Slow playback/choppy audio in Fairlight page

I am having a lot of trouble editing my audio in the fairlight page. The playback is either slow, choppy, or sometimes the audio doesn't play at all despite seeing my audio levels moving.

I have no idea how to fix this problem.

Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening to me?

None, unless you give us details of your system such as version of Resolve, OS, GPU and it's driver, source and codec of the video you are working with, etc.
Sorry to be direct, but there are too many posts on the forum where we are expected to guess these things and come up with an answer.

I am working on an iMac 24-inch, M1, 2021) 16GB memory using Davinci Resolve 18.0.3.

Apple M1 GPU 8 core.

Audio codec: Linear PCM

I really need help if anyone can take some time to help me figure this out. The audio continues to be unreliable. I can hear the audio okay for a few minutes and then it starts to lag and completely drop.

[Peter Chamberlain]

on the color page, what is the playback frame rate?

The timeline frame rate is 23.976

But is the footage playing back at that rate on the Color page?

So I am not having any trouble with any other parts of the software. There is no lagging in the edit page or color page.

The only page I am having problems with is the fairlight page.

Also I am not familiar with how to check the frame rate in the color page.

Sorry for my lack of knowledge, doing the best I can when asked about technical questions.

Hello,

Once again I will try to attempt to ask for help. Please keep in mind I am a novice user so if you need more information please point me in the right direction so I can help you help me.

The issue I am having is in Fairlight only, I can playback my audio fine in the edit and color page. In fairlight the audio is choppy, lagging, or simply doesn't play.

I am using an iMac version 12.6
Apple M1 8 core GPU
16GB Memory

My video codec is XAVC intra 4:2:2 L5.1
Frame rate: 23.976
Sample rate: 48000
Audio codec: Linear PCM
Sample rate for audio: 96000

I am editing my web series myself and have had no issues with the audio up until September. I don't have a lot of money to hire an editor myself so I would love to try to resolve this issue.

Thank you everyone

Resolve Standard (free) or Studio 18.0.4?

Is this behaviour isolated to playback frame rates of 23.976?

Resolve Standard (free) or Studio 18.0.4?

Is this behaviour isolated to playback frame rates of 23.976?

I have the studio version. I have not used a different playback frame rate. What playback frame rate would you suggest I try?

Had a similar problem. The thing that was messing mine up was Preferences > User > UI Settings > "Delay Viewer Display by" option. I had it set to 2 frames. Once I turned that off (Unchecked and 0 Frame Offset) the problem went away.

Fairlight seems to have a different interaction with the audio hardware attached to the computer. In my case I'm running an UltraStudio 4k Mini and an RME Fireface 800. Depending on what setting you have under Preferences > System > Video and Audio I/O > Audio I/O > I/O Engine, will determine how the audio hardware will interact with Fairlight. It also seemed to be mitigated if I ran with System Audio, but then the sync is off. So you might experiment with System Audio / Desktop Video as your I/O Engine. But if you're not running an UltraStudio, I don't think you will have this option.

I also highly recommend, if you use an external monitor, to use CatchinSync: https://quietart.co.nz/catchinsync/
This will allow you to see if your video and audio are synced up. Mine were off at least a frame or 2. But the problem with Resolve is that it has a bunch of different delays you can employ and they all affect different pages and parts of the app. So it will be in sync on the Edit page, but out on Fairlight. Super annoying stuff. BMD really needs to rewrite the underlying code, so that all the pages work with the same audio settings.

What BMD do is buyout different software from different vendors and then Frankenstein all of these systems together. When it works it's downright astounding, but at times it's buggy and needs a real architectural underpinning, so that it works more smoothly. But I can't complain too much, Resolve is doing a lot of things right.

Had a similar problem. The thing that was messing mine up was Preferences > User > UI Settings > "Delay Viewer Display by" option. I had it set to 2 frames. Once I turned that off (Unchecked and 0 Frame Offset) the problem went away.

Fairlight seems to have a different interaction with the audio hardware attached to the computer. In my case I'm running an UltraStudio 4k Mini and an RME Fireface 800. Depending on what setting you have under Preferences > System > Video and Audio I/O > Audio I/O > I/O Engine, will determine how the audio hardware will interact with Fairlight. It also seemed to be mitigated if I ran with System Audio, but then the sync is off. So you might experiment with System Audio / Desktop Video as your I/O Engine. But if you're not running an UltraStudio, I don't think you will have this option.

I also highly recommend, if you use an external monitor, to use CatchinSync: https://quietart.co.nz/catchinsync/
This will allow you to see if your video and audio are synced up. Mine were off at least a frame or 2. But the problem with Resolve is that it has a bunch of different delays you can employ and they all affect different pages and parts of the app. So it will be in sync on the Edit page, but out on Fairlight. Super annoying stuff. BMD really needs to rewrite the underlying code, so that all the pages work with the same audio settings.

What BMD do is buyout different software from different vendors and then Frankenstein all of these systems together. When it works it's downright astounding, but at times it's buggy and needs a real architectural underpinning, so that it works more smoothly. But I can't complain too much, Resolve is doing a lot of things right.

Hopefully some of this will help.