Trying to build an audio cache system to mirror my video cache TOP

General TouchDesigner Discussion
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Seems like this isn’t the first time this problem has been posed, but rather than reviving an 8 year old thread I figured we’d start fresh here.

My network has a video cache coming in from a MovieFileIn TOP, and today I started experimenting with the movie file’s audio. I’m stuck on the very first step of recording an audio buffer that I can scrub through in beat with the Cache TOP. Just need same length, same position to see if I can avoid have to add additional software and communication in the mix.

I’m a little surprised how tricky this is right off the bat. My first two instincts were the Audio Movie CHOP into a Record CHOP mentioned in the ancient thread, or using a Trail CHOP. The Record CHOP seems perfect and runs like butter at default, but setting the segment length crashes TD when it hits the upper limit. At first I thought this was my large network already pushing to the extremes, but I just opened a new project with only the default AudoiFileIn CHOP and the aforementioned recording CHOPs and recreated all my frustrations, crashes included.

Oh yeah, and the Trail CHOP method… it’s just not meant to be playing audio. Before I can even think about scrubbing through it (anything besides a Shift CHOP I should be looking at?) there are tons of pops and artifacts introduced. Audio file → Trail → Output = Nope. Maybe I need something else in the chain?

Anyways I’m open to any ideas, including VSTs or other software that could do the seemingly heavy lifting. The cache itself is the first hurdle, the second is being able to reference it several times like the Cache Select TOP does.

Thanks as always.

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I’ve managed to build something similar to what you describe a while back using a trail CHOP and the same playback technique used in my audio delay tutorial.

The idea is that you’ll be running your audio into a trail CHOP which you’ll lock with a script once you’re done recording. Then, using a look up CHOP and using the same increasing index you’re using for playing back your cache top along with the delay CHOP technique described in the audio delay video you’ll be able to play back your audio at the same speed without pops and crackles.

You can also check this document as a point of reference for your touchdesigner audio projects: How-To Audio in TouchDesigner

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Thanks for the insight! That’s a very slick delay module. It never even occurred to me to creatively process audio inside of TD. I’m going to avoid the deepest depths of that particular rabbit hole for now, but I do think it will be worth exploring your methods of capturing a signal and mitigating artifacts.

I’m definitely coming back to this when I get a chance.

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Interesting take indeed, I was never successful on this so ended up mirroring a vst that worked like a cache top, and it worked out quite well.

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That’s great to hear!

Mind sharing what vst did the trick for you? Now that native vst hosting is rolling out I was recently thinking of picking up where I left off last year.