how to make playback more reliable?

M

MASTON

New member
how can I make playback more reliable?

Hi,

I'm running an AMD K6-2 400, 128 Mb Ram, Cakewalk, Win 98,audiophile, SB Live(for midi), regular 6Gig hard-drive, and am getting drop outs with about 4 audio tracks (24-bit), and 40-50% processor usage.

I've got latency at safe, and that I/O buffer setting thing in Cakewalk at 256.

I've de-fragged the drive.

I've noticed the drop-outs occur when the drive hits max usage, which in turn seems to be dependent on processor usage.

Also the drive doesn't flow regularly but is very inconsistent.

Is there any way to get more tracks running reliably without upgrading hardware.

What about changing drivers. I'm using the ones maudio shipped with the card. What're ASIO drivers. Would that help?
What about changing the DMA setting thing in the maudio control panel?

cheers

Maston
 
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Hey Maston; long time no see. If it's a 6 gig drive then I'll assume it's not exactly a speed demon so that's part of the problem.

There are a lot of things you can do to free up system resources. I'll assume you've already disabled your screen saver (and I also would turn off the power-down sleep mode function of the HD.) One of the best things I ever did to free up my system resources was to change the video card display settings from 32 bit to 16. And it may be my middle-aged eyes but I've never noticed the difference on my monitor since I did that. You could even go lower to 256 colors.

And of course disable all running programs you absoluetly don't need. Turn off anti-virus utilities and firewall stuff. In fact, if you just do the ole control-alternate-delete and close off programs you don't need, the only things that really need to be left on I can think of (besides your music software of course) is Explorer, Point 32, and Systray. Just those three plus Cakewalk.

Are you having trouble with running programs locking up your system while recording? One of the worst culprits I had was Windows Find Fast. Disable that stupid thing and forget about it! It's nothing but trouble. Another believe it or not was MS Works Calendar Reminder. I've had no trouble since I disabled those two.
 
Also....

It looks like you're using 2 audio cards simultaniously, no? I don't know how much more system resources it takes to run 2 at the same time coz I've never done it but that could be a contributing factor I suppose. ASIO drivers have to do with midi and synth stuff mostly and being a guitar man I don't know much about that. If you're using SB Live for your midi stuff though aren't you having latency problems with the SB drivers? They don't use any ASIO drivers unless you're using the APS hack in which case I would guess you're not having any latency problems. Maybe somebody else who uses synths here can tell you about that.

But before you do anything try going to a 16 bit resolution. It's just amazing how much that frees up your system. (I'm also using W98 2nd Ed.)

Another thing, I was just mentioning this somewhere else; I use Cakewalk GT Pro for things where I need a lot of tracks and Cool Edit 2000 w/ the 4-track plug-in for my solo acoustic guitar stuff and as a wave editor. Everyone raves about how stable CE is and I must admit that it's never once locked up my system that I can remember. Cakewalk locks up about once an hour though. That's not bad really but it's just not all that stable a recording software compared to some others in my opinion (but the price is right!) It also seems to use a lot more system resources than CE does even if I run just a few tracks on each.
 
This doesn't sound like a CPU problem to me. I ran an AMD K6-3 450 for a few years. 24-30 dry tracks in SAWPro were never a problem.

Am I understanding you only have one drive? And a small one at that. You'll get better performance if you run the program off the boot drive and all audio on a seperate drive. The audio drive should be the fastest one you have.

My suggestion would be to get yourself an ATA 100 controller and drive. And use that drive for your audio. This is an inexpensive upgrade that should improve things.
 
Hi windowman, I've been here man, you're just not looking in the right places. I've got everything disabled, but I'll trying switching to 16 bit colour, see if it helps. I don't have any latency issues with the SB Live drivers by the way.

larrye: that looks like a well solid article, I'm printing it out now.
Yeah I'm using effects, mainly reverb which takes out 20% of the processor per track

angie: that must be cos of SAWPro, no way can you do that in Cakewalk. Well, that's my experience anyway. I'll look into the drive thing

buy for now, got some optimising to do

Maston
 
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