BR: Fix Metronome Running out of Sync

[marcL]

When I quickly play back short clips reapeatedly with metronome enabled (e.g. for comping), then about each second or third play the metronome is clearly out of sync. This happens in all projects with a lot of comping clips >= 20 lanes.

If I wait a very short time in between, then it runs properly.

[sjoens]

May not matter but Audio or MIDI metronome? Buffer settings?

Sometimes MIDI buffers get out of wack causing some instruments to play out of sync until transport is stopped and restarted.

[rfssongs]

Yes, sometimes I have to re-boot the machine when things get bogged down too much. A nice touch might be something inside of cakewalk that could clear all of that up.

 

Maybe there is I don't know. I can say that the audio re-set doesn't do it.

[marcL]

On 2/21/2023 at 7:24 PM, sjoens said:

May not matter but Audio or MIDI metronome? Buffer settings?

Sometimes MIDI buffers get out of wack causing some instruments to play out of sync until transport is stopped and restarted.

I just use the standard Audio metronome. And as I have no issues with audio playing/recording, I guess there should not be a problem with the metronome. But maybe I am wrong?

But it is a good idea, I could try to use the MIDI metronome.

[msmcleod]

The only time I've seen this happen is when using a project with only MIDI tracks that are exclusively using hardware MIDI outs - i.e. no soft synths or audio at all.

By default, the clock timing is derived from the Audio source:



However, if you've no audio tracks / soft-synths, there's no audio to sync, to which causes the timing issues.

There are two ways of solving this:

1. Simply insert an empty audio track
2. Change the Source to Internal.

Personally, I prefer inserting an audio track as you will get timing issues if you subsequently add an audio track or soft-synth and you forget the timing is still set to internal.

 

[marcL]

4 hours ago, msmcleod said:

The only time I've seen this happen is when using a project with only MIDI tracks that are exclusively using hardware MIDI outs - i.e. no soft synths or audio at all.

By default, the clock timing is derived from the Audio source:

 

4 hours ago, msmcleod said:

However, if you've no audio tracks / soft-synths, there's no audio to sync, to which causes the timing issues.

Thanks Mark!

I have checked my recent projects, all have source set to "Audio" (and of course all do contain audio, cos it happens during comping with a lot of takes).

One thing that I have noticed:

If I stop the audio and wait until the meters go totally down before I restart play, then the metronome runs fine. It is only when I stop and very quickly restart playing (spacebar) that the metronome is sometimes not in sync. Another thing is that I always have an active loop selection during this procedure, maybe this has an impact, too?

Edited March 22, 2023 by MarcL