Bug with Drumagog and Freezing

[thebioguy]

This might be a reported bug but...

When trying to freeze some tracks, one with ride cymbals and one with crash cymbals, I hear intermittent drop outs. When I unfreeze, the audio returns to normal. When I refreeze, new and different areas dropout. It occurs after the initial "hit", when the cymbals should be ringing out during the release.

There might be dropouts one my other drum tracks, but the release is too short on the bass and snare to hear any dropouts.

Each track has Drumagog and Fabfilter Pro C on them.

[Rim]

Are the dropouts at the end of the track? The freeze function essentially does a quick mixdown for that track, so it's possible that it's not waiting long enough after the cymbals ring out. Or is it dropping out in the middle of the track as well?

Thanks,
Rim

[thebioguy]

Hi Rim,

The drop outs are occurring at random locations, not at the end of a track, but always when the cymbals are ringing out.
I don't know how frequently it occurs since I stop as soon as I hear it and start over.

[Rim]

If you have a project where this occurs predictably, I'd love to see it. Please send it to my dropbox: rim at drumagog dot com

Thanks,
Rim

[thebioguy]

Hi Rim,

Do you want the project with the files already frozen, with dropout present, or the raw audio files so you can freeze them yourself?

[Rim]

It would be best to get the project without the tracks frozen, so I can freeze them and see the problem you're seeing. Also, let me know which gog files you were using (or send them to me if they're custom gogs).

Thanks,
Rim

[thebioguy]

Hi Rim,

OK, I have the files ready.
How do I upload them to your Dropbox?
Can I just put them in mine, and send you the link?

Thanks,
Paul

[Rim]

OK, thanks. Just send them to my dropbox. My address is (take out the spaces and substitute the at for an @ and the dot for a .):

rim at drumagog dot com

Rim

[leedgitar]

@Rim, were you ever able to repro this?

I just had this happen to me tonight. I have 4 tracks total for experimentation purposes (kick, snare, ride and hi hat). If I freeze everything but the ride track, playback of the ride track sounds fine. If I freeze the ride (which has 4 hits total in the loop), the 3rd hit cuts out every time instead of ringing out until the next hit. This also happens on mix down.

I have to freeze some of them since my iPad Mini (1st gen) begs for mercy with more than 2 tracks with Drumagog added. I can deal with that if freeze/mixdown sounded as good as during playback though.

[Rim]

Not yet, it's still on my list to investigate.

Rim

[leedgitar]

I did some more playing around, and discovered that in least my case, it was only to do with the locators. I was playing the tracks in a tight loop so I could mess around with the different GoG files in real time and decide on the samples for each track. If your tracks aren't frozen, cymbals at the end of the loop will continue to ring out naturally when the loop starts over. If you freeze the track, that doesn't happen. If I expand the locators to allow a tail at the end for the loop, then it rings out before the jumping back to the beginning.

So in the end, it was a PEBKAC problem...of course any mixed down cymbals would be expected to be cut off at the end if there isn't a tail to let the cymbals ring out I blame lack of sleep for that

Not sure if this is what the OP was experiencing or not, but I'm good now.

[Rim]

That makes sense, because freezing a track creates a mixdown, and uses the resulting mixdown instead of the original track. So if you loop this frozen track, any effects that "rang out" like a reverb tail, or a Drumagog sample, will get cut off.

Rim

[thebioguy]

OK, but...

My tracks are not looped and...

if I try to redo everything, the dropouts occur in new and random locations, but always at the end of a cymbal crash (however, now that I think about it! it might be occurring elsewhere but only noticeable on a crash or ride, since they ring out longer).

[Rim]

OK, another possibility - Drumagog might be running out of polyphony. This happens if a lot of samples are played in a row. Drumagog does it's best to manage polyphony, but if you play too many samples in a short time, it has no choice but to kill one of them to play the next one. Try reducing the sensitivity control - maybe it's double triggering?

Rim

[thebioguy]

Would that account for the fact that if I unfreeze and refreeze, the positions (and number) of dropouts changes randomly?