Hesitation ?

[Gerald angus]

I have a small 2 bar sequence using 5 instruments on 5 separate channels going from metro to my Yamaha TG-55 tone generator, which, essentially plays well.

Although..... there is an initial, slight 'hesitation' during playback on about the 2nd beat of the first bar of the sequence when it starts.
If I loop the whole thing, it plays without any hesitation, after it loops for a while.
It is just that first spot when its starts up.

Is this a latency problem, due to my slow processing power ? (& perhaps,can't be helped) or is there some option I can explore in Metro to affect this ?
thanks.

(Metro 6492 win-xp)

[Jerm]

Usually this happens when a bunch of program change events occur in a row.

Please send me the MIDI sequence for analysis to be sure.

[Gerald angus]

Not sure how to get the file to you...
and there is no option where I am replying that says 'attach' file either..

edit; PM is disabled here too...

[Jerm]

Save as a MIDI file to your desktop. Then click on the email icon on the bottom of this message or send an email to infoATsagantech.biz (change AT to @) and include the file from the desktop.

[Jerm]

I see nothing that should cause a hesitation at all. If you insert a measure on all tracks do you then notice the hesitation one measure later?

I will try this sequence later on external MIDI equipment and let you know if I find anything.

Is it possible to try with a different MIDI interface?

Does this happen on a Mac as well?

[Gerald angus]

I probably could use a newer midi interface for sure, just an old M-Audio-Quattro here, and probably, at least, part of the problem.

I will try the whole process on my Mac and get back here later with that.

Strange.... but inserting a blank measure of time in front of the 2 bar seq. causes it to totally stop now in the 2nd measure. Seemingly, precisely where the hesitation happened the first time. Then after hitting the play button again, at this point it stops after only going 1 beat, hit play again (without re-winding), then continues choking after 1 more beat, etc,etc... until the end of the three measures where it just dies.

Also, strangely, even more, if I click on loop for each inst./channel , it behaves totally normal with no hesitations at all, but has a 4 beat silence in the inserted looped measure of course. But, it's what would be expected.

Please note, I am not a Metro expert at all, especially with understanding how to get my ports-channels etc. set up, so, don't let this make you nuts.
I'll start over with it. It's only a test file exercise anyway.
Thanks for your support.

[Jerm]

I am kind of stumped on this one.

I tried your file under XP with an external MIDI device and it played back fine without any hesitations at all. I noticed that your outputs are a little messed up. You might want to try using the special menu's "trim outputs to tracks" although I don't think that will have any affect on the hesitation.

Might it be some other process is running in the background and is blocking all other processes? Can you log in as a different user or start up using a different OS?

[Gerald angus]

Well, I can't be more specific (sorry) but, I went into Metro prefs. and tried just changing a few things in there, did a 'save' there and everything seems OK now. No hesitations, no sequences stopping at random times. All is Quite normal now.javascript:emoticon(':D')

Of possible note, I toggled Timer/Quicktime Time Manager to-> Windows Multimedia Timer in the process with a new save each time and although it does not seem to matter where I leave it now, everything seems to be back to normal. Perhaps, the prefs. file got corrupted temporarily, which happens in the Mac OS's once in a while ? QT here is at 7.6.8

OK, good for now, will add to this if I discover anything else.
thanks.

[Jerm]

Of possible note, I toggled Timer/Quicktime Time Manager to-> Windows Multimedia Timer in the process ...

Yes, I had forgot about this one. You should definitely not select 'Quicktime Time manager' as you will see hesitations on the PC using this setting with external MIDI.

Thanks for the update.

[alison3492]

Hmmm ... I've been using Metro on the same machine for a couple of years now, and every now and then I just get hit with a blizzard of Qualifying requests. For example, I have been asked to Qualify about 2 out of 3 times I open Metro for the past week or two. There is nothing different about my Mac or any change in usage patterns, yet this keeps happening. Any ideas?

[Jerm]

Hmmm ... I've been using Metro on the same machine for a couple of years now, and every now and then I just get hit with a blizzard of Qualifying requests. For example, I have been asked to Qualify about 2 out of 3 times I open Metro for the past week or two. There is nothing different about my Mac or any change in usage patterns, yet this keeps happening. Any ideas?

I am not sure what the title 'Hesitation' refers to but it may be a problem with permissions of your Metro preferences file. Go to YourUserName/Library/Preferences and see if you have read write access on your Metro preferences file and that your Metro preferences file is not locked. Alternatively you could delete the file and then re-qualify.

The other possibility is that you have more than one hard drive and are running Metro from both. Metro must be started from a single hard drive or you may need to re-qualify.