Automated tempo track causing pops/crackles and CPU spikes

[nickn929]

Hello everyone. I'm new here. Just registered to hopefully get some help since Presonus has not been very responsive. The title of this post pretty much sums up my problem. Has anyone with S1 7 had similar problems with automated tempo tracks?
The weird thing is, I can play the audio tracks isolated from the pool, and they sound fine. So I don't think the audio files are corrupted in any way. But as soon as I pull them into the context of the project, they start making all sorts of noises described above. If I take the automated tempo track out, and set one tempo, everything is fine. As soon as I input a tempo change, bam... Problem.

I've experimented with two different computers and two different interfaces. The problem has been consistent across all of the devices. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

[SwitchBack]

This may be semantics but I don't think you can 'automate' the tempo track. You can use the tempo track to adjust tempo over the course of a song, either to make audio tracks fall in with the metronome or to make the metronome fall in with the audio tracks. Every time you make changes to the tempo track (after you paused editing it for a few seconds) Studio One will re-render all the 'Timestretch' tracks to reflect the changes you made. Creating the new audio files can take some time (watch the Cache Activity meter) during which playback can sound choppy because you're listening to files whilst they are created. So changing the tempo track isn't intended to be done on the fly.

Hope this helps

 

[nickn929]

Ok thanks. Yea I suppose I'm not using the proper terminology, but we are talking about the same thing I think. To give an example, this particular project has a few tempo changes throughout the song, which I set to guide the click and ez drummer drum track. I recorded all the guitar, bass, and synth tracks in real time to those tempo changes, which occurred on the fly as laid down the tracks. I did not record the whole song at one tempo, and then try to alter or time stretch the tracks after the fact to fit the tempo changes... Not sure if that helps or makes a difference. But just wanted to give a bit more background. Either way, this was a problem that just occurred suddenly. Everything was playing back just fine, until it wasn't.

Also, I'm not sure I understand when you said changing the tempo track isn't intended to be done on the fly. So is it not possible to produce a song in Studio One that has more than one tempo that needs to be changed in real time during recording/playback? That just can't be... Forgive me if I'm missing something as I'm not a professional. Just musician doing home recording.

 

[John Vere]

Just to be clear! If your project is starting out with midi and the midi has a few tempo changes, that is all normal and no issues should happen.
Now you record audio along with the midi tracks there should also be no problem.
It’s when you try to change the tempo of recorded audio tracks that you definitely can have issues unless you follow some predefined rules.

 

[nickn929]

Just to be clear! If your project is starting out with midi and the midi has a few tempo changes, that is all normal and no issues should happen.
Now you record audio along with the midi tracks there should also be no problem.
It’s when you try to change the tempo of recorded audio tracks that you definitely can have issues unless you follow some predefined rules.

Yes, I created my entire drum track in the DAW, dragging the midi in from ez drummer. so the midi follows the tempo dictated by the DAW. Then I opened the tempo track and pinpointed where my tempo changes for this particular song would be, and the ez drummer midi followed it no problem. I then recorded all my guitars, bass, and synth tracks in real time to those tempo changes. I'm not recording everything, for example, at 120 bpm and then changing the tempos afterwards. I can see how that could cause some weird artifacts in the audio. But that's not what's going on here. I'm just frustrated because this is about 8 months of work that I can't finish mixing now until this is resolved.

 

[John Vere]

Im brand new to S1 but I think most Daw’s would work the same way.
Generally there should never be an issue under the conditions you have described. The midi should be the only data that is being manipulated by the tempo changes. The audio should playback exactly as recorded.

But I ran into an issue with Mixcraft which was caused by the default setting was that new audio got stretched to follow tempo maps. This is how people who use pre made loops work I guess?
It played in tune but went out of sync. And exactly what you are describing was happening. The audio playback had artifacts because it was being altered in real time. Once I turned off the audio stretch default setting everything behaved normal. Possibly you have this setting turned on too?
Just a long shot.

