skipping audio during playback...

thedude400

New member
I've got a problem that has been making me pull my hair out today. I run an Aardvark Q10 , Cubase SX2, on a 40gb HD 768 RAM Dell. Within the past few weeks when I playback audio it will do this skipping. The audio will completely cut out but when it comes back in a half a second later it will continue where it would have been playing had the skip not occurred...rather than exactly where it cut out.

Here has been my troubleshooting so far: first I uninstaled the aardvark drivers and reinstalled. Didn't help. Then I defragmented the HD and deleted multiple gigs of unneeded saved audio. No change. Then I uninstalled the drivers and aardvark software, shut down, pulled out the aardvark pci card , restarted without the card, shut down again and reinserted the PCI card in a new slot, reinstalled software and drivers. Alas, it worked for a little over an hour while I laid dummy guitars down for a new song. Then as I sat down to experiment with drum parts it started skipping just a little bit again, then gradually got worse and now it has returned to it's original annoying frequency.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue? I would like to continue to try anything that might help. My plan next is to try what I did again and also reinstall cubase, though I doubt that will help.

I record at 24bit 48 khz and have been successfully for over a year without any similar problems so I have a terrible fear that something expensive has gone bad on me. It very well could be an Ardvark issue as usual and I wish I could rid myself of it for good and get a firepod or something but as of now that isnt really in my budget. I really want to get this fixed for free or hopefully cheap. Alright enough babbling. Any help is appreciated.
 
thedude400 said:
I've got a problem that has been making me pull my hair out today. I run an Aardvark Q10 , Cubase SX2, on a 40gb HD 768 RAM Dell. Within the past few weeks when I playback audio it will do this skipping. The audio will completely cut out but when it comes back in a half a second later it will continue where it would have been playing had the skip not occurred...rather than exactly where it cut out.

Here has been my troubleshooting so far: first I uninstaled the aardvark drivers and reinstalled. Didn't help. Then I defragmented the HD and deleted multiple gigs of unneeded saved audio. No change. Then I uninstalled the drivers and aardvark software, shut down, pulled out the aardvark pci card , restarted without the card, shut down again and reinserted the PCI card in a new slot, reinstalled software and drivers. Alas, it worked for a little over an hour while I laid dummy guitars down for a new song. Then as I sat down to experiment with drum parts it started skipping just a little bit again, then gradually got worse and now it has returned to it's original annoying frequency.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue? I would like to continue to try anything that might help. My plan next is to try what I did again and also reinstall cubase, though I doubt that will help.

I record at 24bit 48 khz and have been successfully for over a year without any similar problems so I have a terrible fear that something expensive has gone bad on me. It very well could be an Ardvark issue as usual and I wish I could rid myself of it for good and get a firepod or something but as of now that isnt really in my budget. I really want to get this fixed for free or hopefully cheap. Alright enough babbling. Any help is appreciated.

Update your video drivers, check your latency buffer settings in the recording sofware. "Skipping" is usually caused by operating system inerrupts. You should optimize your computor by shutting off any un-needed programs. Do a search on Google for optimizing computors for music recording and you will find a ton of info.

Also: Don't even get me started about Dell. Enough said.

Good Luck.
 
could be time for a fresh format of your hard drive...i'm assuming you use this computer for more than just recording and eventually shit just builds up in it...

i format all of the computers in my house and studio (well...not the macs) usually every 6 months
 
I would start with the buffer size. Even if you have noticeable latancy, it's better than skipping, atleast for now. That will probably get you to where you can record unless you have major problems.

Then like above, optimise your computer for recording. Well, i actually found that stuffing it with the most ram possible, i have 2 gigs, with a good processor makes optimising not worth the comprimises as it is relative unnoticeable. But when i had a 996mhz pentium 3 with 512 megs of ram, it did make a noticeable difference.

Also, update your divers for your soundcard and anything else, run spyware, etc. Anything to make your computer perform to the best of it's abilities.

That should hopefully do it, if not, you may be in for some more serious solutions.
 
Try recording to a USB flash drive (temporarily) - if this clears the problem then it's disk speed / buffering.

Turn off as many background tasks as you can (like virus checking etc).
 
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