Various noise with Cubase VST

R

rio452001

New member
Hi there,

I've got two questions.

I'm using Cubase VST (version 5, I think) with a 1.4 gh Pentium 4, with 512 mb ram, and a Delta 66 sound card.

I'm recording drums using all 6 inputs on the sound card.

Question No. 1 is as follows: I'd say most of the time, we're getting quite a good recording. However, on about 33% to 40% of the time, on playback, the drum tracks have "digital noises" like pops or "burps" or almost like a clip or "skip" (ie., as if the program is having trouble recording in real time, and sort of "slips" or "skips" rather than record evenly-- it's hard to explain, but it's not a static-type noise, it's more "in your face" and louder.

Any ideas what may be causing it, and how it might be corrected?

If I leave it alone, is it likely to come through on the final mix, mastering and burning to CD? (I suppose I could do a test burn to find out...)

This brings up my second question:

Question no. 2: When I copy the recorded drum tracks to an external drive for storage (let's call it drive "H"), and then try to reopen the original files (in drive "D"), the program can't immediately find the files, and prompts me to look for the files either automatically or manually... when I say to search automatically, it seems to find or recreate the files without difficulty... is this normal, or is this evidence of some other problem that will eventually catch up with me?
 
pos and skips can be caused by a number of factors.
....
1. if your hard drive(s) are not dma enabled.
2. if you have any cards in pci slots that lock out audio from doing its thing.
for example are you running a network card ? if so.....disable in windows prior to a session.
list whats in your pci slots...and i'll try and help further.
 
Thanks for your replies, Manning & Buzi.

Manning, the computer is pretty much dedicated to recording, and there's no network cards or anything like that-- it's basically motherboard, drives, video card & sound card... But, at the risk of appearing totally computer illiterate, how can I verify exactly what's connected to the PCI slots?

Buzi, I'll have a look, but I forgot to mention I'm using Windows 98 (it was more stable than ME, which was the newest operating system at the time I purchased Cubase & my recording computer) rather than XP.

I've increased the buffer setting from 32 (lowest setting) to 48, would that likely make a difference? Is it likely to call latency problems? (I haven't tried recording with the new setting yet).

Also, we're not likely going to get a chance to re-record the drum tracks for a couple of months... in the meantime, we're going to try to fix the "noises" by cutting and pasting other passages in the drum tracks... the "noises" are very short in duration, and as long as we get the drum beats close (if we can't get them dead-on), it should sound better than it currently does.

Any other suggestions on fixing this?

The problem noise sounds like more of a "skip" (if that's possible) than a pop or crackle...

thanks again,

rio
 
One more thing...

The settings on my sound card (Delta 66) were set to 16 Channels, 196 kb memory per channel, and the buffer disk block size at 32

I have 512 RAM total.

If I change the settings to:

16 Channels
240 kb memory per channel
48 disk block size (buffer),

am I likely to improve performance?

Or, can anyone suggest reasonable settings should be, considering my computer & sound card?

While I"m stuck with the problems in some of our drum tracks, I'd like to avoid similar problems when recording the rest of the instruments

thanks, and sorry for all the questions,

Rio
 
you say that you have zilch in your pci slots.good.
so - to verify - if you look around the back of your tower you should see
several slots (eg..6) with blank metal panels in them ?
how many drives ?
also - what chipset are you using ? nvidea ? via ? sis ???
thanks.
ps..what brand of video card ?
 
I'll have a look and get back to you re number of used slots, etc.

I think it's 1 x 100 gig hard drive, compartmentalized into "C" and "D" drives. The C drive is 20 gigs and contains programs only. The D is 80 gigs, and contains only the Cubase files I'm currently working on. I have a separate external drive I use for storage of copies, old files, etc.

Before beginning the current project, I deleted all files in the D drive (after transferring a copy of the D drive to the external drive) and degragmented both C and D drives before beginning the current project.

The chip set is an Intel 845, if I'm reading it right-- it came with an Asus P4B motherboard.

The video card is an ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder 128 (video-capture type card with lots of memory).

Incidentally, I was speaking this morning to a local Cubase user, who suggested something that makes a lot of sense: instead of setting the number of tracks in the audio set-up to 16 at the outset, I should only set the number of tracks that I'm actually recording at the time-- i.e., when recording 6 drum tracks, the audio set-up should be set to 6 tracks, not 16. Then only increase the number of tracks in the audio set-up as I record each additional instrument or track.

It's too late now for the noise in the drum tracks, which we'll just have to edit out the best we can, but at least, I can try to prevent the problem from continuing to happen as I record bass and guitars (there's the occasional spoken word or chant, but we're primarily a "surf" or instrumental band, so there's no real vocal to speak of).

Manning, I appreciate your attention to the understanding the hardware, let me know if you have other questions, suggestions or comments. Same with everybody else who's stopped to read this.
 
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