Yay! My first glitch!

[ermghoti]

I just recieved: AMD Athlon 3000 XP, MSI mobo (unsure of model) 2G of Kingston ( ) Value ( ) RAM, WD 100 and 200 G HD's, E-MU 0404, loaded w/ XP pro and Sonar 5 PE.

So I'm dizzied by the potential this machine has vrs my antique VS 880EX. As a sort of shock therapy, I opted to import the last live recording I did with the Roland, and mix it on the PC. Anyone with the misfortune to be familiar with VS machines knows that Roland raised planned obsolescene to an art form with the early releases. So anyway, the only method to get tracks onto the PC is to record them, in pairs, through the digital outs.

All fine and dandy. I set up both machines, hit record, and play, wander off for 40 minutes, wait for the end of the tracks, hit stop, repeat for the next two tracks. Then realize I forgot to sync the E-MU to the Roland, and start over. Teehee. Over the course of the night, I get all eight 43+ minute tracks transferred.

OK, just eliminating the Roland's DA converters seems to be improving things audibly, except the Roland's outs are a bit hotter than the E-MU's ins, and the vocal tracks are trashed; I'll re-transfer them before I start mixing.

About 9 1/2 minutes in, something in the PC yelled TIMMAYYY! and suddenly, the first two tracks, snare and kick, are 4275 (or something, I had to figure it out to fix it) samples late. Sonic chaos ensues. I Nudged the tracks back into place, new techniques learned, no blood, no foul.

The question: What The Hell Was That All About?

There was no drop-out, no empty audio, just a suddenly late pair of tracks. For its nearly infinite shortcomings, the Roland has never misplaced data, so I have to assume the Whoopsie occurred in the PC. Any ideas?

Perhaps more bizarre, track 6 is permenantly silent. It wasn't last night, I didn't do anything to it, now, no noise. It's not muted, the output is routed to master, all the settings are identical to the tracks that work. Furthermore, I copied and pasted the track to a new track, now the new track behaves normally, the old one just lies there like my girlfriend. Any ideas, pt. 2?

I have searched about a half-dozen combinations of terms, and get nothing, or unrelated info.

 

[Synkrotron]

absolutely no idea...

was the sample rate of the VS matched to the soundcard?


otherwise... not a clue... sorry

 

[ermghoti]

absolutely no idea...

was the sample rate of the VS matched to the soundcard?


otherwise... not a clue... sorry

Yup, both 16/44.1. If it was completely out of control, I would almost understand, but this is like the tracks instantly looped back a fraction of a second, and restarted from there. I wondered if a cat stepped on the reverse shuttle button during playback, but that would have probably left a gap.

No guesses on the silent track?

I have everything fine now, functionally, but I am very curious as to exactly what happened. This time was no trouble, it was a live recrding, so I had bleed from about three other sources to verify which track(s) was haywire. If I track separately, and, say two or three out of twelve tracks decide to pull this stunt, I am going to have a migrane.

 

[Porter]

How were you controlling the VS?

This is talking when I started out with Sonar 2. I had a VS840 and didn't really have any luck with the first attempts at getting the data off it. I had the VS in master (it could only be the master), and Sonar in Slave. The issue I had was involving what I believe is the MIDI clock not being accurate on the VS and it skipped. What I ended up doing was to start the play back on the Roland and quickly unplug the MIDI cable so it wasn't reading the time, so effectively I was using it to kick off the play back.

As for your delima, first question.. did you have the midi cable plugged in at the time?

As for 'Timmayyy'.. can you confirm that it's not on the original recording and it isn't anywhere else maybe hidden on a V-Track somewhere?

As for syncing them all up, the other option is to record a sound, maybe a piano note, clap or hi-hat onto one track right at the beginning and have that play back on each track as you get it to the PC so you can line up on that.

Silent track.. was it that when when you recorded it? Is there actually any audio on it when you play it back? The picture data might not represent it correctly, try deleting your picture cache (you can see where that is in Options -> Global, Audio data tab, picture folder).

I just checked out your sound card and it only has 2 analogue inputs and 2 optical inputs.. what you could possibly do is to get 4 tracks down at a time... two via the digital inputs and 2 via analogue ie, route 2 tracks to the master and 2 to the line/aux out on the VS unit

I don't know if that has helped, but if the midi cable was connected that might be one source of the problems.

Daniel

 

[ermghoti]

How were you controlling the VS?

Meatsync (my fingers )

This is talking when I started out with Sonar 2. I had a VS840 and didn't really have any luck with the first attempts at getting the data off it. I had the VS in master (it could only be the master), and Sonar in Slave. The issue I had was involving what I believe is the MIDI clock not being accurate on the VS and it skipped. What I ended up doing was to start the play back on the Roland and quickly unplug the MIDI cable so it wasn't reading the time, so effectively I was using it to kick off the play back.

As for your delima, first question.. did you have the midi cable plugged in at the time?

No MIDI, but the E-MU claimed it was syncing to the digital in (External). I believe since I am not using Sonar to control the VS, the Master/Slave thing shouldn't bother me.

As for 'Timmayyy'.. can you confirm that it's not on the original recording and it isn't anywhere else maybe hidden on a V-Track somewhere?

Definately not. The recording was live in a bar, there are no V Tracks, and I have done two complete test mixes (on the VS) that have no timing hitches.

As for syncing them all up, the other option is to record a sound, maybe a piano note, clap or hi-hat onto one track right at the beginning and have that play back on each track as you get it to the PC so you can line up on that.

Yep. I insert a few seconds at the beginning of all the tracks, route input one to all the tracks, hit record, tap a pickup pole with an allen wrench, and hit stop. A little Nudge here and there, and everything's correct.

Silent track.. was it that when when you recorded it? Is there actually any audio on it when you play it back? The picture data might not represent it correctly, try deleting your picture cache (you can see where that is in Options -> Global, Audio data tab, picture folder).

The track view displays data, and I seem to remember having a bass track when I played with it at first, but I was up 3-4 hours later than usual by the time I was done. I did copy/paste the exact same track from track 6 to a newly created track 9, the waveforms looked identical, 9 played back, 6 didn't. I'll check out the cache, but everything else is behaving as expected.

I just checked out your sound card and it only has 2 analogue inputs and 2 optical inputs.. what you could possibly do is to get 4 tracks down at a time... two via the digital inputs and 2 via analogue ie, route 2 tracks to the master and 2 to the line/aux out on the VS unit

Daniel

True, but I avoid the VS's DA converters like a plague. I believe I notice a difference in clarity during monitoring, mixing on Sonar compared to the VS.

 

[Porter]

The track view displays data, and I seem to remember having a bass track when I played with it at first, but I was up 3-4 hours later than usual by the time I was done. I did copy/paste the exact same track from track 6 to a newly created track 9, the waveforms looked identical, 9 played back, 6 didn't. I'll check out the cache, but everything else is behaving as expected.

I know this sounds like a basic question, but have you checked the routing on this channel? Which output is it going to? There's not mute on the channel at all, or a the bus which it is routed to?

Daniel

 

[ermghoti]

I know this sounds like a basic question, but have you checked the routing on this channel? Which output is it going to? There's not mute on the channel at all, or a the bus which it is routed to?

Daniel

Routed to master, I also tried routing directly to the soundcard, just for laughs. No mutes on the track or the master.

The track is gone now. I killed it, after I spawned its evil twin: Track 9!

Just curious as to what happened, evidence seems to suggest it's a fluke.