Constant dropouts in multitrack recording

Ninja_Drummer said:
I also noticed that nt HDD is running at 5000 rpms so I definitely considering getting a 7200 rpm exterior HDD
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I would take this one step at a time. Don't throw another drive at the machine just yet.

That internal drive could end up being faster than trying to push data over a firewire or usb buss to a quicker hard drive. The firewire or USB busses would be the bottleneck.

Work on making the machine do what you need it to do with what you have now.
 
Ninja_Drummer said:
alright I gotcha. Thanks for the help everyone. Means a lot to me.
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Are you up to going to Dell support and figuring out the BIOS in short order?

You could have that part of this procedure going in about 15 minutes.

Then we could proceed from there. I may not respond quite as fast, but at least you'll be that much further along.

Whatever you change, document it thoroughly so that you can put it back, just in case!

If you've been in the BIOS already and kind of know your way around, you shouldn't need Dell support documentation. Although, to have that if it is available would not hurt.
 
I'll probably take a look at it later because it's 11:44 pm over here. But I'll take a look at the BIOS to see if I can understand the layout. But if not I can call Dell to see what they think or call my sister's boyfriend whos deep into computers and see what he thinks.
 
Ninja_Drummer said:
I'll probably take a look at it later because it's 11:44 pm over here. But I'll take a look at the BIOS to see if I can understand the layout. But if not I can call Dell to see what they think or call my sister's boyfriend whos deep into computers and see what he thinks.
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It might be possible to make Windows Vista control most of this. So the following may help:

Open up the control panel.

Select "Power Options"

Click on "High Performance"

Click on "change plan settings".

Make sure "Never" put computer to sleep is selected.

Click on "Change advanced power settings".

Never turn off hard disks.

Never sleep.

Disable USB selective suspend setting.

Turn off PCI Express link state power management.

Set the processor power management minimum state to 100%.

Set the processor power management maximum state to 100%.

Set search and indexing to power saver mode.

Dream Scene settings = High performance (although I've completely disabled dream scene on my computer. Let's not go there just yet.)

Multimedia settings: prevent idling to sleep.

See if this helps you to record without dropouts occurring.
 
Well I tried it again the other day with the High performance setting and I got 40-70% idle but it started peaking again once i started the multitracking. Also, now I get an annoying buzz every few seconds when I record. As if there was a slight delay. I've tried adjusting the buffer settings but it still remains. I'm guessing it has to do with the firewire port for my laptop. I'm prolly gonna just go back to using my old desktop.
 
I fixed my issues YES finally. I discovered that I can just switch norton to silent mode so as it doesn't run any background activity or constant updates. Because simply turning off the firewall and antivirus doesn't TRULY cut off norton. But I did so and turned off every option that the "on" setting. And I have no buzzing, drop outs and I run quite smoothly running 512 bytes on safe mode 2.

Damn norton, great security, but when it comes to recording... BOOT
 
I am glad to hear this. I really had not thought of it. This is a laptop though, and I should have.

When not connected to the internet, it is a good idea to disable anti-virus and other types of software like that, as well as all of those programs that try to do automatic updates.

This is good news!
 
I've been following this one since i have a similar problem.I have no anti virus to disable though.
Cubase E4
firepods
pentium 4 2g ram windows xp sp2
texas insrtument firewire card
2 internal hard drives. one for windows & cubase, the other to record to
In past posts, someone stated "Bad CPU"
so i had it tested and they said it had not been installed properly and was bad.
Since then, with the new processor, i can record 8 drum tracks with a few guitar
and bass tracks going and have no pops or clicks with a few vst gates and a tad
eq ing on. It plays back fine also but i still have 100% cpu usage.
 
Yeah when it comes to digital recording and mixing at LEAST a dual core CPU will do. Single core can cause problems because everything running on your computer is running on one core or database. It's kinda like the postal service. You have the one big headquarters and then these subquarters all over the country that help move things along the way and cut in time and any issues that may occur from clutter and craziness.

As compared to just one big headquarters for processing all mail, it would cause issues because everyone's mail all over the country is going through only one office that then ships it to wherever it needs to go despite the distance. This can cause very many problems like somone getting the wrong mail, mail/packages getting destroyed, people not even gettin their mail, etc. In essence this would cause large corp. business to go down, high school graduates will never get into a college because they're mail would get lost whatever.

This is just like a CPU, it is a big warehouse where the computer's "mail" gets processed and sent to where it needs to go. And your motherboard, or the big board where all your hardware plugs into is like the U.S. It contains the roads, pathways, and trails to where the mail needs to go.

So if you have one big CPU like say a Pentium 4 with 3.0 ghz of processing speed. Sure it may seem fast, but then again this is just one core. And ALL your computer processes if going through this one core, which in effect, causes it to become overworked. So it then automatically has to cut down on processes or like me and your problem, programs just start crashing and corrupting.

A dual core may have the same issue but we have two instead of one, so while some other processes may be occurring at the same time as Cubase, we still have room in another core where primarily Cubase has headroom to do it's thing. So the CPU is still getting worked over a bit, but it still is better than just one.

As long as you're having no problems when you record and do whatever then you should be fine.
 
Wow,
I'm setting up a new DAW with Cubase E4. This is great info. I tried running it on my current computer (I use for everything) and it was horrible. So I went for a separate computer just for DAW. I hope two HDD drives are enough. I will be using samples, i.e. Halion one.

Thanks
 
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