Element Playlist Not Saving Ordering

Support
#1

I’m having a problem with the ordering of elements in an Element Playlist are not saving correctly.

First, what I’m trying to do. For Halloween, I’m running a pirate setup. Part of the setup involves lights and cannons synchronized to sounds using a microcontroller, while the other part involves playing background sounds using Syrinscape.

At pre-set intervals, I will be playing either a sound and effect combination from the microcontroller, or a sound from Syrinscape. For Syrinscape in particular, we have a variety of jokes and a welcome. To get this to work, I’m trying to setup the following pattern:

5 minute delay to start of first sample.
10 minute delay from the start of each sample.
Sample list of:
Joke -> Welcome -> Silence (this is an event from the microcontroller)

We have several jokes, so this is setup with 6 Joke samples, interspersed with the same Welcome and Silence samples repeated. Like:
Joke1->Welcome->Silence->Joke2->Welcome->Silence->Joke3…etc.

I am able to go in and organize my samples in the Element Playlist, arrange them in the order that I want, and setup the delays. The delays seem to be setup fine. But when I reload the Sound Set Creator, the ordering of my samples has changed and is not being preserved.

The SoundSet is called “Old Fox Ghost Ship”, and the Element is “Jokes”. Any help you can offer would be appreciated.

My current workaround is to re-order when I load the Sound Set Creator, and as long as it stays loaded it seems like it should work…but I haven’t played through the whole list yet to see if it’s actually playing them right or not yet.

#2

Additional note after more testing:

The Element is set to play the Element Playlist using Sequential, but the first sample it plays is not the first sample in the list, so it doesn’t seem to be starting at the top of the list for what I’ve got in there.

#3

That’s an odd one! My quick tests I just did show things working as I would expect, so something is strange here. Is it just that the Element is continuing from where in the playlist it was last playing? If you do not stop the Element, and let it fade all the way out (which is 3 sec from memory), starting the Element again will have it resume instead of starting a new. I’ll try to keep digging, but that could be a reason you’ll see an Element not start from the top of the Playlist.

#4

No, it’s starting from scratch. So first load up with nothing going and starting the Mood.

I do have the same Sample used repeatedly (the Welcome and Silence).

I did another test, and this seems to indicate that perhaps the same sound repeated may be causing a problem. I duplicated my Effect with the same settings and Playlist. I then went to the first use of the Silence sample I’m using (named “1 second silence”) and pushed the red icon to delete the first use of it. Instead of deleting the sample in the Effect Playlist that I had clicked that icon on, it looks like it deleted the last occurrence of that effect in the playlist. I tried this same test with my Welcome sample and got the same result…it seemed to delete the last occurrence, instead of the one I clicked to delete.

In my copy, I have now deleted all repeated usage of those two sounds so only one is left of each (none repeated). All of the elements are not organizable and persist their order correctly between refreshes of the Sound Set Creator. And it appears to play in the correct order when started as well.

As a work-around for now, I can upload multiple copies of my Welcome sound, and there are several different length silence samples that I can use. I’ll try that out and see if it works.

#5

Ah, very interesting. So having the exact same Sample multiple times in the Playlist is causing ordering issues. This might be the case, since you are using Syrinscape in a somewhat novel/innovative way here. Nicely worked out, we’ll have to decide if this workaround is reasonable or not :slight_smile: Hope you enjoy your Pirate themed Halloween event! :smiley:

#6

Thanks!

Biggest downer I can see with the workaround I have is that it’s kind of a waste of storage space. The sound is small (<400KB), but storage isn’t free. If it does work, I’ll go through and delete the extra uploads after Sunday.

#7

The workaround is working. There are multiple Samples called “20 second silence” that I selected individually. I also uploaded 6 copies of the Welcome sample (to match the 6 joke count). The Element Playlist is staying sorted properly between reloads of the Sound Set Creator, and is playing in the correct order. So I think I’m good to go for now.

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