Why REW Takes so long to Start?

[martins5]

I have the latest release and have close to 100 files in my REW folder.

I've noticed increased delays between the time REW comes up and is useable (able to click on file and get a response). Also, once I've selected a file for use, REW seems to work in slow motion for large files with 28 observations, before I'm able to navigate those observations. It seems like this has been slowly getting worse over time.

Any thoughts? Is this normal?

 

[John Mulcahy]

No, not normal. I have several hundred mdat files in my main REW folder and files with dozens of measurements, not observed any slowdown.

What OS are you using? Are the files on a local drive or on a network?

It is possible there is some unreported error, if you attach a zipped copy of the REW log files folder I can check that (the location of the log files folder is shown in the About REW dialog). If you can make one of the files you have problems with available for download somewhere I can try that as well.

 

[martins5]

No, not normal. I have several hundred mdat files in my main REW folder and files with dozens of measurements, not observed any slowdown.

What OS are you using? Are the files on a local drive or on a network?

It is possible there is some unreported error, if you attach a zipped copy of the REW log files folder I can check that (the location of the log files folder is shown in the About REW dialog). If you can make one of the files you have problems with available for download somewhere I can try that as well.

Not sure what I can provide you. I just double clicked on the REW desktop Icon. It took about 5 seconds to bring up the welcome screen. It took another 30 seconds before REW allowed me to do anything. Task manager showed about 2% to 3% CPU usage and 160mb of memory during that 30 second time period. No disk or network I/O. Opening a file another whole issue altogether. I believe if we can solve the 30 second startup time, the file issue will be related.

Did some testing and discovered the issue seems to be related to ASIO. With Java, my startup response seems to be normal. While in Java, when I go to preferences and change to ASIO from JAVA, I get the same 30 second delay before ASIO becomes active. Then the next time I start REW, I get the 30 second delay.

Just verified the file open issue is related. When opening a large file having many observations with ASIO selected in the preferences, I get the first half of the file fairly quickly with the second half about 30 seconds later. With JAVA selected the entire file opens immediately.

I have Windows 10 on a laptop and ASIiO4ALL v2.14.

 

[trobbins]

Just an aside - do you have multiple audio devices that can be selected in the main preferences window for soundcards and the driver to use? Is your default REW audio device seen by your PC on start-up, or do you start REW with that device off-line? I could also imagine that there may be an initial delay on booting REW if it was required to check on REW version updates, and hence had internet access issues.

 

[sam_adams]

@martins5, when you installed REW; what memory size did you select during the install process? If you left it at the default 512MB size that could explain the slow opening speed.

You can fix this without reinstalling:

Click the 'Start' menu.

Scroll down to 'Windows Accessories'.

Click to open the folder.

Scroll down to 'Notepad'.

Right-click on the 'Notepad' icon and select 'More' > 'Run as administrator'.

Click 'Yes' on the UAC dialog.

In 'Notepad', click 'File > Open...'.

Click on the dropdown list above the the 'Open' and 'Cancel' buttons that says 'Text Documents (*.txt)' and select 'All Files (*.*)'

Navigate to 'C:\Program Files\REW' in the Navigation pane.

Select the file 'roomeqwizard.vmoptions'.

Click 'Open'.

Look for the line -Xmx512m. It may have the '#' character in front of it.

If it has the '#' character in that line, delete the '#' and the following space character.

Then, change the line to: -Xmx2048m.

Save the file.

REW should now open without issue.

If your computer has more that 8GB of RAM, you can change that line to read: -Xmx4096m. This will set the max memory size for REW to 4GB.

I have several large .mdat files of 1GB to 2GB in my REW folder. With the -Xmx4096m setting, REW opens and displays the measurements in the 2GB files in less than eight (8) seconds on a Core i5, 1.6GHz, 16GB machine.

 

[John Mulcahy]

The slow startup is probably caused by the ASIO4All driver loading. At one time I loaded it in a background task but that caused other issues, so it had to go back to being loaded on the main thread. You could try FlexASIO instead.

 

[martins5]

The slow startup is probably caused by the ASIO4All driver loading. At one time I loaded it in a background task but that caused other issues, so it had to go back to being loaded on the main thread. You could try FlexASIO instead.

Thanks for your response. Given that I use REW several times a day to review previous measurement sessions, I will simply keep the JAVA option. On those occasions when I do perform a measurement session, I can switch to ASIO for those sessions.