The very basics

[victoryswing]

At the present I am working my way through setting up a very basic system which I will upgrade as finances permit. According to the info I have read on the various internet home recording sites, what I am using is considered very basic but adequate for my current purposes.

While experimenting with just getting all my parts to talk to each other, while recording from CD's I am getting "skips" in the recording, as though the CD itself was skipping, which it is not.
Something to do with configuration settings ?

Here is the gear I am running :

Pentium 4 processor
128 mb RAM, soon to be 256
Soundblaster Live 5.1 card
Sony CRX140 CD-RW
Sony Extreme program for above
Recording through Audacity.

Thanks

Roger B

[Dogman]

RAM is probably your biggest issue when doing any media file. They are big, and if the pc has to write to the hard drive constantly, this can cause some issues. See if the RAM upgrade helps, but 256 is still pretty low for most tasks. What is your processor speed?
Ed

[NL5]

You really need more RAM - If you are running XP, 256 is kind of a minumum (Just for XP) - Try and go to 512 or a gig if you can swing it. 512 DDR is only about $50.

[victoryswing]

I kind of thought the RAM would be the problem, as I am only running 128 at the moment. I have another 128 card coming but will go for 512 as soon as I can. I'm also running it on Win98 SE at the moment. With newer stuff, I will likely go the XP route but from my reading, there seem to be fewer hardware conflicts with 98, especially with older computer innards.

Thanks for the info so far, keep them cards and letters coming folks.

Roger

[Rokket]

Originally Posted by victoryswing

I kind of thought the RAM would be the problem, as I am only running 128 at the moment. I have another 128 card coming but will go for 512 as soon as I can. I'm also running it on Win98 SE at the moment. With newer stuff, I will likely go the XP route but from my reading, there seem to be fewer hardware conflicts with 98, especially with older computer innards.

Thanks for the info so far, keep them cards and letters coming folks.

Roger

There are some programs that will run better on XP, and will give you nightmares on 98 SE. I don't have an example right off the top of my head, but I am sure that some can chime in. I was running Vegas on my old pc (which was almost 5 years old and had XP) with 128, and after a few tracks and a couple plugins, it was staggering, sputtering and freezing up on me. I am running 512 in my new pc, and I've had songs with 30 tracks, a buttload of plugins and no problems what-so-ever.
YMMV...