audio drops out; restarting Reaper fixes problem - too many plugins? ideas needed

[Jotosuds]

So i hooked up my new M-Audio Firewire Audiophile, downloaded the newest drivers off M-Audio's website, and everything sounds great, been recording some stuff today.

(PC is AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1 gig of ram, 7200.7 seagate HDD running Windows 2000, fully updated. Using Reaper with EzDrummer, Guitar Rig plugins, settings in Reaper are set as ASIO)

But now the audio will just drop out while playback/recording. Everything is still going/recording/playing, but no sound whatsoever. Close Reaper and restart the program and it works fine. But then it'll happen again after maybe a few minutes.

On the project it crashes on i'm running Guitar Rig on four of the tracks, using the FX button on the track in Reaper. Also have EZdrummer going on one of the tracks also using the FX button.

Maybe it's too many instances of Guitar Rig? Is there another way to run the plugin, maybe by a BUS? I'm used to Cool Edit Pro, so i remember that helped system resources.

Another thing that's always been bugging me is since i reformatted my PC, in the Device Manager, under Other devices, Multimedia Audio Controller has a yellow question mark.

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated

I can take screenshots of any settings pages and post them if that would help diagnose..

Previously (last year till yesterday) on this same computer I was using an SB Live PCI soundcard and occasionally all sound would cease from my computer. I would have to restart the PC to get sound again. i thought it was the sound card but now i'm thinking something might be wrong with my computer since i'm getting a similar problem with this new Firewire Audiophile.

 

[danny.guitar]

The yellow exclamation mark usually means something wasn't installed right (maybe the drivers aren't 2000 compatible) or you don't have the latest drivers. ALWAYS go to the manufacturer's (M-Audio) website and download the latest drivers.

Also, as far as I know, Guitar Rig uses a lot of resources. Running more than one instance + using EZDrummer at the same time will no doubt take a shitload of resources.

In Reaper, while everything is running, click the "View" menu and then "Show Performance Meter" and see how much CPU/RAM/Disk usage you're using.

 

[NYMorningstar]

I'd suggest you get another hard drive to record audio on exclusively and save yourself alot of headache.

 

[TimOBrien]

Yup.

You should always have a secondary hard drive to record to.
Any housework done by the OS means the heads have to stop what they're doing, move to another point on the disk and then move back again (which takes AGES in computer time) while the large amount of data in your audio stream backs up. Any overflow will cause dropouts/pops/clicks.

 

[marshall409]

if all of your guitar tracks are using the same tone on guitar rig then yes setup it up on a bus. im entirely sure how that will work as the plug in is gain sensitive and i dont know if the volume going into the bus will act as gain in guitar rig....maybe im way off i dont know.

check the manual on how to setup a bus in reaper on their website.

if the guitar parts do not overlap then you should be able to automate whether fx is turned on for that track. guitar rig is very cpu intensive, and ezdrummer is pretty heavy too. you may just be asking too much of your system i think.

oh ya and also, if youre done editing the guitar tracks and just want to play them back while working on other tracks, just freeze them. i dont know if there is a way to do this yet in reaper, you might have to do it manually. (route the guitar track (after guitar rig) to a new blank track and record it. then you have a plain track with no fx using no cpu but with the guitar rig sound.

good luck. you can almost always find a way around these types of things.

Adam

 

[Jotosuds]

thanks for the replies!

the drivers are definitely the newest ones for Windows 2000, straight from m-audio's site. and i was running 5 instances of Guitar Rig and 1 of Ezdrummer.

I checked the Show Performance Meter, here's what i got (averages):

CPU use: ~70-80%
Disk total: 400 kb/s
Disk read: 400 kb/s

RAM use: fluctuates wildly
System free: 500mb/1000mb
FX CPU use: ~70-80%

just reiterate, everything sounds fine, no crackling/stuttering or anything... just all of a sudden = no sound. and it's not just a pause in sound; it won't work again until i restart the program.

if i got another hard drive, what exactly goes on the other drive? is it just the audio files or is it also the music program itself? would you want to install the plugins on the other drive as well? is a USB external HD ok for this?

oh ya and also, if youre done editing the guitar tracks and just want to play them back while working on other tracks, just freeze them. i dont know if there is a way to do this yet in reaper, you might have to do it manually. (route the guitar track (after guitar rig) to a new blank track and record it. then you have a plain track with no fx using no cpu but with the guitar rig sound.

ah this seems to be probably the simplest solution. i'll try to figure out how to do that. there should be a way to do it in program right? i could also potentially just plug the output cord into my input correct?

 

[TheTrickster]

You should BUY either guitar rig or Ezdrummer. Your symptoms are too close to cracks to give a meaningful answer.

 

[marshall409]

thanks for the replies!

the drivers are definitely the newest ones for Windows 2000, straight from m-audio's site. and i was running 5 instances of Guitar Rig and 1 of Ezdrummer.

