Buffering?

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DaveO

DaveO

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This is probably mostly venting but I'll take any suggestion you guys have. I've been using n-Track for about 10 months and have gotten pretty comfortable with it. I got a new PC a few weeks ago and am transferring all my recording folders to the new one. n-Track itself and the plug ins seemed to install fine and they also seem to execute fine.

The problem I'm having is that I seem to be introducing "skips" into tracks when I record them. I know this is commonly fixed by adjusting the buffering, but I've gone from light to heavy for both recording and playback and nothing has helped. It seems to be related to recording since anytime I come across a "skip" it will always skip at that spot in the track. I can re-record a track several times and sometimes it will skip a few hard-to-detect times when I playback. Other times it is really bad. Using the "knobs" on the buffering page only lets you do a fintite amount of tweaking, but I also tried putting my own values in the text fields. No values have worked yet.

This happened on my old PC but after playing with the settings for a few days I found that moderately heavy buffering during recording did the trick. Those settings then worked forever, at least until Igot ont othe new PC.
I doubt power was an issue on either PC. In case you're wondering, the old PC is a 600 MHz P3 with 256 MB RAM and Soundblaster Live! Value card (I know, I know). The new one is a 1 GHz P3 with 512 MB RAM and the same sound card (I know, I know), but running Windows 2000.

When this happened to me the first time I posted the question on n-Track's discussion forum and got an immediate answer from Flavio himself. He said to play with it a little bit and I'll find the right values to use. That worked then, but I've been at it for a few weeks now and am getting frustrated. Anyone have any other suggestions?
 
I tried playing back a WAV file with Windows Media Player and it will "skip" in the same spot that it does when playing back with n-Track. Gotta be during recording.

Guess I'll have to keep trying.
 
The default buffering in n-Track is adequate on a fast enough machine...which you seem to have.

Have you looked into any obvious problems with your machine? Is your soundcard on its own IRQ? Is your hard drive operating in DMA mode? Is your hard drive 7200RPM or 5400RPM? Are you using the latest SB Live! drivers? Have you tried ASIO? Is your PC setup as "Standard PC" or "ACPI"? What chipset is on your mobo (oh I hope you don't say VIA). Are you using the same motherboard as you were with the 600Mhz?

I don't expect you to answer all those in this thread...I'm just helping you brainstorm. The problem is most likely external to n-Track since you beat the shit out the minimum requirements and are on a stable platform. n-Track on 2K is very nice indeed.

My point...if it's this hard to find buffer settings then the problem is probably not buffer settings. However, did you set your soundcard up under wave devices? By default it will choose Wave Mapper, and you'll want to change it to SB Live! or whatever your soundcard is listed as. I have no idea what the consequences of this setting are exactly, since I was told early on to change it and always have.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Some answers, some questions ...

Thanks for all the ideas. I have some answers, but for the rest I have to do some digging to a) figure out what the questions mean and b) answer them. In case it helps answer some of the other questions, the 600 MHz PC is a Dell Dimension XPS-T I bought in April 2000. The new 1 GHz PC is a Dell Dimension 4100 I bought this past March.

Sound card on own IRQ?
- Don't know. Have to figure out how to tell.

Hard drive operating in DMA mode?
- Don't know, have to figure out how to tell.

Hard drive 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM?
- 60 GB 7200 RPM disk

Using latest SB LIve! drivers?
- According to Creative's web site, yes

Tried ASIO?
- Have to figure out what an ASIO driver is and whether or not I it's something my card supports (SoundBlaster Live! Value).

"Statndard PC" or ACPI
- Don't know, have to figure out how to tell.

Chipset?
- According to a help CD I got with the PC, it's the Intel 815 Chipset INF.


I wondered about changing the setting under Wave Devices in the n-Track Properties sheet. It was set to Wave Mapper, which is what the first PC was (and still is) still set to. I don't remember seeing anything that recommended changing this though, so I checked n-Track's help. It said:

"The Wave devices dialog box allows selecting which soundcard(s) the program uses for recording and playback.
Quick start - if you have just one soundcard, just select the Wave Mapper entry in both the playback and recording devices list.
For both playback and recording, you can select one or multiple devices. "

I only have the one soundcard and I never futzed with this setting before. Just for kicks, I changed the setting on the new one to "SB Live! WAV Device", re-recorded a new track, and played it back. Still skipped.

Also, on the ASIO driver topic, the same help page says "Many soundcards have a control panel that lets you change the buffering settings, accessible clicking on the ‘Asio control panel’ button in the dialog box that appears clicking on a vumeter’s settings button.". I checked the "Settings" button on the playback and recording VU meters, but there was nothing for ASIO settings. Don't know if that's because my card doesn't support them, this is a misprint in the help, or Flavio was smart enough to not include them on that Settings dialog window because I either can't support it or don't have it installed.

