Greetings All,
This one pertains to tracks shifting in time based on where the buffer is set for the audio card.

I had the buffer set for another project...er...song...buffer was set at 4096.

Upon opening a simple three-instrument/one vocal song from a month ago, I noticed the bass track was out of sync...

As I dropped the project buffer down to 2048, then 1024 - the bass got tighter in the song.

This should not be happening.

If anything, it should just take a few milliseconds longer to engage the transport when tapping the spacebar, but the song should still play fine - regardless of buffer setting.

But it does not.

(Yes - lots of heavy plugins may cause issues at lower buffer settings dependent upon the DAW system - understood.)

As mentioned, the last song project had a heavily-laden, high-CPU hitting plugins loaded.
But - opening a much smaller, much less plugin intensive project should play fine at the higher buffer setting. - And it does not.

The bass track that shifted has no sidechain send, which somewhere on this forum had mentioned in another thread.

And plugins on the bass track are of the usual fair - a UAD or two, FabFilter, and Softube.

There is one sidechain in the project from the Lead Vocal to a "Music" bus, in which the instruments are ducked slightly.

But the acoustic guitar and keys are also going to that bus - and the timing on those tracks is fine.

The shift, which I've witnessed before, is random.

I know of and understand SOP's "audio drop-out protection" as well as the very cool "low latency" monitoring feature.

But this has nothing to do with either of those - low latency monitoring is not engaged, and drop out protection is minimal.

Having used Cakewalk since the DOS/MIDI-only days, I guess i am jaded, as that DAW only had issues when too many cpu-heavy plugins were loaded.

On small projects...er...songs...like this one - I could alter the buffer setting with no difference in playback.

And something tells me from reading other SOP threads that I am not the only one experiencing this.

Inquiring minds need to know - will it ever be fixed?

Thanks,
MG