Questions & Answers

Are there any side-effects of using high dropout protection settings?

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asked May 24, 2017 in Studio One 3 by TechSupport77 (195,990 points)

Are there any side-effects of using high dropout protection settings?  This is the setting that is under Studio One>Options (Preferences on a Mac)>Audio Setup>Processing.

5 Answers

–1 vote
answered May 24, 2017 by TechSupport77 (195,990 points)
 
Best answer

Besides the obvious performance improvements, using high Dropout Protection settings leads to some latency or lag on level metering or any other real-time audio displays such as spectrum or loudness meters, as well as gain reduction meters. The higher the Dropout Protection, the lower the update rate on these meters. There’s no impact on audio timing thanks to the dynamic latency compensation in Studio One.

+1 vote
answered May 24, 2017 by niles (54,670 points)
edited May 25, 2017 by niles

There are a few things that should be taken into account though when using low latency monitoring with high dropout protection.

Synced Instruments.
Instruments using synced internal effects, arpeggiators, step editors, sequencers, gaters, modulation effects etc. will temporarily be out of sync when monitored.

Multi channels with effects...
When monitoring a track that is connected to an Instrument with multiple output channels containing inserts on each channel can lead to temporary high CPU load because all channels will be monitored in the low latency path.

When layering sound...
Monitored Low latency Instrument tracks are not 100% in sync (sample accurate) with the non monitored tracks. So be sure to disable monitoring when editing layered audio results, else result will differ from what you hear in the final mix.

> 3 ms inserts act differently depending on the monitoring path.
Monitored Instruments won't be processed by inserts with a latency > 3 ms. So for instance a limiter with 4 ms latency on your master bus will process any non-monitored instrument channel, but won't process monitored instrument channels.

+1 vote
answered Jul 4, 2018 by alancloughley (3,080 points)
On WIndows 10 I've noticed serious performance problems caused by enabling dropout protection on my projects, (4 different PCs and audio interfaces.).

The performance meter goes down initially when you switch it on but it actually causes more dropouts when I record enable VST instruments or multiple tracks in a busy session, others have reported it works a treat but I've never seen it behave well on my projects and I've tested it a lot on a wide range of hardware.

I'd strongly advise users leave this feature OFF until you start having performance issues as it can severely degrade CPU performance during tracking! .

For some users it might work depending on your workflow so once you're sure it works for you on your typical projects and you decide things are generally better with it on sure go ahead and enable it all the time by default. Until then I'd strongly advise leaving it off until you actually get some performance issues to see if it actually makes things better or worse for your typical projects.

At it's worst turning this feature on can completely cripple projects that run completely fine with it off!
0 votes
answered Aug 17, 2018 by tarsonis (3,220 points)
@alancloughley

Same Experience. Totally useless for me running a i7@4Ghz and RME HDSP ITB. For which this "stunning" feature was advertised. Seems to work for some folks. I always got huge projects with a track count >50 tracks and sometimes a ridiculous amount (sounddesign) of processing. In those scenarios this feature would come really handy as its useless for a project when I start out with few tracks (the latency is already low with the PCI version) but it is really a performance hog.  Destroy the groove and timing of the project. And not forget huge amount of dropouts and glitches. Its useless or in beta phase and buggy. Ideally it work out if one had the chance to disable all plugins temporary. As this seems to not going to work with my workflow with a lot of latency processing, busses and pre master. What is the sense if one can play nearly without latency but the hole project goes nuts playing random timeless noise.
0 votes
answered Apr 24, 2021 by jacobdewar (140 points)

PEARL MALLETSTATION DROP OUT ISSUES

I was having crazy issues with the pearl malletstation until I enabled the setting you pointed out 

Studio One>Options (Preferences on a Mac)>Audio Setup>Processing

This made the latency 1000x better thank you! Posting in case anyone with a malletstation tries to google this drop out / latency / lag issue.

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