Dropouts at low CPU % and the Starved 1 & 0 option

[Alanfc]

Hello-

I have this 28 track song that is dropping out at the same point every time.

It didn't start doing it until I went over 35 tracks. I have 11 realtime FX on. Once I cut back the tracks to 28, the problem still occurs. I 've narrowed it down to this delay I have on a guitar part that I cannot live without. It doesn't drop out when I remove the delay. I may just Apply it after making a clean copy to archive. It happens in the middle of a short breakdown where 26 tracks go silent and two guitar tracks play a little ditty. Could this be a cause. ? The CPU load is only hitting 20-24% at any given time.

What if I stretched a bunch of the other tracks out through the silent part and just put envelopes on them to mute them?

My latency is already pretty high

HS XL 2002, Win XP, 1 GB of RAM, 7200 speed hard drive

My big question:

Would the Starved 1 or 0 option help me here?

Like if I put it on "0" instead of "1", would that stop the program from dropping out?

Any comment would be greatly appreciated

-Alan

[dachay2tnr]

Certain plugins tend to be very resource intensive. Reverb and delay are among the more demanding – and certain brands (e.g., Waves) are very demanding.

I think you’ve already answered your own question. Clone and archive the original track and apply the delay destructively to the copy.

You could also try mixing down some of the other tracks to a single track (e.g., mix all your drums to a single stereo track and archive the originals). However a destructive application of the plugin seems to me to be the most straightforward approach and most likely to have the desired results.

[kgirl72]

Does anyone know if there is a stop if starved function in the aud.ini any longer in Sonar 3, that is? I don't see it, but maybe it's named something else?

In the Sonar support on Cakewalk's site, it does say you should delete everything under a certain place, and then save the aud.ini file, then restart. But, this isn't really doing the same thing, is it? Not that I need to, but not knowing the details on little tricks like these is maddening. Ha ha.

-Kirstin

[Alanfc]

Hi Kirstin, sorry I don't have that high-falutin' Sonar 3. (do you like it?)

anyway I just tried a few things and I think I solved the problem

I went in and pulled up the bundle and re-saved under a different WRK file name, also increased my latency, and merged/economized on some tracks. Seems OK now. Everytime I get to that point in the song though I still cringe. I will do some human doubling on those guitar tracks that I thought I HAD to have that delay on...(probably will sound better anyway that way)

Unfortunately for anyone else with my situation trying to learn how to fix, I changed 3 things all at once instead of one at a time, so that I never really learned what was causing the problem by process of elimination.

thanks for the help

[moskus]

Originally posted by kgirl72
Does anyone know if there is a stop if starved function in the aud.ini any longer in Sonar 3, that is?

It has always been gone by default, you need to type it in yourself.

[kgirl72]

Well, actually I mean 2.2 v. Sonar 3, not that it all of a sudden disappeared or anything.

Are people just typing this line in the aud.ini file? Would that even work like it would have on others? The thing is I never tried it on any of the programs, either. If you are to type something like that in yourself, where would you put it in the order of things in the aud.ini file, and what EXACTLY would you type? Does anyone just add lines into the aud.ini file like that?

Addendum: Well, check that out, no stop if starved in any of my past versions either! I should have looked before going into this. I'll do some searching in the website myself to see what people did there.

Sorry, I'm an idiot, perhaps.
-Kirstin

[kgirl72]

Alan, I don't know yet. I have lots of dropouts, with just one track even. Ha ha, so there that is. Hence, my interest in this question specifically.

-Kirstin

[tombuur]

Got lots of drop-out this weekend working on a 10 track midi file with one audio track with looped drums. Processor never used more than 5% or so, yet I got the dropouts. Increased latency to 10ms and that improved matters somewhat, but didn't really cure it. And running this little 2.9ms should not be a problem.

[moskus]

Depends on the instruments and effects you have. Spikes in the CPU usages can/will cause a dropout.

[tombuur]

No istruments (external midi sound module). Only Lexicon reveberb on drum loops. And that ain't much.

[kgirl72]

Hey guys,

I've been searching a lot, but I can't for the life of me figure out how these people are doing this stop if starved technique. When I open my aud.ini file, there is no line that says this to scroll down to, though all the posts say that all you have to do is scroll down to the line that says stop if starved, change the number, etc.

So, if we are supposed to type it in, why do none of these instructions say this, and why are some people able to see it, when I can't if it's already there? If we are supposed to type it in, where do I type it in the ini file? Before what line, after what line, that kind of thing.

I'd like to try it out to see if it helps, but I can't even find that line. Am I seriously missing something? Moskus, you indicated that it has to be typed in, that it's not there by default. The posts here seem to indicate that the stop if starved is there, but that it IS set by default to stop if starved, not keep running. Nowhere on my aud.ini file does notepad say stop if starved. Am I blind? Cakewalk says nothing of it on their site, either, so I'm assuming it's not recommended, whatever this tweak is, but I'd like to try it. Can anyone help?

Thanks,
-Kirstin

[kgirl72]

K, here's what I figured out...I finally found it in Sonar 2, don't know why I couldn't see it the first, oh, million times I looked. But, it's not in Sonar 3 aud.ini file. Is it possible to do this in Sonar 3, that you guys are aware of, or was this functionality removed? Or are you guys as stumped as I am at this very second?

Thanks,
Kirstin

[moskus]

Originally posted by kgirl72
K, here's what I figured out...I finally found it in Sonar 2, don't know why I couldn't see it the first, oh, million times I looked. But, it's not in Sonar 3 aud.ini file. Is it possible to do this in Sonar 3, that you guys are aware of, or was this functionality removed? Or are you guys as stumped as I am at this very second?

Okay, here's how it works:

The StopIfStarved has never been in any aud.ini file by default. The people who use it needs to type it in themselves.

All you do is adding this line to the aud.ini (say 3 or 4 line):
StopIfStarved=0

[tombuur]

You all seem to take for granted what it is all about. I am confused. What does "stop if starved" do?

Any problems using it?

[moskus]

Originally posted by tombuur
You all seem to take for granted what it is all about. What does "stop if starved" do?

It's just that it's been up from time to time...

If you set stop-if-starved in the aud.ini, Sonar will keep playing even if you get a drop-out.

[tombuur]

... but with the risk of getting noise and other problems I guess?

[moskus]

Yes. Clicks and pops will occur, and if you're recording, the pops are there "forever" (till you records again).