First bar kick drum is always louder

[Damion]

This is a bit of an odd question, but it's been a constant issue for me lately. 

When using Cakewalk and creating drum beats with one-shots (example pic attached) whenever a looping section loops back to the first bar, ANY sound in the first bar doubles in volume and clips the track itself. This can be at position 00:00:00 or even at position 99:99:99 in the project. It's not restricted to the beginning of the project, just the beginning of the bar when a looping section is made (regardless of how long or short the looping section is)

Generally I have this issue with kick drums (since they're usually on the first bar of a drumbeat) but I've experimented with other sounds on different tracks on the first bar and it does this all the same. Any transient sample will generally double in volume and clip but ONLY on the first bar and ONLY once the bar repeats back to 1. 

This wouldn't be a problem if it was only an issue with looping during auditioning, but when I export the project, sometimes the first bar exports as louder than others. This is an issue if I want to create a short drum loop from scratch.

Sometimes the clipping and volume issue happens during every subsequent loop when played on repeat, sometimes it won't do it for a couple loops.

Sometimes it exports with the first bar louder, and sometimes it exports normal. It's constant enough to be an issue, but it's infrequent enough that I think it's some kind of looping/buffer/haunted PC issue. 

It does this no matter what effects, sends, EQ I have on the track and it only does this when I'm working with one-shots. It does this with every drum sample and it's not restricted to certain ones. If I'm using a drum VST and creating MIDI, it will not do this regardless of the sample used.  

It sounds like two kicks are underneath each other. I do not have two kicks underneath each other. 

My ASIO buffer size is 1024 and I've played with changing it around and I still get the same issue. 

Using a Scarlett Focusrite 2i2, Windows 10 Home,  32GB RAM, and a mouse that lights up different colors to give me more speed. 

The first bar hits so much harder and only the first bar.

Any ideas?

 

EDIT: So the solution is removing SessionDrummer as an Input on my drum tracks. While glaringly obvious to me as the possible cause, I never removed the input. Silly me. Thank you to everyone who took a look and offered your suggestions!

Edited November 13, 2022 by Damion
Solution Found

[scook]

The image in the OP is unusual. Tracks 7 through 10 are synth tracks with their inputs set to at least one instance of Session Drummer and these tracks also contain audio loops. Normally, synth tracks are empty or contain the frozen audio output from their associated synth. They would not contain audio data from a source other than the synth.

[David Baay]

I can't repro anything like this. Can you share a sample project that's doing it relatively consistently?

P.S. With all due respect to my fiend, Promidi, I consider the "start at measure 2" recommendation to be largely unnecessary. Certainly not necessary for audio tracks, and generally only necessary for MIDI when sending patch changes or initial controller values to hardware modules. Like audio, soft synth output gets 'buffered up' in advance.

Edited November 12, 2022 by David Baay

[David Baay]

I find Zipping up the project folder to be preferable to a bundle file. Then post it on a sharing site and post the link here. I can PM an e-mail address if you don't want to share it with everyone. But I'll probably be going offline soon, and anyone of the regulars can probably figure it out. I'll wager it's due to project configuration and reproduceable on other systems.

[Damion]

5 hours ago, Promidi said:

Always start your projects on Measure 2.  Shift your entire project along by 1 measure.

Starting everything on the absolute 1st measure does not really give anything time to initialise.

It does this regardless of where the measure is....

 

The loop section repeating is the issue. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Damion

[Damion]

40 minutes ago, Promidi said:

Sorry, you never mentioned that.  My crystal ball is still in getting repaired.

It's literally in my original post. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Damion

[Damion]

14 minutes ago, scook said:

The image in the OP is unusual. Tracks 7 through 10 are synth tracks with their inputs set to at least one instance of Session Drummer and these tracks also contain audio loops. Normally, synth tracks are empty or contain the frozen audio output from their associated synth. They would not contain audio data from a source other than the synth.

I agree it's a little unorthodox. It's an instance of session drummer that's being output to each MIDI instrument. I just use it as a place to put one-shots if I'm not playing with MIDI. It seems to work fine (just not on the first bar). This is the only thing I can think of causing the issue however if it were an issue of things being "double tracked" then the issue should happen with each hit and not on the first bar. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Damion

[Damion]

18 minutes ago, David Baay said:

I can't repro anything like this. Can you share a sample project that's doing it relatively consistently?

P.S. With all due respect to my fiend, Promidi, I consider the "start at measure 2" recommendation to be largely unnecessary. Certainly not necessary for audio tracks, and generally only necessary for MIDI when sending patch changes or initial controller values to hardware modules. Like audio, soft synth output gets 'buffered up' in advance.

Thank you for your reply!

I could try to share a project with you but I fear it might be just something with my system and it might just "not happen" for you in something I share. 

But I'm willing to give it a go. How would you like met to share the project? Like a cakewalk bundle or something of the like? 

[Promidi]

Always start your projects on Measure 2.  Shift your entire project along by 1 measure.

Starting everything on the absolute 1st measure does not really give anything time to initialise.

[Promidi]

5 hours ago, Damion said:

It does this regardless of where the measure is....

Sorry, you never mentioned that.  My crystal ball is still in getting repaired.