THE SILENT ORBITS WERE A TWO-PART INTERACTION, AND PART TWO WAS OURS.
Symptom, for two evenings: orbits went silent mid-set. Which ones changed every
boot. The boot log looked perfect — every bank registered with the right file
count — and 19741 `Buffer UGen: no buffer data` messages piled up in a single 6h
session where no performer would ever see them.
Part one is upstream design. `~dirt.doNotReadYet = true` registers banks from WAV
HEADERS ONLY; the audio is read on first use. That read is fired asynchronously by
`readFileIfNecessary` (DirtSoundLibrary.sc:268-274), which returns immediately — so
the synth for the very event that triggered the read gets a bufnum with no samples
in it. A correct file count in the log proves nothing about playability, because
the count comes from the header.
Part two is ours, and it is the one that turned a first-hit glitch into a dead
orbit. `preload.scd` — our own generated warm-up — set `~dirt.doNotReadYet = false`
and NEVER SET IT BACK. `readFileIfNecessary` has exactly one caller, and that call
site is gated on `doNotReadYet` (DirtSoundLibrary.sc:259-261). With the flag left
false, a bank registered header-only at boot is never read. Not read late: never.
So every bank the whitelist happened to MISS was permanently silent, forever.
And the whitelist missed banks routinely, because gig-up.sh built it from the N
most-recently-EDITED tracks (`--last`). That is a guess about what will be played.
the_revolution_will_be_sampled had not been edited recently, so `like_sugar` and
`the_revolution` were never warmed — which is precisely the set of banks feeding
the six orbits that were dead. Whitelist-by-mtime also explains the symptom that
made this look haunted: the misses changed as files were touched, so a different
set of orbits died on each boot.
Neither half is fatal alone. A miss with the flag restored is a slow first hit; a
flipped flag with a complete whitelist is invisible. Together they are a
silent-orbit generator.
THE FIX, in the generator that emits preload.scd:
- Restore `doNotReadYet = true` after warming. This is the load-bearing line: it
demotes the whitelist from load-bearing to a mere optimisation, which is the
only thing it is safe to be on stage.
- Drive the whitelist from an explicit setlist file (setlist_opal2026.txt) rather
than from mtimes. Warm what will be PLAYED. `--last` stays for jamming.
- Emit a per-bank COUNT ASSERTION. Re-loading a bank REPLACES it (addBuffer
defaults appendToExisting = false, DirtSoundLibrary.sc:42-46), so this is
index-stable and `like_sugar:21` keeps its meaning; the assertion guards the one
case that would break that, a whitelist gone stale against the folders.
- gig-up.sh writes via a temp file, because `> preload.scd` truncates BEFORE the
generator runs — a failure used to leave an empty preload the boot read as
"nothing to warm".
The assertion earned its keep on its first run, failing `jbk_kick: expected 508,
got 254`. Exactly 2x, and the tool was wrong, not the rig: that folder symlinks
into the rhadamanthe pack, which carries an AppleDouble `._X.wav` beside every real
`X.wav`. `glob('*.wav')` matches both; SuperDirt's `pathMatch("*")` skips dotfiles;
`ls` hides them so the folder looks clean. Counting now skips dotfiles.
VALIDATION — instrumental, no ears (PLN at work), two timepoints, per the rule that
short windows make a time-varying fault look static:
BEFORE: the_revolution_will_be_sampled, d4/d5/d9/d10/d11/d12 all -inf at source.
AFTER : all 11 declared orbits carry signal, and STILL carry it on a second probe
~95s later with no re-eval (levels stable to ~0.2 dB).
no buffer data since the eval: 0 (was 19741 in 6h)
Preload: 47/47 banks pass the count assertion, 2352 files, 2.2 s, 1.2 GB.
Also fully green: perfect 12/12 orbits, gimme_acid 10/10, mafia_sans_serif 7/7,
wap 5/5. Bare `s "like_sugar*4"` / `"the_revolution*2"` with no helpers: audible.
STILL BROKEN, SEPARATELY: vague_de_crime is silent at source with ZERO buffer
errors, and every one of its dead orbits routes through the ^NN helpers
(gMute2/gM1/gM3/gF1/gF3). That is #61 — an untouched `^NN` evaluates to `silence`,
not 0 — not this bug. Fixing the buffers removed the noise that was hiding it.
Refs #26, #63. Surfaces #61. Note for #44: the readiness gate passes BEFORE the
preload finishes, since "listening to Tidal" is printed by ~dirt.start well ahead
of the warm-up.
