MIOConsole3d Session
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Transport Control block
The Transport block displays information crucial to the operation of Session recording and playback and
houses the Transport operational controls.
Figure 12.25: Transport Header bar: Transport stopped with Loop mode engaged
Transport Control is the only always-visible section the Session window.
• The
Current Playhead position
is shown (in both HH:MM:SS.ss and Bars/Beats). This is a read-only
display.
• The
Ring Buffer Status
buffer status ring:
Since the Ring Buffer is a crucial element of the recording engine, the Ring Buffer Status display is
shown in the Transport section where it will always be visible.
How you use the Ring Buffer is detailed by the
entry in the “Record Trigger block” section
which follows. In the meantime, here‘s what it is and what the display represents:
Inherent to the 3d Session record engine is a 60-second FIFO ring buffer memory cache capable
of handling 128 channels of 32-bit audio at 192kHz. This ring buffer rolls on unnoticed in the back-
ground whenever “Record Enable” on any Session track is engaged (“R” button = Red), continuously
replacing old audio with new (hence “FIFO”, meaning “First In, First Out”).
This 60-seconds of buffered audio is used as a data confidence measure when writing to slower
storage media, and to provide from 1/4 second to 60 seconds of automatic
Preroll
to all Session
audio files.
So, if the Ring Buffer Status ring display is rotating, that means that some track somewhere, whether
visible or not, is record-enabled, and the ring buffer is running in the background.
The white “memory status” section of the ring buffer display grows larger as your Preroll setting
increases. You will see it start “filling up” with audio upon record-enabling a track; so if you set
Preroll to 10 seconds, it requires 10 seconds of pre-loading from the moment you record-enable
your tracks to fill that preroll memory allocation (after all, it can‘t write audio to a file that it hasn‘t
had time to load yet).
When the “memory status” indicator stops growing your preroll time allocation has been reached.
Again, the ring buffer itself is always FIFO-ing the full 60 seconds of audio - the white section only
describes your current Preroll allocation.
The spin rate of the display increases at higher sample rates, indicating data is moving faster through
the ring buffer FIFO engine. As long as channels are record-enabled, even with ‘Preroll = Off’ the
