Audio Playback Problem - 18.1.1 Studio

When I press play..the video starts playing instantly and smoothly..but the audio takes a few seconds to start.. so I see the video playing, but only after a few secs I can hear the audio. I tried dumping the entire render cache, using proxies, no proxies, proxy gen running/not running. Nothing seemed to make difference except waiting 10 seconds after every timeline move. Frustrating.

This problem only started recently. I don't know exactly when; with 18.1 maybe? Could be a Windows update, I guess.

Ryzen 3950, 64gb ddr4
RTX 2080 SUPER
NvME for boot & programs, SSD for doc & media storage
External SSD via USB-3.1 for proxy files

I have a similar issue. Just started today when I upgraded to 18.1.1. It's behaving like a cacheing issue, and is reasonably repeatable. I ended up timing it. It is silence for about 3.2 seconds, then stutters for 1 syllable, then silence again, and then normal from about 3.8 seconds. If I scroll backwards with the jog wheel so that the audio sounds, then it plays straight away. If I use the mouse to position the cursor, then the 3.2 second stutter starts again.

This is a big project - 3 BRAW files each at 3 hours long. I thought it was just the size of the project until I read your post. I opened up the project I was working on this morning before the upgrade, and it behaves normally in 18.1.1. It has a lot of small video files and the entire project renders out to 4 min 53 sec. which is why I thought the size of the project was the culprit! However I did an initial edit on the 3 hour project a few days ago and didn't notice the audio issues then. It has definitely started after the 18.1.1 update.

Darryl

Thanks for your more precise report. It's good news because BM will likely be able to eliminate the problem relatively quickly.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Hi all

Thanks for the reports. Can you add some detail on the audio codecs and the Audio I/O and peripherals you use? As well as any patching and effect info on clips or tracks that may be pertinent?

Please also mention what your Preferences dialog > Fairlight preferences and Audio I/O settings are.

Thanks
Shrinivas

Thanks for responding.

The single audio track is a 2-channel mps at 24800 hz. I created it by combining sound from three tracks from a camera, a smart phone and a tablet, 3 angles from an outdoor interview full of wind noise.. All 3 I aligned and combined them, intending to use voice isolation from this single track and dropping it under the 3 video angle. That part worked beautifully. Then I opened a new project, placing the 3 original video angle on 3 tracks. I aligned them from their wind-noise laden audio track, then added and aligned the cleared up audio track (which I had rendered to the above format), aligned that to the noisy audios and removed the noisy audio tracks, leaving their their video in place. (I chose to not use multicam on this project for reasons unrelated to the issue.)

I've (hopefully) attached a copy of my audio preferences. I don't think we can say I was using voice isolation when the problem occurred because I used that in a previous project to create the cleaner audio file. I did turn it on and off while working on the reported project, but didn't see much difference. Either way, there's about a 3 second lag before audio starts playing. The delay does not occur when I simply stop and start play. It occured only if I've moved the playhead with the keyboard, mouse or speed editor before resuming play

As for effects, there were none on the audio track. Video clips were zoomed and repositioned wo various extents and I placed transitions between some of them. Peripherals used included the aresiad keyboard, mouse and speed editor (bluetooth connection), a Samsung neo G9 mini-LED monitor, Hesch headphones (model unknown) and small JBL speakers. My computer specs were included in my original post.

Perhaps I should also mention that I tried having proxy files on and off, preferring proxies, preferring originals, and keeping the proxy generator on and off. None of these seemed to have an effect. Finally, at least one additional person has reported a similar issue in a Resolve Facebook group.

I hope this information helps you pinpoint the issue quickly. Please let me know if I can provide further assistance.

Hi,

I am having the same problem with different media. I am working remotely via a Cloud Pod device attached to a RAID drive. My media is all proxy media and the symptoms described in the first post are exactly what I am experiencing.

All audio plays back fine in the source window, I am only having this issue in the timeline. Frame rates between proxy files and timeline don't make a difference, and I've tried using system audio out instead of my Focusrite device as well. My proxy media was generated remotely for me as H264, so not sure if that is the issue.

I am working from Windows 10, Resolve Studio 18.1, Build 16

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Hi Ron

If possible, can you pass us a link to the combined audio file and the project DRP so we can take a look?

