Go Back   Cockos Incorporated Forums > REAPER Forums > newbieland

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 10-30-2019, 01:58 PM   #1
spblat
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2015
Posts: 7
Default Troubleshooting drops during recording?

Is there a way to get REAPER to report in real time when it's having trouble writing audio from USB to disk? I had an old 2016 MacBook (the one with the crappy mobile processor) and it took 16 channels from our XR18 with zero issues, for years. Then I got a new MacBook Pro and it's dropping samples like crazy during recording.

Sounds like this. Impossible to miss the pops and gaps in the recording.

What you can see at 8:11.5 (11.5s in the recording) is that the bass track (1) goes silent and the guitar track (5) has a time gap.

I'll play with buffer size but I've read that just increasing the buffer can cause other problems. Can REAPER show in real time when it's having trouble keeping up with incoming audio?
Attached Images
File Type: jpg Untitled.jpg (60.0 KB, 80 views)
spblat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-06-2019, 03:26 PM   #2
suchatravesty
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Feb 2018
Posts: 154
Default

Other people do it, but I've always had problems recording more than a couple tracks at a time to an external drive. I think my problem was write speed of the flash drive.
suchatravesty is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-07-2019, 09:16 AM   #3
spblat
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2015
Posts: 7
Default

Thanks. This is driving me crazy. With the same software and same template and no active plugins, I was flawlessly recording 16 live channels from USB to FLAC on a 2016 MacBook with an underpowered mobile CPU. Everything was perfect. Now I have a 2019 MacBook Pro and it’s dropping like crazy with the CPU hanging around 3%. I’m not using an external drive and I have no idea how to try and troubleshoot this to see where the bottleneck is.

Any suggestions?
spblat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-07-2019, 09:52 AM   #4
DVDdoug
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Jul 2010
Location: Silicon Valley, CA
Posts: 2,774
Default

Quote:
I'll play with buffer size but I've read that just increasing the buffer can cause other problems.
The ONLY downside to a bigger buffer is latency (delay) and that's only a problem if you are monitoring yourself through the computer and it's difficult to perform.


I'm not an expert on this and I'm a Windows user, but it's usually related to multitasking and your operating system is always multitasking even when you're only running one application.

Quote:
Now I have a 2019 MacBook Pro and it’s dropping like crazy with the CPU hanging around 3%.
It's not always related to total CPU usage. Some other application/driver/process just has to "hog" the system for a few milliseconds too long and you get buffer overflow. A faster computer usually helps because it can finish-up the other tasks faster. But, your newer-faster computer is probably doing something that your older computer wasn't doing.
DVDdoug is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-07-2019, 10:19 AM   #5
spblat
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: May 2015
Posts: 7
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by DVDdoug View Post
The ONLY downside to a bigger buffer is latency (delay) and that's only a problem if you are monitoring yourself through the computer and it's difficult to perform.
Thanks. Last night’s session seemed to have worse dropouts with a smaller buffer, so I’ll crank it up to 4096 samples next time and see how that goes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
spblat is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-07-2019, 10:53 AM   #6
Fabian
Human being with feelings
 
Fabian's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Sweden
Posts: 7,407
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by spblat View Post
<snip>
Can REAPER show in real time when it's having trouble keeping up with incoming audio?
To answer this question, no.

Reaper gets buffers filled with samples from the audio interface driver, and Reaper cannot know that the driver wasn't able to capture all samples coming from the interface.

Outputting, Reaper can tell when the buffer is overrun, but not on input, AFAIU.
__________________
// MVHMF
I never always did the right thing, but all I did wasn't wrong...
Fabian is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -7. The time now is 11:08 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.