Thanks again. I'll keep working on this as much as I can, but unfortunately I don't get much time to do it. It might take a while.
 
- "Statndard PC" or ACPI

I'm not sure I should have mentioned this because I'm not sure how critical it is. RME recommends it, and their rationale sort of works for me, though I don't fully buy it. Go into Device Manager and expand "Computer". It will either say "Standard PC", or something else, most likely related to ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface). If it's setup for ACPI, all of your devices will appear to be on IRQ 9. Now, I'm not convinced that all the devices actually use the same IRQ, however, so I wouldn't bother with this one except as a last resort. If you change it to Standard PC, you will have to reinstall drivers for all of your hardware, so be prepared.

- Soundcard on its own IRQ

This one isn't always a problem, especially if the soundcard is sharing with a device that doesn't generate a lot of traffic. To check IRQ's, go into Device Manager and select View from the menu at the top, and pick the option Resources By Connection. From the list that will appear, expand Interrupt request (IRQ) and a list of all used interruptswill appear.

- Hard drive operating in DMA mode?

Open device manager and expand IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers then select the channel that your hard drive is on (Primary or Secondary), then select properties. Under the Advanced Settings tab of the dialog that will appear, you'll see two devices, 0 and 1. Device 0 is master, Device 1 is slave. Each will have a field labeled "Current Transfer Mode" and the field corresponding to your audio hard drive should read something like "Ultra DMA".

- ASIO

I *thought* that the SB Live! had ASIO drivers. If this is the case then I would try them, since it offers super low latency mixing. Now this isn't the root of your problem, but it'd be worth checking into. If you had been running ASIO, I would have recommended that you increase the ASIO buffers in your soundcard's control panel. In fact, n-Track will use the buffer settings you specified in the soundcard's panel regardlesss of what you change them to inside n-Track.

- Chipset

The intel i815 seems to be fine. A majority (not all) of people with skipping/dropout problems on machines that are powerfull enough and setup properly, typically have an inferior motherboard/chipset. The fact that you have a Dell does make me curious though. Dell is a good brand but often the big brand manufacturers throw together pathetically bad systems, with the root being poor motherboard design. I've seen HP systems that have been 50% slower than well-built machines, with all hardware being the same (video, processor, memory, HD, etc). I'm just blabbing now, ignore this. I'm sure you'll get your machine working.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Good info

Slack,

Thanks again for all the info. If nothing else, I've been learning a lot about my PC this way - until recently I've primarily been a Unix person.

I'd love to leave work to play with it now but it will have to wait until later tonight.
 
Hello,
I had the skipping problem as well just recording a simple drum track to n-track (I just started messing with n-track).
Setting the hard drive to super duper, i. e. DMA, fixed my problem.
Thanks for the providential advice,
The Tallman
 
Some more answers...

Slackmaster,

I finally had some time to poke around:

- Standard PC or ACPI
- Looks like ACPI. And, yes, lots of devices show up under IRQ 9.

- Soundcard on its own IRQ
- No, see above

- Hard drive operating in DMA mode?
- It's a Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 60 (5T060H6) 60 GB disk. It's Ultra ATA 100, so I believe that is always going to be DMA? I'm a little confused by somethings I found while poking around. I thought I found that the zip and the hard disk were on the SECONDARY channel (not my first guess) adn the DVD and DR-RW were on the primary. Both channels has the transfer mode set to "DMA if available". However, the Primary channel's current mode is "PIO Mode" and the secondary channel is "Ultra DMA mode". Like I said, I think that sounds backward and I wanted to find where I saw which devices were on which channel so I can verify. Unfortunatley I don't rememebr how I got that and am trying to figure it out now. I'll update this assuming I find it again.

- ASIO
- I couldn't find anything on Creative's website about an ASIO driver. However, the addendum to the SB Live Value manual on their web site says "Windows 2000 only installs a set of basic drivers for your card. To install the latest audio drivers, use the installation disc provided.". So I checked out what was on the CD, but didn't see anything about an ASIO driver there either. The only thing that wasn't already installed was "Wave Studio", whatever that is, and that name didn't seem to be relevant to this topic.

- Chipset
- I'm still not sure about this one. When I go into the Device Manager, I see two different INtel numbers, depending on the device. They are 82815 and 82801BA. I'm not sure what these numbers refer to and why there are two different onees, but I'm still trying to find that out as well.

One other thing I found interesting. While in the device manager, I clicked on "Resources by connection, then expand DMA, I see "2 - Standard floppy disk controller" and "4 - direct memory access controller". When I click on the DMA item, I get the DMA Controller Properties window. That tells me "No drivers are isntalled for this device". I don't know if this indicates a possible problem or there is no driver needed since the disk (as far as I know) only operates in DMA mode.


Slackmaster, thanks for all your help so far. Tallman, I'm glad someone got their problem fixed. I'll keep working on this one. I'm on a mission at this point.
 
