. I don’t get why I can run a session in my DAW (Studio One 5) with lots of tracks and VSTs running and have no issues but playing one audio track and one midi track in Cantabile gives me drop outs. I’m getting the feeling it’s not Cantabile. Yes I’m frustrated… I really hope I can find the problem or I’ll have to go old school and use my DAW to handle all my show data. Back in the day when I was doing a solo live stream show to the internet I was running a full session of tracks minus my vocals and guitar and running Wirecast broadcasting software with 3 cameras with everything automated in Reaper and in 2 years of shows never had one glitch. It would be great if there was someone who could do a remote look into my PC and see if there’s anything that can be done.

Hi Leroy,

Could you post your Cantabile song and any racks used in it here on this post for us to look at. And a screenshot of the Audio Engine settings you use in Cantabile.

Thx

Dave

Leroy,

I did a year of daily live shows in 2018-2019 using Cantabile feeding into Voicemeeter (Voicemeeter with A1 pointing to my MOTU ASIO box so I could tap off the outputs directly in the Voicemeeter System Settings) to get Cantabile’s output into OBS and live stream to YouTube, and never had any glitches then. (Two cameras for me.) Maybe something changed recently. I’ll recall my setup and see if I can get it to glitch.

Terry

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SHOW 50 SONGS.cantabileSetList (13.4 KB)
HELIX RACK.cantabileRack (2.0 MB)

I’ve seen some of your YouTube videos and it looks like it’s working great! I know there are people doing way more with Cantabile than me so this has to be something that can been fixed.

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Thanks Leroy, I can’t answer why Studio One works well at the 64 bit buffer but the first thing I would try would be to adjust the audio buffer in C♪3 up in value from 64 to the next possible larger size and keep increasing it till glitches go away completely just so we see if it’s tied to that somehow. I realize you want to run at as low a latency as you can so this is just to gather info.

Hi Leroy,

we’ll need the song files as well; the set list doesn’t contain the song files. Also, the media files you are playing would be helpful for diagnostics.

Cheers,

Torsten

I tested it at 128 and 256 and had drop outs though they seemed to be shorter. Oddly enough at 64 I played several songs with no drop outs.

Torsten is right, if you could upload at least one known Cantabile Song file that glitches would be helpful as well …

Thanks Leroy for running those tests, it sounds like latency in general isn’t the issue from the findings …

Dave

Here’s a few tracks you can use.

Link to Audio and Midi files

BLUE.cantabileSong (35.1 KB)
MONTUCKY BLUES.cantabileSong (38.9 KB)

I don’t think its a latency issue ether. I uploaded some song files.