Timing with audio files

[zorpiedoman]

UG... I just spent three days trying to get everything perfect on the timeline, and it just doesn't work in production.

The whole point in displaying a .wav file on the timeline is so that I can easiy hit marks and have lighting changes on down beats, right?

So i painstakingly line up my lighting changes with the beat in two different songs. Everything looks perfect. I run them on my production system and one song is perfect, as hoped... I'm exited, then I run the second song and the timing is off by half a beat. WTF??

I go back and double check. Everything LOOKS perfect still in both songs. I try and figure out what might be causing the latency in one song but not the other.

I'm crushed, and frustrated. Gonna stop working on this before I throw my computer out the window.

This is so important to fix because I have 114 more song to do, and I can't afford the time to create each one, then test it in produciton, bo back and adjust to what I 'think' it needs, retest and repeat till it comes out right. This should just work after I line the changes up with the audio file wave form.

I would appreciate any help you can offer, thanks.

[Luc Henrion]

Please give us more info: Mac/Windows ? Version ? RAM, CPU, GPU ? Etc... The more we know, the more we might help

[JohnRichards]

Sounds like you are using mp3 files. Change to wav, and once you have saved show, do not display wave shape.
This has always worked for me.

[zorpiedoman]

INTERESTING DISCOVERY....

The exact same song when exported from CuBast to an .mp3 file is 8:50 in length... when exported as a .wav file it is 8:51 in length... EXACT same start and end points, only changed the file type.

Very interesting...

[zorpiedoman]

To recap with details, because this is still a big problem.

I have simplilfied my setup to remove any external devices from being the cause of this.

I am running Windows 10 on a laptop PC. ShowXpress is on that system. I use an Xpress 100 cable to attach to two T3 light fixtures. I use DMX cables not microphone cables and the run is properly terminated.

On the timeline is a .wav file for my backing tracks. When I visually look at the timeline and the lighting changes they look exactly right. (See attached screen shot) Even when I test by starting near the critical lighting changes it seems to play correctly - usually.

BUT when I run the timeline from the beginning of the song (the critical light changes are two minutes into the song) they miss their mark virtually every time. It is noticable that the amount it is off varies from test to test.

Question: Is there a specific type of .wav file this sytem perfers to process? I have tried 48/24, 48/16, and 44.1/16 but none of them seem to fix the problem.

[image]

[JohnRichards]

Have you tried disabling the wav view. That has helped me on large audio files

[zorpiedoman]

... sure, but then there is no audio playing. These are my backing tracks, I kinda need them..

[JohnRichards]

no, you just have to untick waveform box in Timeline->settings

[zorpiedoman]

well, i just tried that, and it was actually worse... The lights were almost a full beat ahead of the music.

Thanks for the idea, though!

[Luc Henrion]

Do you have access to another laptop ? I suspect some erratic behaviour of the laptop itself; I have had such issues with some graphic cards some years ago.
Maybe it needs some optimization too ?
https://bandzoogle.com/blog/20-ways-to- ... production