any tips on stopping cakewalk dropping out?

[r0cker]

hello there, firstly thanks for reading this. anyway, i'm getting a new computer soon cos cakewalk is running cripplingly slowly on my old 233. in the meantime i am trying to squeeze the last bit of life out of it.
i was just wondering if anyone had any settings tips for hard drives, hardware or within cakewalk that might help perfomance. currently cw is taking up to a minute to start to play and dropping out a lot too. i am trying to use as little processing power as pos with fewer real time plug ins but the meters are still up pretty high. if anyone has any tips they would be well appreciated. i'm not expecting good perfomance from my computer i just wondered if there are any settings that may help me out.
cheers
alistair

[dachay2tnr]

I finally had to break down and get a 933 MHz PIII with 256 Mb RAM, as my CW files wouldn't play at all on my 233 Mhz P1. I, however, use realtime FX quite extensively, which was part of the problem.

Anyway, defrag the HD, of course. And also defrag the CW audio files. You can do this by saving as a .bun file and deleting your .wrk file. Then reload the .bun. This puts all your audio data into one .wav file, which might help playback.

Bottom line, though, is a 233 MHz machine is not the right platform for audio work.

[r0cker]

thanks for your reply, that was very quick! just wanted to check if i need to clean the audio disk after deleting the wrk file and before loading the bun file up or if this is not necessary.
i realise i'm gonna hav to upgrade, just a case of having to finish a track before i get my next advance, so this the final struggle!
also wondered if you know how swing affects audio, will it move sounds within a clip or only move the seperate clips?
thanks again
alistair

[dachay2tnr]

Although it is not necessary to improve the playback, you should run Clean Audio Disk after saving the .bun file and before reloading it. This will reclaim disk space for you.

Sorry, but I'm not familiar with "swing". I only do audio recording, no midi.

[AlChuck]

I really doubt that any software could be smart enough to know how to do multiple time-shifts on an audio file to try to match a swing pattern and have any reasonable results come out of it. I'll bet my extra kidney that all it does is move the start times of audio events.

[r0cker]

i think pro tools le on the digi 001 does audio quantizing and fades the starts and ends of audio segments so there is no clipping. i will experiment with cakewalk and let you know.
thanks for your reply