glitch/stutter

[thewaiter]

Cakewalk folks,

I am experiencing a problem with glitching/stuttering when playing back midi,I'm not sure if it is hardware related or software related and was hoping someone may have come across this before.
I am using Cakewalk pro audio 6 and my pc is a pentuim 2 200hz with 96 m ram (I'm pretty sure thats enough for the program)

I have a number of modules connected to a Roland 4x4 USB midi interface and upon play back of a track the data stutters/jumps/glitches (whatever the word is), this happens every now and again it's not continuous,but nevertheless very frustrating when it does

Anyone have any suggestions ??

[lkmuller]

I had the same problem. Try cutting back on your hardware acceleration in the control panel - that cleared it up for me.

[AlChuck]

thewaiter,

I had the same problem when my machine was a Pentium MMX 200 MHz, also with 96 MB RAM. It seemed to be unaffected by the hardware acceleration setting of the video card. I created a second hardware profile so that I could boot with the modem and the network card disabled (normally the network card would connect me to the network at the office through a DSL connection). I also made sure that none of the resource-stealer things were running -- like FindFast, the Windows Scheduler, the antivirus scan software, etc. Worked fine until I got past five or so audio tracks, which prompted me to upgrade recently to a screaming PIII-700 with 256 MB RAM.

-AlChuck

[thewaiter]

I almost feel like doing the same ditching the P2 200 and getting a faster bigger model but haven't got the wedgeo at the moment so I'll have to tweak a few things, can you explain the hardware acceleration ?

[AlChuck]

Please excuse me if I don't get this precisely right as I'm not in front of my Windows 9x machine right now...

Go to Control Panel and double-click on the Display icon.

Click on the Settings tab. You should see a buton labeled "Advanced" in there. Clock on it.

In the dialog that pops up, there should be a hardware acceleration slider (can't recall if there are tabbed pages in here or not) that goes from "None" to "Full," I think, with maybe 2 in-between settings. Adjust this downward if it's up at Full and close the dialog box (click Apply if there's a button so labeled) and the others that got you there. You might have to reboot for this change to take effect.

Also check the Cakewalk website if you have a PCI video card -- it could be hogging the PCI bus. There's a FAQ or technical article about what to do about this for various video cards; perhaps yours is on the list.

Good luck!

-AlChuck

[nubius]

The only video cards I know of that hog the PCI bus are the Matrox Millenium series. There is a setting you can change in WIN.INI to correct this (intentional) problem.
If you have one of these *older* cards, then lowering the hardware acceleration might not help. It could be a DMA buffer size/cache/HDD block size issue.

[AlChuck]

nubius,

My MagicVideo PCI card on the old computer had this problem -- I think all S3-based video cards do, at least potentially. Was the Matrox Millenium based on the S3 chip?

-AlChuck

[nubius]

No idea! Probably...

[AlChuck]

Sorry I overlooked mentioning this before... one more thing that might cause such behavior -- in my last machine, I had two newer 32 MB SIMMs and two older 16 MB SIMMs for a total of 96 MB; it was a slow machine (Pentium MMX 200 MHz) and I couldn't reliably get even a track of audio, with the same behavior you describe.
Eventually I decided just for fun to take out the two 16 MB modules... and suddenly I had a DAW that worked. It was no screamer, mind you, but it could record 6-8 tracks and run a couple of plug-ins without problem.

I had read somewhere that even though motherboards say they support it, sometimes using memory of different speeds or types can cause performance issues. I had some that was faster than the other and some that was EDO, some that was not.

-AlChuck

[thewaiter]

I also use two 32MB chips and 2 16MB chips, bugger maybe I should try that also.

You guys have mentioned probl;ems using audio I DONT even use the PC for audio recording! my souncard is a soundblaster AWE64.

I shall try some of the tweaking mentioned above thanks

[John Sayers]

It's probably not a windows problem but for all you guys and gals this is a good site for basic windows setup for audio
http://www.musicsolutions.com.au/art...ngwindows.html

[thewaiter]

Well I tried a couple of things but still having troubles. I have the computer linked up to a Roland SMPU 4x4 if I am transmitting
over 4 midi outs with patch changes going on and filter information being transmitted, is it possible that my PC is just not powerful enough ??? I am using Cakewalk Audio 6 I have a Pentium2 200mhz and have 96meg RAM ?????