Delay / buffering before playback or recording starts

peter5992 · 12-25-2012, 01:52 PM

Good morning everyone:

Hope you are enjoying the Holidays.

Questions: as of late, I've been getting 5 to 10 second delays before anything happens (eg when I hit the spacebar, before playback starts, or recording; sometimes also for saving).

I have been keeping an eye on RAM and CPU use, and while the project is pretty loaded with VSTs (by Eastwest especially), they stay well within reasonable limits (CPU below 50%, RAM 4 of 16 GB).

When I let Reaper take a minute break, it usually starts immediately.

I suspect there is a performance issue somewhere, but is there a way I can check what it is? It's kind of disruptive to the workflow to have to wait for 10 seconds or a minute every time I make a little tweak to an instrument here and there (which I do ad naseum).

Thanks!

V'ger · 12-28-2012, 06:43 AM

Very weird. Does this also happen with an empty project?

Are you checking the CPU and RAM with an external viewer like Task Manager in Windows or is this just from within Reaper? Could of course be that you have some external process going on that hogs the resources so check that.

Could also be that your audio card is waiting for sync that never comes so double-check its settings. Same for Reaper: right-click the play button to see if you got some time code sync accidentally set up etc.

Ollie · 12-28-2012, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by peter5992

as of late,

What did you change before that?

(Did you mess with undo settings maybe?) Is that happening in all projects or just in that one?

peter5992 · 12-29-2012, 09:54 PM

Thanks for the feedback! My educated guess is that the project may just be a little too heavy VST loaden. This is my backup DAW, with a somewhat antiquated CPU and settings. This particular project has instances of Hollywood Strings and much more, which tend to be taxing on computer resources.

On top of that I've just installed a new audio interface, M audio Projectmix i/o which isn't quite a straightforward as I though it was going to be. Got this interface primarily for Pro Tools but also for Reaper, but it isn't an easy install even with Pro Tools so that opens up the possibility of more pontential troubleshooting issues.

It's not a normally occuring event, usually projects start immediately (unless I set a countdown).

peter5992 · 12-31-2012, 02:39 PM

I think I figured out what it is -- too much VSTs and effects, something similar is starting to happen to another project I am working on now. After I just added another track it starts to buffer and playback is delayed. I suppose it's gotten to the point where it really can't comfortably handle all the VSTs simultaneously anymore, some of them are pretty CPU intensive (like Hollywood Strings) and my computer is ageing a bit.

Well, I'm just going to have to split up things then, to keep everything under control.

karbomusic · 12-31-2012, 03:49 PM

Quote:

After I just added another track it starts to buffer and playback is delayed

Reaper preloads ~n seconds of data for every track that contains audio from the cursor forward before playback. The delay is not noticable until you hit enough tracks to realize it. The way to know if you are seeing this scenario...

Place the cursor at some random position, hit play, notice the delay before it actually starts playing. Move the cursor back to that exact same postiton. If playback now starts immediately at that same spot but is now delayed at some new start position, its that disk buffering. If the same spot timeline is always delayed even after the first time you hit play, it is something else.

Reaper actually will keep that buffered audio for much of the life of the session. That's a good thing because chances are you'll hit play in the same spot often and only the first pass will be delayed. I've often wondered how nice it would be if there were an option (provided there were enough physical memory) to preload all audio into memory. Maybe one day.

peter5992 · 12-31-2012, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by karbomusic

Reaper preloads ~n seconds of data for every track that contains audio from the cursor forward before playback. The delay is not noticable until you hit enough tracks to realize it. The way to know if you are seeing this scenario...

Place the cursor at some random position, hit play, notice the delay before it actually starts playing. Move the cursor back to that exact same postiton. If playback now starts immediately at that same spot but is now delayed at some new start position, its that disk buffering. If the same spot timeline is always delayed even after the first time you hit play, it is something else.

Reaper actually will keep that buffered audio for much of the life of the session. That's a good thing because chances are you'll hit play in the same spot often and only the first pass will be delayed. I've often wondered how nice it would be if there were an option (provided there were enough physical memory) to preload all audio into memory. Maybe one day.

Hm ... that is interesting. But I have only one audio clip in the entire session (a VST rendered to audio). Does the same apply with respect to midi in a session?

karbomusic · 12-31-2012, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by peter5992

Does the same apply with respect to midi in a session?

I don't think so. That being said, its probably what you thought it was.

dug dog · 01-01-2013, 06:46 AM

I've encountered the same thing as the OP under similar circumstances. This is a project with only 1 VSTi (Superior Drummer with 16 stereo outputs) and only 3 audio tracks and a couple of sends (delay and reverb).

I'm using Windows XP. CPU usage is bouncing between 35-50% and there's plenty of RAM still available.

I started disabling this and that to see if the problem would go away and it did when I eliminated Reaverb from the project. When I added Reaverb back to the project, the problem started up again. I got the same behavior with Perfect Space which is another convolution reverb that I got with Sonar 7.

peter5992 · 01-01-2013, 09:55 AM

It has to be a performance related issue --- when I loop a section, Reaper has no problems going seamlessly through the same loop again and again.

Interestingly, as I keep building this session with more and more tracks, muting parts of the session which are 'finished' (they are 8 different short music loops in same tempo and length) playback appears to be fine. Maybe Reaper has a way of 'freeing up' resources when certain VSTs haven't been used in a while.

kingocounty · 01-01-2013, 10:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by peter5992

It has to be a performance related issue --- when I loop a section, Reaper has no problems going seamlessly through the same loop again and again.

Interestingly, as I keep building this session with more and more tracks, muting parts of the session which are 'finished' (they are 8 different short music loops in same tempo and length) playback appears to be fine. Maybe Reaper has a way of 'freeing up' resources when certain VSTs haven't been used in a while.

What version of Reaper are you using? I was having the same issue on Mac 64-bit, 4.31 and reverting to 4.22 cured it for me.

peter5992 · 01-01-2013, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kingocounty

What version of Reaper are you using? I was having the same issue on Mac 64-bit, 4.31 and reverting to 4.22 cured it for me.

I'm on 4.31 -- but right now it seems to be behaving just fine so I'll keep this version for a while. I would need to do some extensive testing to really figure out but I am trying to get a project done for a Friday deadline. I am little worried that if I start changing things around I'll run into more issues (my soundcard / mixer is a little wonky but working right now, don't want to rock the boat).

zHENKOVSKI · 11-10-2018, 09:07 AM

In problem-causing project you should create a send from track A to track B and a send from track B to track A. This creates something like a program code loop. When I removed one of these 2 sends, playback started to work fine!

Good luck!