 

[Edu]

I don't know if this helps, but for each audio track you can choose whether or not to follow the tempo. If the audio track follows the tempo, a stretching effect is applied at each tempo change, which may cause audio artifacts. You can use the inspector panel (F4) to select the behavior of the audio track. For recorded audio try the option not to follow the time, maybe this helps.

 

[nickn929]

Thank you all for the help. I'm going to experiment some more tomorrow with your suggestions. I've been using Studio One for about 5 years now, having just upgraded to 7 from version 4. Come to think of it, all my previous projects haven't had tempo changes. So I never bothered to pay attention to those settings you guys just mentioned, because I've never had any problems until now with this current song. I'll post back in how it turns out.

 

[Midiboy]

Yes, I too have this problem with certain plugins. Mostly with SynthV2, however, while it may click and pop during playback from the DAW, when mixed down, it does not. I have been able to narrow this down to certain CPU intensive plugins and can prove it by disabling the plugin. It even happens if the plug in isn't actually being used at the time of the tempo change. In your case, perhaps it is the FX you put on audio tracks. Something that is dependent on timing to get it's effect like reverb or delay. Tempo changes confuse the snot out of tempo dependent FX and cause high CPU usage to recalculate timing on the fly. Again...my bet is, when you mix down, you won't notice the artifacts.

 

[nickn929]

Yes, I too have this problem with certain plugins. Mostly with SynthV2, however, while it may click and pop during playback from the DAW, when mixed down, it does not. I have been able to narrow this down to certain CPU intensive plugins and can prove it by disabling the plugin. It even happens if the plug in isn't actually being used at the time of the tempo change. In your case, perhaps it is the FX you put on audio tracks. Something that is dependent on timing to get it's effect like reverb or delay. Tempo changes confuse the snot out of tempo dependent FX and cause high CPU usage to recalculate timing on the fly. Again...my bet is, when you mix down, you won't notice the artifacts.

Hmmm, interesting. Didn't think of that. I'll check that out as well when I have some more time to dig into it. Thanks!

 

[nickn929]

Finally got around to messing with this tonight and as a couple of you suggested, the time stretching was the culprit. It was set to on when I went into the track inspector. Switched it off that and onto 'Follow' for the tracks that were giving me trouble, and that seemed to work. Thanks a lot!

While I was checking this problem though, I did notice I have an abnormal amount of pops and crackles that were not there before. And all at random spots, across every track, and not repeatable either when played again. Not sure what to make of it since I'm using a new computer that's much more powerful and faster than my previous one, and my buffer size and dropout protection are maxed out when mixing. So I guess I'll have to figure that one out next... Never ends

 

[SwitchBack]

With a new computer there can be all sorts of reasons for audio issues. Google for optimising computers for audio production for tips and tricks. There's a few articles in the knowledge base too.

As for buffers they are a necessary evil, to allow (slow) computers to not drop the ball when jumping between tasks. The trick is to find the smallest buffer size not giving buffer depletion issues, because larger buffer sizes come with problems too! Long story short: Try a smaller buffer size.

 

[nickn929]

With a new computer there can be all sorts of reasons for audio issues. Google for optimising computers for audio production for tips and tricks. There's a few articles in the knowledge base too.

As for buffers they are a necessary evil, to allow (slow) computers to not drop the ball when jumping between tasks. The trick is to find the smallest buffer size not giving buffer depletion issues, because larger buffer sizes come with problems too! Long story short: Try a smaller buffer size.

Thanks, I will experiment with the smaller buffer sizes. I know there tends to be a sweet spot with that too and then after that, it hurts more than helps. As for optimizing the computer, that's all been done, both on my previous computer as well as this new one, before I even start using it for recording. I think I need to take a second look at any background processes that may still be running to make sure I didn't miss anything. I also plan to add another SSD to the available slot in there so I can separate my song and sample files, and keep my DAW and plugins on the OS drive. Idk if that will help, but it can't hurt to have the extra storage I guess.

I'm currently using an Asus ROG Strix G17 with an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HX CPU and 64GB RAM. My previous laptop is an HP with Ryzen 7 and 16GB RAM. And so far, I haven't noticed any improvement in speed or performance between the two. So... Idk.