strange loop re-triggering

[georgeludwig]

This doesn't happen all the time, but it happens often enough to be a real problem, i.e. the last time I played live it happened.

Basically, I'll record a loop. Then go to next loop in the same track and start recording. When I stop recording the next loop, it play for a bar or two, then resets back to the beginning. I.e., if I recorded a 4 bar loop, it will play the first half, reset to the beginning, then play normally for the rest of cycle. But when the loop begins again, it's the same story...it plays two bars, then resets to the beginning.

This is really frustrating. This morning it happened twice in the same song, which is very rare. I don't know what to make of it.

[stevoj]

Mobius does strange things from time to time, but I've not come across this one before; must be really annoying. Hopefully Jeff will know the answer.

[Piesi]

this sounds a bit like my "strange multiply behahiour"-issue, but this didn´t happen to me yet too. Does this also happen with sync mode "off"? If not, it´s probable sync related. And from what I think, Jeff is currently working on rebuilding the sync-engine, so this might get sorted out when the next Mobius release arrives:-)

[Jeff]

Yes, this sounds sync related, do you have Sync Mode set to something?

[georgeludwig]

Yes, this sounds sync related, do you have Sync Mode set to something?

Jeff,

Yes, sync is set to host. I'm running mobius in live. After going through the docs again, the only possibly related setting I found was retrigger drift frames (or somesuch). I've doubled it from the default value of, I think, 4096.

Maybe it is related to multiply. The other day when it happened twice, I was using the multiply function. I'll use it some more and see if I can coax it to fail. Although, with the different drift retrigger value, hopefully it won't come back. :)

[georgeludwig]

So I MAY have found what was up, and I'm wondering if there are any other Fireface 400 users out there who experienced something similar.

It appears that increasing the drift resync frames stopped the strange re-triggering, which begged the question of why was it drifting so badly. There was also another datapoint, where once in a while the audio would sputter. I assumed this was a typical drop out due to either an over-stressed CPU, or another program doing something in the background. I was able to confirm that it was neither...it would happen even if there was almost nothing going on, i.e. one track of mobius being used, that's all, and I've got a newish dual core powerbook. I also got in the habit of having the process monitor running in the background sorted by CPU utilization. And I was able view it a couple of times when the sputtering occurred, and there was no other program. So I upped the Fireface buffer to 1024K. And still I got sputters once in a while.

Last night it occurred to me that maybe it's a sync issue, but another type of sync. So I checked the Fireface control panel, and sync was set to "automatic". Since I don't have anything plugged in via digital IO, I assumed this was a safe setting. So I set it to internal, and so far, so good. Could this possibly explain the excessive drift causing the resync?

I can only hope that this was the culprit. My rig was barely giggable. The few times I've played out with it, it screwed up every time, which messed up my concentration pretty bad. I've got another gig in a couple of weeks.. crossing my fingers!!