Dude, sorry it took me so long to notice this post again.

There might be something fishy with your hard drive setup. First of all, you need to ditch the zip drive for a bit. Uninstall it and physically remove the cable from the motherboard. Second, move the hard drive to the primary channel and the CDROM drives to the secondary channel. I seem to recall something about the secondary channel on some chipsets being limited. Once you get things running it should look like this:

IDE0 Master: Hard drive
IDE0 Slave: Nothing
IDE1 Master: CDRW
IDE2 Slave: CDROM

Please give this a try...the zip disk might be ocassionally polled, resulting in that channel being clogged for brief periods of time.

The ATA/100 thing is probably not an issue.

I believe you have an i815 chipset.

The DMA thing (no driver necessary) is normal.

Good luck!

PS. Windows 2000 service pack 2 is out now BTW, you might check over its list of fixes to see if the ATA/100 issue you mentioned was resolved.

Slackmaster 2000
 
hello,

this reply is 5/21/01.

I just started experiencing the same problem with my system tonight. Skipping while recording and occassionally out of sync while playing back.

My system is pretty beefy and I'm using a newly installed Lynx One soundcard. I do have via chipset...damn. I did record several tracks before encountering these problems.

I've never tried adjusting the buffer settings since I've never had this problem before. I'd appreciate some guidance.

Thanks,
Rusty K
 
Just a thought- are you guys defragging regularly? Shouldn't be too much of an issue with the huge drives, but ya never know.
 
Weird,

Go figure! I turned on my puter today opened N-track to the song I was working on last night and all my tracks are fine.

This all came about after a full day of computer use. I also have to turn off the overhead fan in the room while recording. After a while the room tends to get a bit warm. Could this be a factor in computer performance? In the future I'm going to crank the AC before I session.

Rusty K
 
Haven't had time to do much lately. Hopefully over the weekend.

Defragging:
I haven't felt a need to defrag the new PC. It's a 60 GB disk and there's only about 8 GB on it. I tried that a few times on the old PC (20 GB disk) but everythime I tried it I got a message saying defragging wouldn't buy me much, so I never went ahead with it. I'd be more inclined to try this if I reach the desparate point rather than right now ("If it ain't broke, don't fix it.").

One thing I'm considering is getting a smaller second drive (but still 7200 RPM) to hold all works-in-progress. I don't necessarily I think the disk I have is causing a performance problem by itself. However, I'm sure I'd get better performance by having the audio files on one disk and the O/S and n-track on another.


Powering Down (or at least shutting down):
Not sure about this one, but who knows? I usually leave my PCs up all the time (lucky enough to have a cable modem) and do a restart every week or so "just because". The new PC is on an open computer desk (IOW ventilation is not an issue) in the basement, which stays about 60 degrees year-round, so I doubt overheating is an issue. I never had never had an overheating problem with the old PC and that's in a closed cabinet in a room that gets up to 80 degrees in the summer.


Thanks to all for the additional input. I'll post my results when I try your suggestions.
 
Recording to a network drive...

I really haven't had any time to futz with this problem in a while, but I had an idea and spent a few minutes trying it out.

I mapped the hard drive on my old PC to the new one, created a new folder for an n-Track song, saved the song to that new folder, and recorded a new track to that mapped drive. The stuttering was so bad I could barely recognize the track when I played it back.

I was actually a little surprised by this since the two PCs have a Fast Ethenet connection between them. I wasn't sure if trying this would solve the problem, but I was kind of surprised at how much worse this was.
 
Did you ever consider my advice? Your IDE configuration is a hell of a lot more critical than most people realize.
 
Slackmaster,

I do want to try your suggestions as soon as I can, but I just haven't had any time to play with this recently (case in point, most of my recent posts have been while I'm at work, like now :rolleyes: ).

While I was in the basement last night it just hit me that even though I don't have a second disk on a separate controller, maybe I could fake it by recording over my home network to the drive on the old PC. I realize you don't actually get anything close to 100MB/Sec of throughput from Fast Ethernet, but since it would only take a few minutes I gave it a try. Like I said, I was pretty surprised by how bad it turned out.
 
Yeah, ethernet isn't a stable enough flow to be adequate. Plus it's going to choke the PCI bus pretty good if it's constantly transfering while you're recording.

Technically 100Mbps should translate to 12MB/s but in real life, halve that number, even on a switch.

Slackmaster 2000
 
whats wrong with the via chipsets geez i just got a pentium 3 650 chip on an asus mother board the board is a p3v4x model pc 133 i got the whole lot in a pc i bought second hand for 500 aussie dollars i was going to use this chip and board for now till the p3 1 gig chips became real cheap then ditch the 650 for the 1 gig chip but now i may have to get another board also if the via chip set is not good with recording and then go for the intel chipset instead some advice please :-)

Wayne
Melbourne Australia
 
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