So I was going to put this in the OS7 section… but not necessarily an OS7 issue…and not breaking news to most of you. (spoiler…turned out to be SD card issues…with several cards).
I switched to OS7 and everything was working. I love that you can turn off the on the fly color/font changes. And also I had a saber that the speaker would constantly trigger stabs, and OS7 100% fixed it. The only thing I noted was if the font.wav was still playing the ignition seamed choppy, and also blaster blocks done in quick succession were causing lag. On complex styles it was very bad. This is on 2 different sabers. So I go back to os6 and not as bad, but still laggy on complex styles…which I thought maybe I just didn’t really notice before. So I go back to OS7 and try 3 different NEW sandisk SDs. From 2 different venders. 2 were 16g from amazon, 1 was a 32g I had around from about a year ago maybe from Walmart. I tried doing a long reformat, I tried making sure my font folders all under 8 letters. Nothing would get rid of the lag, which always seamed worse on OS7. Go back to os6 and still lag.
At this point 5 different SanDisk ultras…so in desperation I grab the kioxia SD card out of my LGT xenopixel…and try that…boom zero lag. Go to OS7, zero lag. So I pull another one from another LGT and it works perfect as well.
I had heard about SD cards quality after covid…but I just would have never thought 5 different cards bought at different times would all have issues. Some were not as bad as others…but all had noticable lag. Then these off brand ones have zero lag even when I’m trying to get them to do it.
I guess just posting as a heads up…current SanDisk batches are sketchy, or I’m really unlucky. Needles to say I ordered a few from different companies so I can find what works well for me and have some backups.
So I got 2 of the same brand that was in the LGT on Amazon prime…just tested and they both have lag…wtf. I can’t win…I don’t get it. I am testing using 2 different sabers. I’m not changing the config or anything. The SD cards have the exact same data on them…they are exact duplicates.
Are you using ProffieOS 7.x?
ProffieOS 7.x has some lag when it’s doing the first two saves (of each save file), but that lag then goes away. However, if you re-initialize the SD card with a copy of data from ProffieOS 6.x, then the lag would occur again.
I am making an exact copy of the SD card in the saber, and just switching out the SD card.
The lag is not when saving or making changes, or when repopulating with os6 data, I know what your talking about and this is not that. This is happening when I use blaster blocks in a font with fire, or energy blades, etc. Or if I change to a new font and the font wav is still playing and I ignite the saber, it’s choppy on the ignition.
If I don’t use any card and just run off the board with no sounds there is zero lag. I have 3 cards that also work perfect with zero lag (all 3 are same name brand and all put of recent made LGT sabers)…I have 4 other SanDisk that all get lag. Then I just bought 2 of the same exact name brand as the ones from the LGT sabers, fully expected them to work perfect, but nope they are lagging to.
I just ran a SD speed tested on the cards. The ones that work with zero lag and the ones that lag all have right about the same read speed of 88 mb/s…so now I am really confused…
SD card speed tests are really only represented well by the on-board command sdtest in serial monitor.
Standalone apps for hard drives doesn’t translate well.
Results of like 12 or more simultaneous streams should be low/no lag.
I’m wondering if there is something else these cards have in common.
Like maybe it’s the way you’re copying them?
Could even be the order in which the files were copied to the cards. (Although it shouldn’t really matter if the cards are fast enough.)
The ones that work well, have they had their contents copied too?
Or did someone else format and copy data to those cards?
I’d be interested in getting more details on your testing process.
And yes, I’d be interested in seeing the full “sdtest” output from these cards.
I am going to do some more testing tomorrow. I just used a generic SD speed test program, I will try to run the real SD test on them tomorrow.
I do the same process on every card. Did a quick format, then just selected the 50 soundfont folders and drag them into the empty SD card. Then I copy over my preset.ini file.
The cards that work perfectly work right from that point and I don’t mess with them after that.
The ones that have lag I have tried the long format, also I have tried the program I have seen here to reformat them.
I am going to try to not move over the preset and all 50…I will just move over the soundfonts needed for the styles on the config and see if there is still lag.
Maybe I’m just pushing the limits with 50 soundfonts and mostly all complex or interactive blade styles.
50 fonts is a lot, but the problems created by that is not normally described as “lag”, but audio glitches, or “pops”. That would also show up as audio underflows in the serial monitor.
I recommend using the “dir” command in ProffieOS to list the directories in the order they actually appear on the SD. The directories at the end will be slower than the ones in the beginning.
I did the real SD test, and they are telling I think.
Cards with zero lag:
Time to open: 2204
Time to read: 1392 kb/s
Simultaneous Audio: 15.79
Tto: 2482.01
Ttr: 1376
Sa: 15.61
Cards with lag:
Tto: 7886.78
Ttr: 994.12
SA: 11.27
Tto: 4923
Ttr: 991.17 kb/s
SA: 11.24
Maybe when I load a card I should load the fonts for the complicated blades styles first, then throw the other ones on? Although I don’t think that is the issue…I never have any audio issues, all is crystal clear, no cracks or pops.
You want 1200 kbps and 12 simultaneous audio streams (per manual), so these cards are not sufficient to support more complex styles, hence your lag. When the SD is slower to read it impacts the speed at which the animation can run since the audio processes first. If you don’t have 1200 kbps for reading you will always have lag in more complex styles, especially fire or sparkle.
It’s not a mystery ;-), 99.999999999% of the time when someone reports lag in the visual effects it’s a slow or corrupt SD. You can easily check by removing the SD and running the effects without sound, if there’s no lag it’s the SD (obviously).
You can confirm by running ‘sdtest’ - if you don’t have 1200 kbps with 12 simultaneous audio streams then you need a better performing card. Sometimes reformatting can help BUT it seems the quality of SD cards in the marketplace have taken a dip since the pandemic.
