Serious problem with intermittent freezing during muti-track recording

S

Spazhands

'ere mate
Hi guys. I have been using Reaper for a while now to record bands without issues. But as of last week Reaper keeps locking up every now and again while recording 9 tracks of audio and then continues with that chunk of audio missing... so sounds like its skipped on playback.
I kept an eye on it while trying last night and had task manager up on the perfomance tab and there is a cpu spike when it occurs.
I am fairly sure I have not changed anything since it was working fine so this is an odd one. It doesn't seem to do it when just recording a few tracks for example a guitar at home.
Now could this be a power supply problem? I ask as its not the meatiest supply in the world! I am yet to try with phantom power off and see if it makes a difference. Its driving me nuts, I have new hard drives and have kept them defragmented etc all drivers are latest versions, and have even tried a different release of reaper.

specs/chain:
windows xp sp3
3.1ghz dualcore,
2gb of ram,
emu 1820m fed via adat from korg168 console

Thanks in advance!
 
Lots of things can do this unfortunately. You're going to have to experiment and track this down.

Are you recording to your boot drive? Anything interrupting the process (another program, OS service, etc) can be taking focus away and letting the audio buffers overrun.
You should always be recording to a second separate drive.

You'll need to make sure no interent processes are running. Updates, etc. Best to disconnect from internet completely.
You'll need to see what other processes are running. A anti-virus check or other automatic process needs to be stopped while recording.

Defrag your drives and make sure they have plenty of free space. Drive heads having to hunt for empty sectors are bad.

There are also a lot of 'tweaks' to XP to make it better at recording. You should look around for the guides.

This is just a start....
 
Just looking at from a computer issue and not knowing 100% of the full set of problems. It sounds like your are having hard drive issues. First, even if it is not, back up your stuff. Once you are set with that, start looking at how full your hard drive is. Once you hit around 80%, disk will begin to struggle as it has to traverse (assuming traditional hard drive) to find a place to put the data. It also effects your virtual memory.

Last but not least, if you are experiencing boot issues, then start to look at replacing your hard drive. I have seen this very often and it could be (just keep an eye out, not to scare you) a warning that the hard drive is at the end of its life. It happens and in stability is a the first sign as a rule.

Back to my first point, back it up. External hard drives are so cheap, there is no good reason not to. That way, you don't have to be scared.
 
You say it occurred whilst recording nine tracks. When you have recorded bands in the past, did you use the same number of tracks or less?

And when it crashed, did you have any VST plugins running at the time?
 
Cheers for the replies. I am recording to a brand new separate drive and have over 90% free, the same drive I have recorded to without issues, using the same number of inputs.
I have done most the things on here Optimising Windows XP For Music as a matter of course when re-installing xp and also a few other tweaks.
As it was all working ok before I am thinking either some hardware somewhere is slacking.. like the power supply or stick of ram? or I have some software lurking and causing issues.
The thing is when recording my cpu use stays below 8% apart from when it goes scatty.
I never use any plugins whilst tracking, I shut off my anti-virus, there's no internet connection in the studio so that's out, I have been ending all unused processes.. but only since it has been freezing.

Do you think I should change the psu anyway just incase? It is fairly old, only 350w and thinking about it the emu dock draws 48v for phantom power.
This is driving me nuts as I need to record an EP tomorrow!!
 
Ok, just went out and bought a 650w psu and another 2gb stick of ram.. which now gives me a total of 3.5gb being XP 'an all.
Will try tomorrow and see how it goes!
 
Well, good luck with that. Though when I had a PSU issue (or I thought I had) the machine was just shutting down of it's own accord, without any discernible pattern of behaviour. Turned out to be a problem with the motherboard, not PSU at all. In view of what you've said, it was probably wise to upgrade yours anyway.

For DAW work, I've taken the conventional wisdom on board, which is to reserve a PC for that task only. Once running how I want it, I do not update the OS. Networking is disabled and no AV is installed. It does for what I want, it's an older PC (even below the spec of yours) so I can expect a few stutters if I throw very long audio streams into it.

I hope you get the problem sorted. Best of luck.
 
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Spazhands - If you've no luck, download and run a GUI version of memtest.
It's free to do and rules something out. No harm, right?
 
Thanks guys. I am off in a minute to the studio to see if this is solved. The worrying thing is that it worked fine before and I could track 11 inputs and it wouldn't even break a sweat, even with only 2gb ram. I keep the pc very minimal, ok I do use it at home for internet access but every aspect of that is shut off when recording etc. The pc is tranported to and from the studio but it is in a rack mount 'shock proof(ish) server case and I am careful with it.. as a matter of course I always lift the lid and check nothing has come loose.
Worst case here I think is that the soundcard has developed a problem and christ they are hard to find now!
I have downloaded that memory tester and will run it before I go. Cheers
 
I hope that's not the case.

The psu/ram may have done it but, if not, check it here and see what you can try for free before spending mo' money.

I always look for duff memory or overheating first because it costs nothing to do that.
 
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Ok, so my upgrades did f all! I even installed Ableton to see if Reaper was the problem, but there were issues with that.
If I stopped the recording it would carry on drawing the waveforms for ages and then they would disappear.
I'm wondering if this is some kind of write problem with the disks, although I did try recording to the system drive and it wasn't having that either! Arrgghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! :facepalm:
 
Have you solved this yet?

I have had a similar problem with a computer completely rejecting an EMU 0404 sound card. Nothing wrong with the soundcard or the computer and they will work for a time together, then suddenly the computer fails to recognise it. Either a fault with Win 7 (it sometimes fails to find perfectly good DVD drives as well) or it could be to do with updates. I currently have the 0404 working in another computer which is not connected at all to the internet and has not been updated. Only other thing I can think is something to do with power supply or the card itself getting hot? I wouldn't know about that. All I can suggest is trying the card on a fresh install without the connection and be very selective about updates.

I think you said you're using Win XP. The big thing we have in common here, is the EMU brand and since I experienced my problems, I have come across several complaints about Creative drivers and EMU cards suddenly stopping.
 
I thought I fixed it! I did a fresh install of xp and only loaded the emu system, reaper and service pack 3. It worked for a practice I recorded but then 2 days later it happened again, so I am thinking the card has gone funny and can't handle the feed from the breakout box aswel as the adat feed from the korg console. I am going to re-install again without the service pack and see what happens. The worst bit is that I just missed out on a replacement card going on ebay for 8 bucks :facepalm:
 
Oh dear. Well, to honest, I wouldn't go for another EMU if you can help it. Bear in mind, I'm no expert by a long shot but I have seen quite a few reports of problems with Creative products like this one.
 
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Solved?!!

It seems to have stopped its freezing.. so far. I offset file switching in Reaper and that has done the trick so far... must have been trying to access files all at the same time and causing the freeze?!!

EP on!
 
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