First Aid Instructions if Glitchy Playback in the Studio
Since the Studio isn't running inside a Flash plugin anymore, we are facing many more dependencies that can potentially lower the experience in terms of performance. To rule out common issues, here is a list of things to check before getting too frustrated:
First Things First
- Install the latest stable version of Chrome. You can check your current version by typing chrome://settings/help into the address bar.
- Close any browser tabs you don't need.
- Run the Studio in incognito mode to prevent extensions from creating possible interferences.
- Quit background software like Skype, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Slack, etc.
- Check for CPU intensive, unnecessary processes in your Task Manager (Windows) or Activity Monitor (Mac).
- Free up space on your hard disk if your machine is running out of it.
- Reduce your browser's window if you have a very high screen resolution.
- Try the Support >> Help >> Audiotool Booster
- Support >> Help >> WebGL pitfalls and how to fix them
The Way You Build Your Track
Arrangements can often contain inefficient effect chains where a bunch of devices could just be removed or merged without altering the final sound. Ideally you should not bother, but every device on the desktop takes valuable CPU time. Here are some tips:
- Combinations of Stereo-Detune and Stereo-Enhancer can often be merged into one.
- Compressors can make you believe that the sound is more powerful. Try bypassing them to see if they are really necessary. Sometimes just increasing the volume achieves the same effect.
- The Heisenberg can be very CPU intensive. Try to minimise their amount in your arrangement or, if you don't need any Heisenberg specific feature, use the less CPU intensive Pulverisateur to create your sound.
- Quantum as a multi-band compressor is mainly used for mastering and to alter the dynamic of specific frequency bands in complex sounds. If you do not need these features, replace it with Gravity, which needs way less CPU.
- When using Curve, switch off the filters you don't need.
- Switch off the spectrum analyser in Quantum and Curve once you've adjusted their settings.
- If a particular effect or chain of effects is used by several sounds, connect it to a mixer as a send/return effects chain instead of duplicating and inserting it after each sound.
- Make your arrangement compact. Long cables need more pixels to be drawn.
- When working on parts of a big arrangement, deactivate any timeline tracks that you don't need to hear.
Something helped? Let us know in the comments! Nothing did? Create a topic in the Help board
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gvb6ugkhut7k6
3 hours ago -
gvb6ugkhut7k6
about 1 month agoyou talked about merging effects. how do you do that?
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André Michelle stays home
about 5 months agoHeads Up!
The latest Chrome 79.0.3945.79 (Mac) reintroduces new glitches while playback. An issue has been filed for the developer to fix.
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Jordi Moragues Stays Home
about 5 months agoConfirmed on Linux as well, but it's just a subtle difference for me.
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André Michelle stays home
about 6 months agoThere is a new experimental flag introduced by the Chrome developers to test a different internal audio-infrastructure for the web-audio-api.
Please visit: chrome://flags/#audio-worklet-realtime-thread and enable it. If you discover any changes (good or bad) with audiotool, please reply to this comment. Thanks.
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virusmachine
about 5 months agoit seems to work better than the booster for me.
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André Michelle stays home
about 6 months agoThis is the corresponding issue (link is only visible to registered users) Quote: "WebAudio Rendering Thread for AudioWorklet uses "DISPLAY" priority thread and this causes audio glitches when other graphics tasks (outside of Chrome) dominate the system."
So, it is probably hard to test effects outside from Chrome.
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Jordi Moragues Stays Home
about 6 months agoFor me it doesn't make any obvious difference. I get the same frequency of overruns in a specific draft with or without.
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STAGEFRIGHT
about 8 months agoRemember when we thought Next was gonna run so much smoother than flash haha
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André Michelle stays home
about 8 months agoAbove tips were actually valid for the Flash app as well.
We tested the Flash app against Next before launch and Next was indeed performing equally if not better than Flash. However, it looks like Next performance differs extremely on different systems. Anyway, we are permanently improving the performance of the studio, so if you can contribute some data about your system in a new topic, we can get to the bottom of this. Also please read WebGL pitfalls and how to fix them (This helped a lot of users with poor performance on decent systems)
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/kurp/ stays underground
about 8 months agoBut it does?
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★YBI BR0KΞ
about 1 year agoThe audio freezes a lot and has a staticy noise. I've made sure I do not have any other tabs open or things like that. Please.
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Dext3r
about 1 year agoSame.
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Jordi Moragues Stays Home
about 1 year agoSometimes, playing a big arrangement with the timeline view expanded will help reduce glitchiness.