I checked the Show Performance Meter, here's what i got (averages):

CPU use: ~70-80%
Disk total: 400 kb/s
Disk read: 400 kb/s

RAM use: fluctuates wildly
System free: 500mb/1000mb
FX CPU use: ~70-80%

just reiterate, everything sounds fine, no crackling/stuttering or anything... just all of a sudden = no sound. and it's not just a pause in sound; it won't work again until i restart the program.

if i got another hard drive, what exactly goes on the other drive? is it just the audio files or is it also the music program itself? would you want to install the plugins on the other drive as well? is a USB external HD ok for this?




ah this seems to be probably the simplest solution. i'll try to figure out how to do that. there should be a way to do it in program right? i could also potentially just plug the output cord into my input correct?

ya but that is overkill and also means your signal will be degraded as it has to pass through your converters again. unless youve got great converters, do this as little as possible. i dont think reaper has a freeze function im just realizing this....that kind sucks. but you could do them all at the same time. mute everything except the guitar track, route (using the routing matrix or manually) each guitar track to a fresh new track, crank up your asio buffer and go grab a drink while you record your guitar tracks. its probably best to turn off monitoring while doing this to save cpu, as you may run into the same problems while doing this. if your computer cant do all 4 at the same time, try two at a time or one at a time. if you need more help on how to route the tracks to blank tracks, just ask.

Adam

 

[Jotosuds]

You should BUY either guitar rig or Ezdrummer. Your symptoms are too close to cracks to give a meaningful answer.

assuming much aren't we?

i've been test playing a project that has one ezdrummer track, and two guitar rig tracks for about 15 min. now and it's working fine. i'm pretty sure it's a system resources issue which i now have ideas on how to solve.

mute everything except the guitar track, route (using the routing matrix or manually) each guitar track to a fresh new track, crank up your asio buffer and go grab a drink while you record your guitar tracks. its probably best to turn off monitoring while doing this to save cpu, as you may run into the same problems while doing this. if your computer cant do all 4 at the same time, try two at a time or one at a time. if you need more help on how to route the tracks to blank tracks, just ask.

Adam

yeah could you clarify a little on how to do the routing? i see in reaper there's the little green I/O buttons with Sends, Receives and Outputs.

so would i mute everything except the guitar track, add a new track, open up the I/O settings on both original track and the blank track, and then ..

edit: ah i found the routing matrix. it's got source on the left, destinations on top, white boxes, grey boxes and if i click on the empty grey boxes it makes a little white shape, kind of like a tetris block.

edit: i think i figured it out. i made a duplicate track of one of the guitar rigged guitar track. they sound pretty much identical, so i guess problem solved.

Thanks a lot everybody, marshall especialy for the routing idea

 

[marshall409]

ya you would mute everything youre not using or duplicating, setup a second blank track, and then yes you could do it through those i/o menus but i suggest learning to use the routing matrix for things like this. hold on a minute while i open up reaper and mess around for a minute.

Adam

 

[Jotosuds]

ya you would mute everything youre not using or duplicating, setup a second blank track, and then yes you could do it through those i/o menus but i suggest learning to use the routing matrix for things like this. hold on a minute while i open up reaper and mess around for a minute.

Adam

see my previous edited post. thanks a lot, this should solve the problems hopefully

 

[marshall409]

yep no problem. ya its pretty simple, i just havent used it much so i had to look at it again.

you're welcome

Adam

 

[Jotosuds]

one last thing, the recorded/routed track and the original Guitar Rig track sound different. the recorded one is bassier and doesn't sound as crisp. i realized after playing around with it the difference is too noticeable.

to avoid this degradation in the sound i plan to open up that one guitar part, assign it the guitar rig setting, and then mix it down/render that one track, and then reinsert it into the original arrangement. any easier ways to make sure i get the original source sound w/o breaking my pc?

 

[pipelineaudio]

We knew this type of thing would be an issue and wanted a FAST easy, simple way to take care of it:

1: Select all the items you want to affect.

2: Right click and choose " apply fx to selected items as new take"

If you want the raw stuff back just hit shift-T

 

[TelePaul]

Sorry to hijack this thread but when you guys say a second hard drive, is that the same as a partitioned drive or do I actually need to buy 2 x Hard Drives.

 

[Mindset]

Sorry to hijack this thread but when you guys say a second hard drive, is that the same as a partitioned drive or do I actually need to buy 2 x Hard Drives.

Prefereably 2 physical hard drives. at it's absolute minimum I would at least keep audio on a seperate partition than windows.

 

[elementary]

We knew this type of thing would be an issue and wanted a FAST easy, simple way to take care of it:

1: Select all the items you want to affect.

2: Right click and choose " apply fx to selected items as new take"

If you want the raw stuff back just hit shift-T

Brilliant idea!


On my macbook I only have 1 firewire port which i use for the firepod so would there be any benefit in using a faster USB hard drive?

 

[timthetortoise]

We knew this type of thing would be an issue and wanted a FAST easy, simple way to take care of it:

1: Select all the items you want to affect.

2: Right click and choose " apply fx to selected items as new take"

If you want the raw stuff back just hit shift-T

+1 on this. This was the first thing I learned in Reaper and was the thing that kept me using it.

 

[marshall409]

We knew this type of thing would be an issue and wanted a FAST easy, simple way to take care of it:

1: Select all the items you want to affect.

2: Right click and choose " apply fx to selected items as new take"

If you want the raw stuff back just hit shift-T

thanks alot! i knew reaper must have this function, i didnt know what it was called though as usually i look for "freeze track" or something like that.

i'm new to this part of the forum....are you involved in reaper development?

Adam

 

[pipelineaudio]

..are you involved in reaper development?

Adam

Not as much anymore.. I harassed the two actual coders relentlessly until I had the app I wanted At that point, I really ran out of things to request. So for the last year Ive mostly been redefining the requests of others, and trying to interpret reaper's actual features, verses what people request