Lag during tuning and songs

[RogueScholar]

I've read a lot of the posts here about lag and how to fix it. I've reduced my whatever that input number in the .ini file to 150. Here's what's different from what I've read from a number of people: Most people are saying that they get no lag when they tune, and then the lag starts when the song starts. Mine is similar: When I click to start the song, it turns on the guitar so I can hear myself playing, and it sounds great, barely noticable lag, but definitely playable. Then after a few seconds, maybe 2 or 3, the audio seems to "switch over" to whatever it's now playing through for the tuning part, and the lag just goes through the roof. During that switch, if i'm continuously plucking a string, the guitar gets muted briefly, and then comes back on with all the lag intact. And then it stays there through the song.

Everything is telling me that it's the game that's doing this, not my system, since I can play at times in the game without lag. I've switched my audio cable to analog going right to my stereo receiver. Has anyone else experienced this? Any solutions? Thanks.

[BlueRed]

Same here.
As i play Bass i love to have a thight response to the string pluck. So i done something similar. I use a DI-Box, on the input my bassguitarre on the link-out the Rocksmith crap cable and on the XLR out my audio interface. An on the PC is running Guitar Rig 5 running with 48khz just for monitoring (over ASIO) latency in GR 5 is almost 3-5 ms over all so no problem. But RS has about 30ms the USB interface cable + processing + output latency... even 50ms are to high for me expecially on fast tracks.

[Kring]

your way too low at 150, it's rare a system can work that low. That should be closer to 512 or 1024. you could also set to 0 which allows rocksmith to auto-adjust. but I'd bet your problem is you have it way too low for your system.

Can you tell us CPU, memory, video card, hard drive, sound card you are using?

[Indrek]

Originally posted by Kring:

your way too low at 150, it's rare a system can work that low. That should be closer to 512 or 1024. you could also set to 0 which allows rocksmith to auto-adjust. but I'd bet your problem is you have it way too low for your system.

If his output buffer size was too low, then he'd be getting audio dropouts and distortion, not lag. If the audio is otherwise working correctly, but simply lagging, then his latency settings are fine.

Also, 150 is not way too low. I'm running at 160 and I've seen other players report using buffer size in the 150-250 range. 512 or 1024 would add way too much latency.


Anyway, jumpymonkey9, knowing your computer's specs would indeed be helpful. If it's only lagging when the amp sim is active, then it might be that the CPU is having trouble keeping up.

A couple of things to try if the problem occurs would be to restart the song, or to pause the song, unplug the cable (from the PC, not the guitar), then plug it back in. That usually does the trick for me if I get increased latency in the game for no apparent reason. Although it's happening very rarely for me and the latency seems to increase only a bit (to about 20-30 ms, I think), so it may not be caused by the same thing as your issue.

[Kring]

Drop outs can be similar to latency - 150 is really low for 99% of the systems. I'd suggest going back to default of 4 for latency and 512 for buffer. and then start working your way back toward 150 from there.

[RogueScholar]

Hey guys, thanks for the help so far. I'm not getting any type of distortion like Indrek was referring to. I went down to 140 I think, and started getting really bad noise and distortion, so I brought it back to 150. I can change it again, but it just doesn't seem like that's the issue. I'll try the unplugging to see if that helps.

And Kring, if I start at 4 and 512, how will I know when I get low enough? I thought the gauge was to stop when you heard the distorted sound on the intro video when the game starts up.

As for specs:
Win7-64
Intel i7 950 @ 3.07ghz
12GB ram
Nvidia GeForce GTX 470

As for the sound card, I'm just using the onboard sound. I had it running through the optical output, but changed it to analog to see if that would help. It didn't. I'm running audio into a Kenwood 5.1 receiver that is well over 10 years old. I think my roommate might have some speakers I could try, to narrow down what it is.

It just doesn't make sense that the lag only happens at particular parts of the game, unless like Indrek said, the cpu can't keep up for some reason.

Thanks for the help so far guys.

[RogueScholar]

Okay, so after trying again, I'm wondering if I'm confusing a different issue with lag. I mean, there's still some lag, but during a song, when I hit the note, it's like a half second before it lights up saying I hit it. So it's tough to know if I'm hitting the right note at the right time. The notes are synced up correctly with the music, so I know I don't have to change the display lag correction setting in the game. Maybe this isn't related to what I think I'm experiencing, and maybe it's a different issue altogether. Still could use some help though. Thanks.

[Indrek]

Originally posted by Kring:

Drop outs can be similar to latency

Not in the sense that we're discussing here.

Originally posted by jumpymonkey9:

Hey guys, thanks for the help so far. I'm not getting any type of distortion like Indrek was referring to. I went down to 140 I think, and started getting really bad noise and distortion, so I brought it back to 150. I can change it again, but it just doesn't seem like that's the issue. I'll try the unplugging to see if that helps.

And Kring, if I start at 4 and 512, how will I know when I get low enough? I thought the gauge was to stop when you heard the distorted sound on the intro video when the game starts up.

Yes, that's how you set your buffer settings in Rocksmith. If sound is free of distortion at 150, then it should be fine and you shouldn't have to increase your latency settings, at least not as high as Kring is suggesting.

Maybe one thing to try would be to up it to 160, as I've seen several people recommend using multiples of 8 or 32, but I have little faith in that helping. Still, can't hurt to try.