Thanks for the report again
Shrinivas

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Hi Rod

Purely in the interest of isolating the issue, is there a difference in behavior with the original media? And without the Focusrite physically connected?

Regards
Shrinivas

Hi all

Thanks for the reports. Can you add some detail on the audio codecs and the Audio I/O and peripherals you use? As well as any patching and effect info on clips or tracks that may be pertinent?

Please also mention what your Preferences dialog > Fairlight preferences and Audio I/O settings are.

Thanks
Shrinivas

Sorry for the delay. This is now my third attempt to provide the extra information. The forum app timed out while collecting the information and blocked me from posting. I couldn't even save what I had written so I have had to start again.

Codecs
Short answer - standard BRAW. That is Linear PCM; 48000Hz; 2 Ch

Detailed answer
This was a 3 hour conference recorded on an ATEM Mini Extreme with 1 x BMPCC and 2 x Studio Camera 4K Pro. The plan was to do an initial edit with the ATEM during the conference. Transfer the drp etc. over to my workstation and complete the edit there on Resolve.

We got a feed from the House PA and connected that to Ch 1 on one of the Studio cams. The other channel was ambient sound using the internal mic. Same for the other 2 cameras. We controlled recording through the ATEM so have braw copies on the cameras, mp4 copies on the ATEM, plus an mp4 of the "stream" which was our rough cut edit on the night.

In post, I copied all the files including the drp to the workstation, fired up Resolve and opened the project. The default timeline had mp4 video and audio. Duplicated that to a new timeline for editing purposes. As intended, the default audio track was replaced by the audio from the Studio Cam which had the house feed. Before copying the audio to the timeline, the audio on the clip was changed. 2 mono tracks were added. 1 for the ambient sound and 1 for the house feed. This meant a total of 3 tracks. 1 stereo from the original recording and 2 mono which were the individual tracks from the original recording. The mono house feed track was copied to the timeline to replace the default track. I also had to copy the mono ambient track to get around issues with the house feed for the first 9 minutes. (They had extra music coming through that wasn't supposed to be there!)

This was all playing normally on 18.1 When I upgraded to 18.1.1 was when the problems started.

Effects
None - not even compression and EQ! Still early stages in editing.

Audio I/O
Nothing was explicitly changed away from Resolve defaults.
Both tracks are patched to Bus 1
Bus 1 L & R patched to Jabra Evolve Link Headphones - situation normal for me.

Fairlight Preferences
Unchanged at default settings.

Other comments
1. Since my last post, I have gone back to the original timeline using the mp4 files, and there is no issue with delays.
2. I have also checked the audio in the Fairlight page and there is only minimal delay there. Normally the audio starts playing when I push down on the space bar. In this project using the braw audio, it waited until the spacebar key was released before playing. A minor, but still noticeable delay.

Hope this helps.
Again apologies for the delay, but it has been very frustrating trying to get this post completed in the forum app. I have ended up typing it up in a text editor and copying it over.

Thanks,
Darryl

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Thanks for the detailed report Darryl.

Out of curiosity, have you tried other audio outputs outside of the Jabra Link - say USB or 3.5 mm headphones connected directly to the computer? I don't know if it would make a difference - it's for isolating and checking if it has a bearing on the issue.

I'll check the rest of the report and see if we can follow it up.

Working remote, I don't have access to the original media, but I will see if the problem persists when the person with access is online. They use Mac, which may provide additional information.

I have tried every audio output combination available and the problem persists whether I am using the Focusrite device or not. As above, we may try using Pro Res or DnX proxies and see if that makes any difference.

Rod

Out of curiosity, have you tried other audio outputs outside of the Jabra Link

Yes - as you expected there is no change in behaviour.

Out of curiosity, have you tried other audio outputs outside of the Jabra Link

Yes - as you expected there is no change in behaviour.

For the record, there was also a wav file of the camera audio saved by the ATEM as part of the project. It behaves the same as the braw file when loaded into the timeline.

FOUND IT!!!!!

Dialog Leveling had been turned on at the track level and I didn't notice that. This is not visible at all in the mixer on the edit page, and there is no mixer at all on the cut page. I was looking at effects on each clip - which there were none. The only place you can see the effects is on the Fairlight page, and even there it is a bit confusing! On the mixer channel strip there are "Track FX" and "Effects" buttons. In my mix the Effects button was blank as I expected it to be. I completely missed the Track FX button until now.

