Delayed start of playback

Hi. I’ve noticed since updating to WL12 on initial opening up of a session and pressing play I have to wait for 5 seconds before music begins to playing. I never had this issue in WL11.2. I do have a handful of plugins running.

Maybe I don’t a certain parameter switched on somewhere? can anyone help?

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If you start playback of a simple audio file, without any plugin in the Master Section, do you get this delay?

There seems to be a 1 second delay when just playing an audio file, though it’s much longer with plugins on. I’m working in the montage.

Hi!
PC or Mac, check buffert settings and perhaps drivers!?

regards S-EH

Do you have this button checked? (better not)

Sadly it didn’t make any difference. Thanks for the suggestion though.

I’m on Mac

Check if a particular plugin could be the culprit.

However, the first time the montage is loaded, the 1st playback start will be long; this can’t be avoided because all plugins must be initialized.

I assume you use WaveLab 12.0.30

For me it takes 3 seconds on first attempt, for the second and onwards, there is no delay. (without any plug ins)

When WaveLab is launched, it doesn’t initialize the audio device immediately. This occurs during the first playback or recording attempt, which may take a moment depending on the driver and sample rate. WaveLab takes this approach, unlike other DAWs, to speed up launch time and because it’s sometimes used without playback (e.g., for batch processing or pure rendering tasks).

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Thanks for this. This makes sense. It seems alot worse than what 11.2 was like.

Have to ask even if you use “Built-in Audio” with your Mac ?
Maybe bluetooth keyboard or something else in system!
I have Mac Book AIR from 2020 with M1 and start of any
Audio file or Montage without plugin it starts directly in WL 12.0.30

regards S-EH

Can you test this in two scenarios?

  1. Show master section
  2. Hide master section

I think this needs to be fixed in next version. In WL6 playback starts immediately.
As soon as I press play to start the track it takes 5 seconds for the playback to start - Cubase - Steinberg Forums

By design, the playback engine is not initialized when launching WaveLab, to have a shorter launch time. Hence, it is initialized the 1st time play or record is used. For most audio drivers, this is under 500 milliseconds. This can take longer if the sample rate needs to be changed.

Actually, you can change this by opening WaveLab with the startup dialog and have the audio device controls visible. In that case, initialization takes place at this time.

I feel that Microsoft edge like start up thing is not really necessary.


It still makes sense if WL opened without that startup assistant taking 1 second longer than starting playback after 5 seconds.

If your playback takes 5 seconds to start, then initializing during startup would add another 5 seconds.
However, if your audio device takes that long to start and this is inconvenient for you, you might want to consider upgrading to a better audio device. What is your current device?

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I use MIDIPLUS Studio M 192Khz device and every other software works fine with this.


Even Reaper has a batch processor, but it is starting up and running within 2 seconds whether there is an external audio interface or not.

The 5 second delay remains in the new update.

Not on my Windoze 10 Pro WL 12 current update system … or any of the devices (RME HDSPe AIO Pro/Lavry/RME ADI-2). Play is essentially ‘immediate’.

FWIW, an almost identical issue was reported quite some time ago that affected certain RME devices (and not just in WL). RME promptly addressed this with an updated driver.

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Not sure what to say about this. I use the latest driver for my device too on Windows 11 Home.
Processor