how many audio tracks can I use on my pc?

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daafje

New member
Hi, I have a PC (300PII, 128Mb RAM) with the SB Live! card, which came with that crappy pathetic verion of Cubasis. This gives me only 8 tracks of audio, which is not really enough for me.

I recently bought Cubasis VST which promised me 16 tracks of audio but when I installed it on my machine it only gave me 8 again. Is this dependent on my soundcard, and if so, could I use my old SB AWE64 Gold card together with my Live! to get more audio tracks? Or should I just reinstall my machine (something that needs doing quite urgently anyway) to get the 16 tracks I crave....

Cheers
 
Cubasis has a limit of 32 audio tracks according to the specs on Steinbergs site so that's not the problem (as far as I can see).

300MHz, 128Mb RAM should cope with more than 8 tracks if the hard disk is up to it. No modern hard disk should have problems with 16 tracks though. Even at 24/96 resolution, the teorethical throughput is (24/8*96000) 288kb/s or 4.6Mb/s (OK, 16 tracks in 24/96 resolution may be pushing it). As you use SB Live which have a fixed sample rate of 48k and a max bit depth of 16bit (correct me if I'm wrong), the throughput on your system is only one third of that, i.e. about 1.5Mb/s. No problemo. Especially not if you have configured your system correctly. However, track limitations due to hard disk limitations usually don't show up as fixed limits on your system but rather read/write errors or odd-sounding tracks (missing frames). Or do Cubasis perform some sort of system check and tells you how many tracks you can use?

The limit of the total number of tracks is not dependent on the soundcard. The soundcard only limits the number of simultanious ins and outs. SB Live only has stereo in/out (right?) so that's not your problem either. You should be able to record two tracks at a time until your computer cannot handle the total number of tracks anymore.

Is the bundeled version of Cubasis limited to 8 tracks? If so, then there's your problem and you need another program. I suggest that you check out n-Track from www.fasoft.com. It's cheap and it's great. There's a 16bit version that is cheaper than the full 24bit version but I think the 16bit verion lacks some other features as well, like support for VST plug-ins.

I'm out of ideas here. Can you be more specific on how the limitation is showing? What tells you that the limit is 8 tracks?

/Ola
 
Ola, thanks very much for your prompt reply! This is why I love the internet...

You have already been very helpful. With your confirmation that the audio track limitation is not down to the hardware, I am tempted to conclude that it is down to the appalling state that my machine must be in after 2 years of heavy use and no maintenance to speak of ... Especially since, as you suggested, the last version of Cubasis had only 8 tracks of audio. The new installation is probably adopting some of the old settings (I know that it is, because I haven't had to re-load all my sound fonts in the new version).

Today I finally received my new graphics card (my old one was dead) so I can now access and therefore reinstall my computer. After that I will attempt another installation of Cubasis VST and take it from there.

Thanks so far!
 
A fresh install of Windows is always the cheapes upgrade to your computer :) but you may very well get away with a fresh installation of Cubasis. It does indeed look like your computer is mixing settings that it shouldn't. The problem is that even if you reinstall, you might have the same problem. Let us know how it's going.

/Ola
 
n-track now supports VST plug-ins. Version 2.14 (I think that's the latest number) adds this capability. I need to upgrade...

MikeDog
 
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