When I turn the Dialog Leveller off, the problem goes away. Comes back when I turn it on. This is obviously something that BMD still needs to address, however Dialog Leveler is not appropriate for this project so I am happy to just turn it off and mix the levels using compressors, volume shaping etc. where required.

I can now get on and finish this project!

Thanks for your support. everyone. As we have bounced ideas around it has refined the diagnosis, and now we know what the root cause is.

Thanks,

I have found a temporary solution. I removed my proxy media and project from the Cloud Pod and Cloud itself and am now working locally and offline and everything is working as intended. In the process of troubleshooting the project ceased responding to anything, which prompted the move offline.

So I didn't find a solution to the problem, or even what the problem might have been (it was not Dialogue Leveller as mentioned previously), but I do have a workaround that will enable me to actually work now.

So I didn't find a solution to the problem, or even what the problem might have been (it was not Dialogue Leveller as mentioned previously), but I do have a workaround that will enable me to actually work now.

Interesting... It was the Dialogue Leveller for me. My initial reaction when it first hit was some sort of cacheing issue, and that would explain your experience as well as mine.

FOUND IT!!!!!

Dialog Leveling had been turned on at the track level and I didn't notice that. This is not visible at all in the mixer on the edit page, and there is no mixer at all on the cut page. I was looking at effects on each clip - which there were none. The only place you can see the effects is on the Fairlight page, and even there it is a bit confusing! On the mixer channel strip there are "Track FX" and "Effects" buttons. In my mix the Effects button was blank as I expected it to be. I completely missed the Track FX button until now.

When I turn the Dialog Leveller off, the problem goes away. Comes back when I turn it on. This is obviously something that BMD still needs to address, however Dialog Leveler is not appropriate for this project so I am happy to just turn it off and mix the levels using compressors, volume shaping etc. where required.

I can now get on and finish this project!

Thanks for your support. everyone. As we have bounced ideas around it has refined the diagnosis, and now we know what the root cause is.

Thanks,

This thing is the bane of my existence. I turned it on to try it and and it didn't do anything for me AND it lagged playback in edit tab, so turned it off. However, I get this damn lag like it is on. Set it in the Farilight page.

Any ideas on what I can do to get rid of it? It has pooched my entire project as everything lags. I've replace the audio track but nope, still get the lag. I'm at the end of my rope on this one.

I can copy/paste everything over to a new project and it works great again.

Deleted Render Cache and nothing.

I can easily replicate it and it ONLY happens if I turn it on in the Fairlight page. Selecting an audio clip in Edit then using the Inspector to turn on Dialog Leveling then off, it plays great. if I do this Fairlight, tun on, then off, it will always get the stutter on the edit page. It just never seems to really turn off even though it is showing off. Has to be a bug issue of sorts. Reported it so fingers crossed. In the mean time, rebuilding everything I go... where is the emoji for that?

**UPDATE** Seems I found a very specific bug and support was able to reproduce it and hopefully will get fixed in the next release.

v18.1.2 has not solved this problem. When voice isolation is on (w/without dialogue leveler) there is a 3 second sound delay. With dialogue leveler only, a split second delay. Turn both off, and the problem disappears.

It is the same for me wirh audio isolation in edit or Fairlight, in a clip or in a track.
Every time after press play there is 3 Sec. delay and the audio jump from left to right or viceversa.

I found a workaround, left click on the clip, aply voice isolation via properties panel and with right click on the clip choose "cache sound effects"

It works for me until BMD find a solution or i buy the latest an most expensive graphic card.



i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz / 32,0 GB Ram / Nvidia RTX 2080 Super

Just found this post, but I'd like to add that I'm having the same problem, however I am still experience it without any audio effects on. I'm pasting the post I just made in the forum but it has yet to be approved by a mod.

I've encountered an issue where, when plugged into my LG 4K OLED (used as the video clean feed), audio playback is delayed when moving through the timeline. If I move the play head around the timeline and then play, video will start fine but the audio is silent for a second, then will catch up and be in sync. This happens with both color and audio effects disabled and enabled, but only when plugged into the external tv. If I just use my laptop display and Dell 34" ultrawide, there are no issues.

The tv is set to 60fps, and plugged directly into my MacBook Pro. Exports play fine in QuickTime, VLC, etc.

