CWPA9.03 newbie in need of recording help

K

KarnEvil

New member
Hi all,

I just recently purchased CWPA9.02 Suite (patched to 9.03) and a Delta 1010 from M-Audio (fine piece of hardware). I am having this problem where my overdubs end up being recorded before the beat. Here's the situation:

My band laid down drums, bass, and guitar in one take, using 8 tracks to do so. A 9th track was used to record a click (I also have a cheapy stereo sound card to do this). When playing it back, my guitarist was not happy with his take (I thought it sounded fine - anyway :). I setup another track to record another guitar take. The second guitar take recorded, however, it sounds like my guitarist played way ahead of the beat. When he recorded the second take, I know he was dead on with drums and bass previously recorded. Comparing the waveforms between the two guitar takes, the second take appears to be shifted to the left slightly - ahead of the beat.

My system is a homebrew PII400, 196MB, Ultra2 SCSI HD's (4.5GB and 18GB), Windows NT 4.0
Audio settings:
44.1-16bit
Buffers in playback que - 8 (too high maybe?)
Latency - lowest
R/W caching - disabled
I/O buffer size - 64KB
Full Chase Lock selected
Waveout position for timing set for outputs 1 and 2 of Delta 1010

Also, I have been noticing a general flakyness of Pro Audio, such as: waveforms not fully appearing on all tracks after reopening a project, the console's aux bussing not working sometimes (I think that was the automation reaking havoc on my mix), the MIDI metronome not syncing with audio playback (that explains the recorded click track), and not letting my computer shutdown after closing out from a long session (I have to reset - NT don't like that). Could all of this be NT's fault maybe?

Any advice/comments/help awesomely appreciated! Thanks!
 
I had the same thing you describe happen to me once, but it never happened again. Weird.
Anyway, I trust you've checked all the usual suspects...I hear that NT is crap on MIDI timing. Anyone care to comment?
 
Hey thanks for the reply!

Anyone out there use Cakewalk Pro Audio 9.03 in Windows NT 4.0 and experience any similar problems as I described in my first post? I am thinking about downgrading my OS to Win95B or Win98 to gain stabilty (well, in the sense of toning down the flakyness I am experiencing). Good or bad idea?

Thanks...
 
Ok...

I talked to a technical support guy at Cakewalk and discovered some interesting things that someone with a similar setup to mine may be interested in.

First, the Wave Profiler did not give my Delta 1010 enough buffer space. This caused the problem with my overdubs being "off beat" with the rest of may tracks. He told me to try 11024 for the 44100 Hz sampling rate under the "Stereo" section in place of the 3584 that the Wave Profiler determined for my setup. That took care of the problem. I'm not sure if other sampling rates have to be attended to in this manner. Doesn't hurt to experiment.

Second, I talked to him about MIDI and Windows NT. MIDI works well in NT only if your sound card drivers were truely designed for NT. How you can find this out, I don't know. However, all I want MIDI for is the metronome. To make the metronome sync with playback, I must use the FM synth MIDI drivers instead of my nice MIDI daughterboard I have for my sound card. I guess that means I can't use a nice hihat sound for a click. :) oh well..

As for the gaps appearing on certain waveforms of my recorded tracks, he had no clue. He suggested reinstalling cakewalk... hmmm... Fortunately, this only happened to one of my projects.

Another good peice of advice he gave me was to only select the audio drivers that are currently in use for the session and do not attempt to record with multiple sound cards simultaneously, unless they're designed for it.

I must say, Cakewalk has good tech-support. The guy stay on the phone through recording tests and everything to make sure it was working! Now my system is screamin!

Thanks for the replies - feel free to add any comments!
 
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