Clicking on ASIO playback.

HarBal · Post by **HarBal** » Sun May 23, 2004 7:16 am

We have a number of customers who have reported clicking during playback using ASIO devices. For most the solution is to slightly increase the ASIO playback buffer size for the device in question.

However, one HarBal user has reported a problem that is not fixed by the above adjustment and has also discovered the source of the problem. For the record, his system had the following:

Intel P4 3.2 Ghz (Hyper threading disabled)
Intel I875PBZ 'Bonanza' Motherboard
1 Gb Transcend DDR400 Ram (2 x 512 running in paralell)
Maxtor ATA133 40gb Boot Drive C
Maxtor ATA133 60gb Archive Drive D:
Seagate Serial ATA 160Gb Audio Drive
Seagate Serial ATA 160Gb Backup drive
LG 24 Speed CD-RW
Aopen 12x DVD Rom
RME Digi 96/8 PRO Interface ver 2.05 drivers (Latest)
2048 Mb Virtual Mem
WinXp Pro SP1b

Increasing ASIO buffer sizes had no effect. He found that the Latency on his graphics card was 248/255 (Hogging the bus bandwidth) and when reducing it to 88/255 and the Asio clicking dissapeared.

This information has been posted to help anyone else having similar problems.

Regards,

Paavo.

Jay · Post by **Jay** » Tue May 25, 2004 4:42 am

Thanks for the info, Paavo. FTR, no problems here so far with 1.5 and a Delta 66. Buffer settings have to be pretty much what you've suggested. I don't know why there would be, but is there some advantage to using ASIO vs. the other supported protocols?

HarBal · Post by **HarBal** » Tue May 25, 2004 8:25 am

Jay wrote:... I don't know why there would be, but is there some advantage to using ASIO vs. the other supported protocols?

There are two possible advantages with ASIO. Lower latency is one though in the context of what HarBal does this level of latency is probably not a big deal to most people. But the one that that is useful for Pro sound cards is the channel patching that HarBal supports through the ASIO protocol (ie. selecting which channel to playback to).

Maybe someone else might suggest other benefits. I'll openly admit that I'm new to ASIO - after all that is why it took so long to sort out the driver issues.

Cheers,

Paavo.

Post by **dbmasters** » Tue May 25, 2004 8:42 am

Something I also noticed with ASIO is that HarBal currently can not share the drivers.

If I have WaveLab open, and then open HarBal, HarBal will error out loading the drivers, whereas apps like WaveLab can share the drivers with more than one app open.

Post by **dbmasters** » Sat May 29, 2004 1:38 pm

I have been growing to favor treating single tracks with Har-Bal while multitracking, being able to share ASIO with Sonar or whatever other app would be very beneficial in that area. To be able to export a track quickly and easily into Har-Bal then update the current Track in Sonar would be nice, like I do with WaveLab.

mflorio · Post by **mflorio** » Sat May 29, 2004 5:13 pm

dbmasters wrote:I have been growing to favor treating single tracks with Har-Bal while multitracking, being able to share ASIO with Sonar or whatever other app would be very beneficial in that area. To be able to export a track quickly and easily into Har-Bal then update the current Track in Sonar would be nice, like I do with WaveLab.

Which is why I have mentioned in the past that being able to run HB with command line parameters would be a HUGE benefit for us Sonar users !

Paavo, just one parameter is needed - the input file name. Sonar appends this name (which in actuality is the name of the .wav file of the currently selected audio clip) to the application path and spawns it whenever the user selects the appropriate item from the Tools menu.

BTW db, I have a .reg file that will put Har-Bal on the Sonar Tools menu if you need it. You'll have to open the clip manually in HB of course, unless Paavo decides to help us out !

Also for Paavo: wouldn't enabling command line params automatically make drag & drop possible (if I remember correctly how the Win API works....it's been a while !).

Mike

Post by **dbmasters** » Sat May 29, 2004 6:16 pm

oh, totally cool, pass on a link or the reg file, that sounds awesome...but, if the ASIO driver can't be shared it does kind of limit the effectiveness of the option.

That said, when they make a VST version of this app it will remedy the situation as well. But since they are making the mac version first (understandably) it may be a while until we see the VST...

mflorio · Post by **mflorio** » Sat May 29, 2004 8:44 pm

Dan,

I don't happen to use ASIO, so I don't have the driver sharing problem.

Paste the following into a text editor (assuming HarBal path is as below), save with a .reg extension, and run.

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Tools Menu\Har-Bal]
"ExePath"="C:\\Program Files\\Har-Bal\\Har-Bal.exe"
"HelpFilePath"="C:\\Program Files\\Har-Bal\\Har-Bal.hlp"
"MenuText"="Har-Bal"
"StatusBarText"="Edit the selected audio event using Har-Bal"
"Type"="WaveEditor"

Post by **dbmasters** » Sat May 29, 2004 8:46 pm

thanks dude, I gotta edit a couple paths, but it's a good template, thanks muchly.

HarBal · Post by **HarBal** » Sat May 29, 2004 9:24 pm

Good ideas guys. I will be putting in command line support and will probably need to do a minor revision soon so I minght get it in then.

The drag drop support doesn't come automatically from the command line. It is supported through COM interfaces. File associations would be supported though.

If I remember, I'll try finding out what is needed to get ASIO to share. It isn't documented in the standard ASIO 2.0 interface doco so undoubtably it involves something special. Might even be a priorietory thing of Steinbergs that they haven't made public.

Cheers,

Paavo.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat May 29, 2004 10:24 pm

HarBal wrote:Good ideas guys. I will be putting in command line support and will probably need to do a minor revision soon so I might get it in then.

That would be great - thanks Paavo !

Post by **dbmasters** » Sun May 30, 2004 3:30 am

You the man, Paavo!

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