Has anyone experienced these issues? It's incredibly frustrating to deal with while trying to edit quickly and makes it extremely difficult to check the quality of cuts. Any solution would be appreciated.

System: 16" MacBook Pro, M1 Max 32gb ram

Tv: 65" 4K LG OLED C1

If I left out any more relevant information please let me know. Thanks!


So the issue seems to be with one of my external monitors. Does anyone have a reason/solution to why this would cause problems? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

It seems v18.1 has a variety of audio lag problems. Mine are on a capable PC connected to a Samsung Geo 9 monitor and may be related to voice isolation. I don't think this is related to your PC. BM is aware and I' feel certain they are working on this.

Hi all
Well, i too have this problem which has made it impossible to edit. It's not due to any track based effects, or clip based effects, nor is it solved by turning on cache audio effects (just in case)... I didn't have this problem before updating to v18 and i only recently discovered the issue. It seems to only affect linear pcm, 48k, stereo files... Material that was recorded in mono is no problem, but making the stereo files mono does not solve the issue.

Someone here gave timings of the lag they were experiencing but mine is far worse - sometimes as much as 10 seconds pass before it offers a hint of dialogue, only to cut out again when it gets to the next clip.

Running a mac mini M1 with 8gb ram, and had zero problems before upgrading to 18.
Any help appreciated.

More info on this issue:
No waveform appears in the clip - even though it IS there.
The meters don't move and there is no audio - even though it IS there
If you double click on it, sometimes you might be able to see and hear the audio, but most of the time not, even though the audio, most definitely, IS there.

If anyone can help with this problem i'll send cash in the mail.

The software is completely unusable.

Any update on this? I am having the same issue. I've recently upgraded to Studio and its got worse! Not great to say the least.

Throwing in my 2 cents...

I added the plugin Frequency Analyzer to two tracks so I could compare them. I don't recall any problems that original session, but since then, I get the audio delay consistently. If I just turn them off in Fairlight, the delay disappears.

I also find that using Dialog leveler is causing some distortion in my audio (goes away when I turn it off). Wishing I hadn't paid the money to upgrade now

Okay, this makes no sense.

So previously I posted that just turning the plugin Frequency Analyzer off, fixed the problem. Later, I just removed the plugin, which had worked just fine when I initially added and used the plugin the very first time. Those edits still work fine.

However, If I make a copy of those edits that used to have the Frequency Analyzer, the problem comes back!
If I add the Frequency Analyzer back in to these new edits, the problem goes away!

(Edit)
WAIT! Everything I just said was in Fairlight. If I switch to Edit, the problem is still there. Turning the plugin on/off or removing it again, does nothing to fix the problem in the Edit page.

No rhyme or reason.

I CAN'T EDIT! Even if I can see the waveform. I need to hear how each cut starts! Frustrating.

I am also having this same audio issue. Did anyone come up with a solution other than going back to Premiere Pro?!

Hi everyone,

it is the same here with me / us. we're running multiple davinci resolve studio in version 18.1.4. build 9
Audio / Video is pulled over the network via SMB from different RAIDs within a file server. The audio is also 2CH linear PCM in 48 khz.
Sometimes it behaves like a caching issue, but other times when you press play on the same spot the audio starts to play later. I can also see this in the editing tab when i look at the level meter. it starts later than the video. Video and Audio I/O is set to a decklink extreme 12G, all the other settings for audio i/o are standard. no effects like mentioned previous are in place and no proxies are being used.

i really hope this gets resolved sooner than later.

It basically makes editing in Resolve unbearable when using these audio filters. This needs to be fixed for these audio filters to be viable. Add an audio render option to the timeline like Premiere, something...

Bugs will happen, but it's annoying that this one was reported and acknowledged by the company four months ago and there have been several updates since then. Perhaps this is a particularly difficult bug to eliminate.

I'm very impressed with the voice isolation function but I've resorted to leaving it for the very last pass during my edit. Otherwise the playback goes nuts 80% of the time. (Even if you disable it after enabling it!)

If you did the effect at the clip level, I guess you'd be able to bounce the audio effects, but that is annoying and shouldn't be necessary. Plus when you have a whole piece with dialogue it's a lot easier to do it at the track level.

