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Audio diagnostics

audio-diagnostics

The audio diagnostics dialog is a utility for displaying statistics about the audio from the current render being played out. It can be opened from the Audio diagnostics... action in the Help menu.

Statistics

  • Underruns - This is the total count of underruns1 that have occurred. Ideally this statistic should be zero. If you get underruns try increasing the buffer size in the Sound / Midi config.
  • Buffer Usage - This is the current utilization of the buffer, in samples.
  • Status - "Playing" if sound is being played, "Stopped" otherwise
  • Elapsed - Total time elapsed of the current render
  • Refresh rate - Time since the last period, should be ±1ms of your period setting in the Sound / Midi config.
  • Samples written - Number of samples written to the buffer during the last period.

Clear

You can clear the Underruns counter by clicking on the Clear button. Useful for testing if a new sound configuration has any underruns.

Refresh

By default, the dialog is automatically refreshed every 100 ms. You can change the refresh rate by editing the spinbox or you can disable the auto-refresh by checking off the Auto-refresh checkbox.

If auto-refresh is disabled the statistics will only be updated when you click the Refresh button.

The Refresh button can be clicked at any time to force update the statistics.

1: An underrun occurs when the buffer does not contain enough samples that the audio device requests. Silence is filled in for these missing samples and what you hear is a gap in playback.