Merging Technologies

My team and I recently recorded an important drum session at an outside studio, to do so we printed separate stems for each instrument group as well as mixing down the click track from Pyramix.

Upon reviewing the session, we felt something off in the timing and with further examination found that the recorded click track appeared to fluctuate around the bars beats grid up to 15 ms ahead or behind the down beats

Mind you, not every click instance is offbeat, but this offset would occur at sporadic intervals.

We asked a colleague to see if he ever noticed this issue so he took a closer look himself on his primary and secondary (Pyramix Masscore 32-bit) systems. After comparing the audio/waveforms of his tests to our own, we found that our respective click tracks had IDENTICAL errors in timing, regardless of whether they were recorded in realtime or non-realtime


For now, we've adapted by recording in metronomes from other DAWs or even downloading a click track of the required length, but how could this type of bug even be possible with such a powerful system as Pyramix? We have already recorded several musical projects with this click track as our basis, and when recording personally, my team and I had felt something 'off' in the click, but attributed timing issues to our own human irregularity in rhythm. In case it is not clear, we are extremely concerned about this issue and the ramifications it may have had on our work.


For reference, we compared pmf files and noticed the same fluctuation with BWF, WAV, and AIFF. We have tried all manner of metronome settings and tempos.

Setup
Pyramix Masscore 64-bit (v9.1 Build 8.26786)
Windows 7, SP1
Horus
V-Cube.

I beseech my fellow Pyramix users to examine this issue themselves and make sure they are not experiencing such problems, and for the engineers at Merging to help identify and resolve this issue.

Thank you in advance for any and all input.

Could it be related to the attack offset setting in the metronome setting box?

Hi Tas

I highly doubt it. We have tried changing the value to test its effects, but have left the default settings since nothing improved. We also only use the bars/beats count so the grid value is set at -144 dB. The amount of offset we are involuntarily experiencing is up to + or - 15 ms, and since we run most of our projects at 48k, that is about a 7,200 sample variation at its peak.

But still, maybe there is an ideal value or multiple of the attack offset that would remove the timing glitch for us? If so, we haven't found it. Did you notice anything unusual with your metronome track when using it?

Hi spc,

First of: I never use click track, as I do sound design and audio post production, but I gave it a try to see whether I get the same results and behold: replicating your issue was really easy.

• I created the smallest possible project. (to remove overhead)
  
• I set up my metronome, fed it back to Track #1 and recorded this
  
• Audible and visually the metronome is not stable at all

On bar 7 the wave is "almost" spot on, but on bar 8 iot is really off. This repeats every couple of beats or so.

My guess is: this is a stone old remnant of last century. Hasn't been altered at for age. But we do have 3D audio!

@Merging: Remember my remarks about your different GUI's? Well, the metronome GUI is a fine example. How does it work?
@Merging: goto: /program files/merging technologies/pyramix virtual studio, and you'll see on top level 5 .wav files. I hav e ask about this years ago. Clean this up! It is uuhh....weird to have wav files on toplevel of a DAW-directory.

Hi,

We've have been looking at your report and can confirm such irregularities.
The issue seems to be happening when the projects are not at 44.1kHz. Currently our source Bars, Beat and Grid wave files are all 44.1kHz Medias.
Those files are located here. C:\Program Files\Merging Technologies\Pyramix Virtual Studio

If you convert those source files to the same sampling rate as the project we do not anymore have such irregularities.
Just go to the Media Manager and do a Sample Rate Conversion (right click menu) to the project sampling rate. By Example if at 96kHz convert the Bars, Beat and Grid wave files to 96kHz and load them within the Metronome Settings dialog.
If you can for now use that workaround until we resolve the problem.

The issue was entered in our database as GAIA-995, we'll look into it.

Best Regards,

__________________
Ricardo Ryan
Project & QA Manager
Merging Technologies

I guess that explains why I did not see this problem here as I always use my own click Wav

I too faced the same issue while using the software. Can somebody please tell me how to fix it.