I too am having a problem with audio lagging on playback. If I pause playback, roll back, and play again it starts playing fine. This is on simplest of projects with simplest of files regardless of where footage came from (iPhone, GoPro, Sony A6600) and with nothing applied to files. I never had this problem before and I haven't changed anything on my system (short of regular Windows updates).

I've had this issue since I started using Resolve (Like 3/4 months ago) and this has got me close to quitting Resolve completely. Had to edit a lot of one video on the Fairlight tab as it seems to not be as affected by the issue. Thanks to the answers on this sub I've just started adding audio effects to each clip on the edit page rather than for the whole audio steam and the problem doesn't occur. Obviously this is annoying but at least I can actually edit now, thankyou all!

I'm having the same issue on 18.1.4

Someties audio starts to play fine. Sometimes it takes a moment before I start to hear anything. Really annoying!

Is Blackmagic working to fix this??

Is Blackmagic working to fix this??

I'm guessing we might find out once 18.5 is out.

Yeah so this is happening to me and driving me insane. In the Edit Page audio takes multiple seconds to start playing after the video, cuts in and out. In the Fairlight page, it takes like 7 seconds to start playing, then plays just fine.

This is regardless of track effects etc (even though that really shouldn't cause problems if it's going to be a feature of the software).

It's extremely frustrating.

Same issue here. I'll hit play in edit, and it takes a second or two for the audio to come in. Toggling the dialogue leveler on or off fixes it for the next 2-3 attempts, but then the lag resumes. Clearly, some kind of audio caching/playback bug was introduced by v.18, as I never had this before on the same project files.

I noticed this was happening in project files created before the update, so I selected all on my timeline, hit copy, and pasted them into a new project file, and this seems to resolve the issue for me.

Hi Everybody.

Having the same issue and I am on DVR 18.1.4 Studio on a MAC system.
I think, I found what it was for me and resolved it: It's a project for a big client with many many reviews,
and versions.
Each time I edit a new version, I duplicated, the previous version - as we all do.
But each version, the issue got worse.
So, I tried a different route: Make a new empty timeline and copuy/paste all content into it.
Et voila, lagging was gone.


Still something BM should resolve: Duplicating a TL should not cause this.

Sucks that we need workarounds to prevent editing from destroying our edits.

Same situation on 18.5 beta. Single RENDERED video track and checkerboard audio with only EQ and compressor. I get a few second lag before any playback starts and it jitters and jumps ahead several frames to seconds. I do all of the prescribed cache management, caching audio, etc but I just can't edit with Resolve. Loving the program but dang it's frustrating how easy it is to completely nuke a project by simply using the included tools.

I wasn't duplicating timelines when I first experienced and reported audio lagging in November. For me, it seemed related to Voice Isolation. This is apparently a complicated bug, as it is reported by many people under varying circumstances and with varying work-arounds eliminating it for different individuals.

I have this issue, and I also agree it is something to do with Voice Isolation. I suddenly had two Projects that didn't play audio at all, when I switched the Voice Isolation off, it came back but has a 3 second lag for the audio to kick in within the Edit Page. and around 5 seconds in the Fairlight page. It makes editing a talking head almost impossible to remove short pieces you don't want in there, as you have to go from the Waveform and not your ears.

I also switched off all other plugins + all Color Grading effects, and still the issue persists. I will try the suggestion to make a copy to a new Timeline, and hopefully this will work until BM resolve this bug. Clearly there is something wrong with the Voice Isolation and Dialogue Leveller effects.

thanks all.

UPDATE 31/07: I have found that one of the RX10 Plugins was causing this issue. I didn't find this, as I thought by clicking on the dot it would disable it, but I had to actually DELETE the Plugin. The second I did this, all Audio not only lined up correctly, there was no delay to the playback. I consider this resolved, although I do still occasionally have to enable and disable Voice Isolation to get sound sometimes, so that's still an issue/bug.

[Shrinivas Ramani]

Hi Paul

Can I check if this is the case with 18.5? Could you provide a link with a small project export (DRP file), a diagnostic log file from the help menu and include details on your hardware and peripherals and codecs as a start?

Thanks
Shrinivas

Anyone find a solution to this? Using plugins shouldn't make the audio delay by 3+ seconds to start. Premiere works perfect with this, and that program is so bad in so many ways.

Same issue. Guys, please give us a fix for that, it's driving me crazy. Almost imbossible to edit normally.