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snio
about 1 year agodo you guys have a at booster compatible with chromebooks? i just got a new laptop and it would be pretty sweet if i could find a way to get the booster downloaded on it
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Known As I stays home
about 11 months agoHuh?! Must have overlooked it somehow :)
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/kurp/ stays underground
about 11 months agomaybe though, i probably just found out somewhere on the internet.
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/kurp/ stays underground
about 11 months agoaha it was all over the bug report board, not sure how you didn't see it? xP i think andre explained somewhere in the boards
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AUDIOARCHITECT
about 1 year agoI am not at home at the moment, i have to check if i am 100% sure about 64bitbrowser and 64bit java. I will check tomorrow and let you know! I certainley hope that's the solution... Thnx zo much Andre for helping me out! Cheers bro
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André Michelle stays home
about 1 year agoGlad I could help!
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AUDIOARCHITECT
about 1 year agoAndre... Thanx!! I am a noob.... I installed java again and selected the offline 64bit version.
Then i use the launcher to start booster, then i opened the AT app and....
IT WORKS PERFECTLY! Thnx for all youre help, now i am going to make some music!
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André Michelle stays home
about 1 year agoAs @Known As I stays home said: You should reply to my comments or even better file a new bug-report. I know it is annoying when something does not work properly, but we are facing very new issues with Audiotool in html now that need a much deeper conversation to find a solution.
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AUDIOARCHITECT
about 1 year agoYes i am sure of Java 64bit it's installed.
What do you mean by audioworklet?
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André Michelle stays home
about 1 year agoIn the preferences you can see if 'AudioWorklet' is enabled (checked). It is a technology that should compute the audio in its own thread, hence less glitches. We figured however, it is not perfect yet, but it is up to the browser vendors to come up with a better solution. Hint: I know they are ;)
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AUDIOARCHITECT
about 1 year agoMy setup as follows :
i5 2.80 Ghz 8 G RAM 120 G ssd (60G free) .
Latest Chrome
Latest Java 8
native instruments audio 8 dj
When i use it whitout booster :
by use of 1 or 2 machines like a 909 and a 303 it already starts to glitch.
I also tried incognito it's just the same
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André Michelle stays home
about 1 year agoAlso, I saw on your wall that your booster does not connect. Are you 100% sure that you have Java 64bit installed?
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André Michelle stays home
about 1 year agoIs that with or without AudioWorklet enabled?
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AUDIOARCHITECT
about 1 year agowhy....just why
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AUDIOARCHITECT
about 1 year agonothing works for me! booster won't work. did everything you asked...
i installed booster, i started it with launcher, i see the icon in the tray(dark grey) i can change buffersize within booster, i can't choose output device.
Still glitchy as hell... sorry i give up!
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André Michelle stays home
about 1 year agoIt is unfortunate, but you really need to provide more details on your system and machine. Otherwise there is no way to help you. If you cannot change the output device it is up to the PortAudio library we use to list your audio-devices. We could report a bug over there. But I am more interested in why and with what setup it glitches without the booster first.
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InfiniteShadoe
about 1 year agoMy audio tracks lag a LOT, I have nothing but AT Next running in an incognito browser on Windows 10. I opened my Task Manager and when I hit PLAY to listen to my track, which consists of the Machiniste (only one pattern) & Centroid (added a piano loop), the CPU on my computer instantly jumps to 99% usage.
I have the Booster running on my system tray.
I enabled the audio worklet (no idea what thats supposed to do but someone suggested it).
I enabled lower FPS and even disabled animation.
I shrunk the window as small as possible, it only covers 1/4 of my desktop.
However, I have noticed that when I minimize the page, or switch to this tab to check the boards, the track clears up and plays at full speed. Its only when I'm viewing the workspace that the music slows and skips.
I'm not quite sure if I added this in hopes of finding help or in the off chance my tricks might help someone else, but anyways that's my 2 cents.
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André Michelle stays home
about 1 year ago@InfiniteShadoe I feel your pain, but unless we have all systems available up and running, it is very hard to put our fingers on the problem. Chrome already gives us headaches. With each update we are trembling what they fixed or broke this time. It is rarely getting any better. They are bold things we can do in future to support the latest fancy web-technologies such as WebAssembly, but we need way more resources for that.
One question still: Are you sure the booster is actually connected to the app? The icon should light up and the first context-menu entry should reflect that it is indeed connected.
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André Michelle stays home
about 1 year agoI have added some tips when building massive tracks. Please feel free to add more in the comments if you find other ways to improve the stability of the App.
Plz help. I have done everything you said and it is still really glitchy. I can't use the booster because i have a chrome book and it seems that it doesn't work on my particular computer. I have activated the hardware acceleration and that doesn't seem to make a difference. I am giving up hope...