Audio amp lowered when other sample playing

Hey, I’m new to sonic pi and I’m not sure if this problem is actually related to the software or if its a hardware limitation on my end.

But I’ve been playing around with live loops, and I noticed that when I’m running two live loops at once sometimes the volume of one loop gets lowered when the other loop is playing something.

So for example, if in one live_loop I am playing a sample (e.g. :loop_breakbeat) for 1 bar and sleeping for 1 bar, then in another live_loop I am playing a scale over 2 bars (with fx, shuffle, etc. not sure if this would affect it), the amp of the second live_loop will get lowered during the first bar while the drum sample is playing, then raised to it’s intended value when nothing else is playing.

Just wondering what’s going on, and how I can fix this? Thanks

Hi @latch,
You may be encountering the behaviour of the built in signal compressor. See here:

Thanks to much for the info. Will give that a try as soon as I can, hopefully that fixes the issue.

I guess if it does work, a follow up question would be what is the benefit of leaving the signal compressor enabled?

Thanks again

Someone else may have further to say on this, but one reason may be that it’s there as a kind of safety mechanism - to limit sounds that are unintentionally very loud. It’s possible that many folks in Sonic Pi’s target audience might just experiment without fully being aware of the ideal volume levels - and particularly in a situation where they might be wearing headphones, this becomes especially important :slight_smile:

Thanks for the info, sorry I forgot to reply. Fix worked though, also allowed me to figure out I had the amp on a sound turned up too high, turned it down and fixed the problem without needing to disable the compressor

1 Like