Audiosculpt problems/ cpu utilization and crackles

[johannes]

hello,

when i prelisten a treatment like filtering, timestretch, transposition but also when i scrub

i get over 100% cpu utilization displayed in the activity monitor and a crackling sound.

another (maybe related) error that appearing often in a popup window is:

The kernel “” reported an error

SuperVP::ParameterFileErrorModule_Filtre::ftc_initfilter parameter file is empty

this mostly happens when i scrub or when i edit a bpf in the sonogram and sometimes this also freezes AS.

EDIT: i also noticed heavy distortions when transposing the sound down to -2000 cents and it seems to be possible to start multiple

supervp instances when clicking muliple times while scrubing.(see the attached screenshot).

 

hmm… i now updated to osx 10.7.5 but i still get these errors using the latest versions of audiosculpt and diphone

(i already posted a diphone error report here at discussion groups).

 

 

any ideas what could cause the problems?

thanks for help,

johannes

 

[johannes]

hello,

i now installed AS 3.1.4 on a older MacBook (2008) running OSX 10.6.8.

the good thing is: i didn’t get the clicks and crackles when previewing treatments. even though supervp

still appears with over 100% CPU in the activity monitor - but maybe thats normal. with 10.6.8 on the other hand,

scrubing through the sound – click and drag multiple times in the waveform representation – still leads to multiple

supervp kernels appearing in the activity monitor and a crackling sound.

maybe the clicks , crashes and errors i get on my 10.7.4 mbp are osx related?

thanks,

johannes

[picasso]

Hi Johannes,

Thanks for the report.

First, yes the scrub problem causing multiple SuperVP instances is a bug. That bug may cause later several problems because having multiple “ghost” supervp instances are not very good. We will try to fix that as soon as possible.

The fact that SuperVP appears with 100% cpu, is not a problem for AudioSculpt and is not the cause of the crackles & pops.

The crackles you get when you transpose down -3000 cents are related to the gain of the transposed output, i suggest you change the Gain parameter of SuperVP to a lower value. In AS Menu > Processing > Realtime Processing Settings : look in the Synthesis Settings tab and change the gain (ex: 0.1). You should compensate in those cases if you get a distorded sound.

If it does not solve your issue, you may also try to change the SuperVP playback latency in

Preferences > Audio > SuperVP Play latency (seconds). The default value of 0.1s is often adviced but sometime is not sufficient for some computers or laptop (and depending on the audio card), increasing it (ex: 0.2s ; or decreasing it if it is too big) may solve this issue.

You should also verify the options in your Realtime Processing Settings if you do not get the expected output. Sometime you leave an option on that affects your next processing. I suggest you reset it to the “Factory Settings” (using the presets menu in the bottom of the “Realtime Processing Settings” window) in those cases. That’s probably why you get different results in your computer under 10.7 and the one in 10.8. Apart from the different settings issue, running AS in 10.8 should not pose any problems.

Best,

Charles

[johannes]

hey charles,

thanks for your feedback.

very good! changing the realtime processing settings to “factory settings” and reducing the gain make the crackles/clicks disappear.

now that i´ve checked the bpf in the sonogramm by editing the transposition (both bpf´s “transposition” as well as “transpose envelope”) and

AS crashed when i switched from one mode to the other. another behaviour i already realized is that the edited “transpose envelope” sometimes sounds like it get scaled or even completely ignored - this happen in preview as well as in the exported audio.

let´s say i load a 3 sec long sound. without touching the “transposition”-bpf and just drawing a very simple “transpose envelope”-bpf, which is going from 0 to the minimum(-2400) in 500ms, it seems like AS will scale the bpf to the duration of the sound- so it reached the value -2400 at the end of the sound instead of 500ms.

didn´t found out what exactly is causing it but sometimes changing the “transposition”-bpf by adding some points to it makes it work correctly…

 

btw. iam really impressed, guys! for me audiosculpt´s transpostion/ timestretching algo is best one in this domain i´ve ever heard.

for sounddesign preserving spectral envelope and transients are very important features, thumb up!

apropos does the audioscuplt supervp kernel sounds better (smoother and with more detail in frequency representation)

than the one which is part of max-supervp objects, or is it just me?

 

thanks and ciao,

johannes

 

 

[picasso]

Hi Johannes,

Thanks a lot for your impressions and feedback

About the crashes you get, if you have the time, we will greatly appreciate if you can give us the crash reports. It will help us a lot to fix possible issues you have. As a side note the “Report a bug” menu option (in the AudioSculpt Menu) should automatically grab the last crash report and make an email so you can send it to us at audiosculpt-bugs@ircam.fr.

About the supervp maxmsp objects and how to configure it as closely as possible to AudioSculpt you can :

1 - look at the Console output in AudioSculpt and extract the different options passed to the kernel (like for exemple the window size, window type, fft size, and additional options/flags used for synthesis).

NB: To output them in the Console with a realtime playback press ALT + ENTER (not RETURN) or press ALT while you press the SuperVP playback button. 

2 - Use those options to feed your maxmsp supervp~ object (you’ll have probably to look at the documentation to find the proper way) and in most cases you should get similar results.

Although the SuperVP max msp object does not give you access to the full kernel options, for the transposition case the only difference is that AudioSculpt send a parameter file wich contains all Bpf values for transposition/transpose envelope and in MaxMsp you have just a direct/Real time control over the transpose / transpose envelope values you pass.

HTH

Thanks again !

Best,

Charles