Originally posted by jumpymonkey9:

Okay, so after trying again, I'm wondering if I'm confusing a different issue with lag. I mean, there's still some lag, but during a song, when I hit the note, it's like a half second before it lights up saying I hit it. So it's tough to know if I'm hitting the right note at the right time. The notes are synced up correctly with the music, so I know I don't have to change the display lag correction setting in the game. Maybe this isn't related to what I think I'm experiencing, and maybe it's a different issue altogether. Still could use some help though. Thanks.

Just so we're clear - the latency you're talking about is not the latency between plucking a string and hearing the sound from the game? Because if so, then your audio latency settings are fine and the problem is somewhere else. Sounds like maybe the game is having trouble detecting the notes you're playing. Make sure your guitar's volume and tone controls are maxed. Try switching to another position with the pickup selector. Make sure you don't have any fret buzz, and that you're playing the notes cleanly.

Does this happen consistently in all songs? What about Amp mode, the minigames or the technique challenges - does it happen in those as well?

Did unplugging the cable help?

[Kring]

So I've seen issues with a particular NTKRNL.EXE file running. typically it points to a bad driver. If after it starts you exit Rocksmith and then go to task manager, processes tab, and the sort on CPU, system Idle should be at the top.. but everything else below it should be zero with the occasional process running at 1-3% for a second or two. If you see "System" taking approx 16% then you have the bad driver issue. go get a different version of the sound card driver to start. and it doesn't hurt to go get the latestest Nvidia driver as well. Did you make any changes to the graphics settings? try lowering those in the game as low as you can go to see if that has any effect. the other check is as soon as lag is occuring, ALT-TAB out, check the task manager the same as above and see if anything is using CPU cycles. keep in mind that even a process only consuming 16% is robbing an entire core of your system and that will cause lag.

I still think you are too low on the buffers - common signs of that are 1-2 second lag after a while of playing, not just distortion - both the buffers and the latency settings BOTH combine to determine your overall latency. The difference between 150 & 256 is exactly 4ms, not noticable so I would keep at 256 minimum. Buffers have a tendency to run out, they can work fine for 10 minutes but if they hit max then things start to lag and distort.. no reason to be so aggresive at 150. going from 256 to 512 is exactly 10.7ms of delay... there's no reason to cut your buffer short to save a few milliseconds.

Also, I seem to have to unplug and replug in my cable every other day. otherwise sustains don't last long and occasional notes drop out.

[Coffee]

Maybe try another tone cable? Maybe the one you got is defect?

[RogueScholar]

Originally posted by Indrek:

Just so we're clear - the latency you're talking about is not the latency between plucking a string and hearing the sound from the game? Because if so, then your audio latency settings are fine and the problem is somewhere else. Sounds like maybe the game is having trouble detecting the notes you're playing. Make sure your guitar's volume and tone controls are maxed. Try switching to another position with the pickup selector. Make sure you don't have any fret buzz, and that you're playing the notes cleanly.

Does this happen consistently in all songs? What about Amp mode, the minigames or the technique challenges - does it happen in those as well?

Did unplugging the cable help?

Okay, so it's a new day, and I figured I'd try again. First thing I did before starting it up was to change my buffer setting to 160, as you suggested. Just to see if that would help. Started the game, and for some odd reason, it seems to be working pretty much fine, as far as the lag goes. The lag that I was hearing during the tuning part is pretty much gone, and the songs were pretty easy to play, since I was hearing myself at the right time. The only thing I've changed other than that was putting a new battery in my bass last night. I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it. I was still getting a signal out from my bass before changing it, but I just change it every so often just in case.

I did try unplugging the cable the other day, but that didn't seem to help at the time. And after I changed my buffer to 160, I changed it back to 150 to see if there was a difference, and I can't hear it. It sounds good both ways. I've left it at 160 for now. Maybe it's because my computer was freshly booted, I dunno.

Now, I'm still having trouble with the note highlights in the game showing up a bit late. I don't think that's affecting my gameplay though, since on one song I got a 90 percent accuracy rate. I wish I could say you guys really helped me, because I know that's what you were trying to do, but I can't figure out why things sound okay now. Of course, that just means they may go back to crap randomly too. I just hope it stays good for a while. Thanks for the help guys. I'll definitely refer back to this thread if I have any other trouble.

[Indrek]

Originally posted by jumpymonkey9:

Okay, so it's a new day, and I figured I'd try again. First thing I did before starting it up was to change my buffer setting to 160, as you suggested. Just to see if that would help. Started the game, and for some odd reason, it seems to be working pretty much fine, as far as the lag goes. The lag that I was hearing during the tuning part is pretty much gone, and the songs were pretty easy to play, since I was hearing myself at the right time. The only thing I've changed other than that was putting a new battery in my bass last night. I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it. I was still getting a signal out from my bass before changing it, but I just change it every so often just in case.

It's not impossible that the old battery was close to running empty, which may have introduced enough noise and distortion to your signal to mess with Rocksmith's note recognition. I don't have enough experience with active pickups to offer a definitive answer here, sorry.

Originally posted by jumpymonkey9:

I did try unplugging the cable the other day, but that didn't seem to help at the time. And after I changed my buffer to 160, I changed it back to 150 to see if there was a difference, and I can't hear it. It sounds good both ways. I've left it at 160 for now. Maybe it's because my computer was freshly booted, I dunno.

It's also possible that before the reboot you had enough processes or services running, or maybe a misbehaving driver (as suggested) above, to cause this issue. I'd expect you to get audio dropouts rather than lag, but then real-time audio is a tricky beast. A reboot is a good way to ensure that your system is in a fresh state. Next time it happens, try checking resource usage in Task Manager or Resource Monitor.