slow down of recordings

[drummer1000]

has any one else encountered a speed problem on N-TRACKS???? whilst recording a rough demo consisting of two guitar parts on one track and two vocal parts on one track i encountered a slight problem after recording....after a ramdom interval the vocal track seems to move slightly ahead or behind where its supposed to be...the track doesnt move but the actual sound recording..i tried recording each track several times and encountered the problem each time...my first thougt is that my hard drive is skipping during recording....any ideas????

[Slackmaster2K]

Um, are you using two soundcards?

Slackmaster 2000

[drummer1000]

nope just one

[Slackmaster2K]

Hmmm...wow. And it's not a sample rate issue since you're recording all these tracks at the same time? Odd. What soundcard?

Slackmaster 2000

[TimOBrien]

Have you tried going into the preferences>Options tab and unclicking the boxes "Use System Timer" for playback and recording time?

Somewhere I vaguely remember this being an issue before and I think this was the answer. Have you checked the fasoft board for this question?

[drummer1000]

soundblaster 16..im recording the tracks one at a time(2*guitar and 2*vocal)...... so that might be the problem...im not totally sure though,is thier any other software i can use to correct this on though im dimly aware of wave editors ets but i have very little i dea of how to use them or which one is best for this problem...tim ill give what you said a shot.ive not actually been able to access the fasoft site i keep gettin 404'd so........

[Slackmaster2K]

Are the tracks consistantly off, or does time seem to drift within a track? I agree with tim that it's probably a clock issue, the SB16 being the most likely suspect.

Fasoft is up and running for me, but it took about 30 seconds to connect.

Slackmaster 2000

[drummer1000]

the vocal dubs are ok to begin with then they lose sync and seem to occaisionally shift back and forth in the song.....it probably is my soundcard,its old and badly needs replacing

[Sangram]

Is this happening after you mix down the file and play it on another software, or even after that??

Sang

[drummer1000]

ive only tried it on n-tracks...basically im not gonna mix down the track till ive worked out what the problem is but ive a feelin that if i transfered the wav files to another program the problem would still be there....on top of this i tried adding a new vocal part to two of the songs last night and during recording ntracks temporellary locked and then stopped itself anything i tried to record ater the point in the song where it froze it will only record for a few milliseconds then it stops....im starting to think shelling out for a copy of protools might not be such a bad idea...help!!

[Sangram]

Drummer

Por Favor, Senor..

Run one of your recorded tracks through anyother program (Winamp? Sonique? Windows Media Player?) and check if the problem is there. If it's not, it's likely an error with n-Tracks. If the problem still persists, you may have a hardware conflict or configuration issue.

Sang

[TomD]

I've had that happen a few times. I think a lot of the problem, is not having quite a powerful enough computer to handle it.

Here is what I do, and it's been working.

Close all programs I don't need

Keep the hard drive defragmented

From time to time, save the sng file, close N-track, and run a
memory reclaimer ( I use Ram Idle ) - once run, CLOSE it before running N-track again.

Don't use effects until all the tracks are recorded. If more than 6 or 8 tracks, I mixdown the song, with effects, open a new sng file, import the mixdown wave, then add more tracks to that.
(rarely have done this)

Sometimes it does it anyway, and I found a fix. At least, for me it fixed it.

Under VIEW/Settings, there is settings for the buffering. Click on 'Default setting' and click apply - the problem is gone, until the next time. Maybe a week or a month from now. Now, I didn't change from the default settings, but somehow clicking on that, resets something in the program.

Your mileage may vary, but it's been working for me. And mine does it bad when it does it.

[drummer1000]

the problem isnt with n-tracks i did a rough mix down and made an mp3 and the mp3 was out of sync too bout its ok as i think i have found the problem.........my hard drive is well and truely past it..i have two one 10 gig one twenty gig i ran a defrag the other day-for the first time in months-and the disk surface of the 10 gig drive(which has n-tracks,windows and a veriaty of things i use on a dialy baisi)is damaged ive tried to run a repair on it but it cant restore anything...so i guess its time to get a new hard drive......damn...and heres me saving up for a desk too