Help with audio dropouts, please????

[scottr]

I've got a Layla 20 bit and running Cubase VST on a PC with Win2000. I used to have this system on Windows XP and I never had any problems with it (although I didn't use it much). But now my audio drops out after only a few seconds (10-30 at max) during playback. It seems to be recording ok for the most part, but once when I was recording 8 channels of audio the recording became slow after about 5 minutes. I've read everything in the troubleshooting manual and most of the Getting Into the Details manual, nothing helpful there. Any ideas what could be causing the dropouts and slowing down of the recording?

I am using a cable that didn't come with the unit right now for the breakout box. I plan on switching back to the other cable tommorow.

Scott

 

[scottr]

I just read in another thread someone recommending a 7200 rpm harddrive, at least. I think mine is only 5400 rpms. Think this could be the problem?

Scott

 

[scottr]

Another clue?

During playback, it seems to play fine until i hit either the ff or rew button. Maybe this helps narrow it down?

Scott

 

[wang191]

it could be the drive. If it's a 5400 rpm drive the seek time could be less than a 7200rpm. But this seems to be a problem you didn't encounter before. Try and think back to when you had it on xp. Did you record at all for 5 minuets and notice the same things happening? Did it do the same thing when you hit fast forward? If not...it is less likely the harddrive. (it still could be, but may not be)

How old is the install of 2000? It could just be the registry and compter getting slower as it usually does after about 5 months of use. If it's a dedicated recording rig then it may not be that.

How much harddrive space is left on your Operating System partition? i would recomend at least 1.5 gigs of free space otherwise the comptuer may start to lag.

What apps are running the background? Try killing all the non essential apps in the task manager etc. Or do a ctrl+alt+del and kill unwanted processes.

try to narrow it down and see what happens.

 

[scottr]

it could be the drive. If it's a 5400 rpm drive the seek time could be less than a 7200rpm. But this seems to be a problem you didn't encounter before. Try and think back to when you had it on xp. Did you record at all for 5 minuets and notice the same things happening? Did it do the same thing when you hit fast forward? If not...it is less likely the harddrive. (it still could be, but may not be)

How old is the install of 2000? It could just be the registry and compter getting slower as it usually does after about 5 months of use. If it's a dedicated recording rig then it may not be that.

How much harddrive space is left on your Operating System partition? i would recomend at least 1.5 gigs of free space otherwise the comptuer may start to lag.

What apps are running the background? Try killing all the non essential apps in the task manager etc. Or do a ctrl+alt+del and kill unwanted processes.

try to narrow it down and see what happens.

Well the thing is, I swapped hard drives and OSes at the same time.. So no way of knowing which the problem is. I switched the cable today and all is going well so far. The installation of 2000 is brand spankin new and I'm not running anything in the background except the Layla console. Hopefully the cable took care of the problem, but if not, I will have to assume the harddrive, agreed? In any case, I'm still wanting to upgrade to XP.

Scott

 

[MartyMcFly]

If the whole thing is slowing down while recording 7-8 tracks of audio I think your problem is your sample rate...I mean 7-8 tracks at once is alot for any computer...its just getting bogged down...

 

[drstawl]

I'm getting dropouts playing back just a stereo pair and it's pissing me off bigtime.

I'm using a system that's powerful enough (never had this problem up until yesterday) and the Delta 1010 that never fucked up on me before.

It's happening with both .mp3 and .wav playback and it's random. I've tried pausing the playback near where the dropouts occurred and looping the suspect region: No Dropout.

I've considered the cable from the Delta to the amp but how the heck could this fix itself that quickly? These are very short blips.

It doesn't seem to be affecting the input signal because I just produced a two-CD set from a live recording direct to CDR dumped via S/PDIF to the Delta and have tested the resultant .wav and .mp3 files on another system. No problem.

I've tried Windows Media Player, Winamp, Sound Forge 6 and Vegas Video3. Same results. Random Dropouts.

WTF????

 

[monty]

Have any of your cats been using your gear?

 

[wang191]

if you go to device manager (right click on my computer, properties) see if DMA is enabled on the harddrive. Sometimes 2k won't detect it automatically. I don't have my 2k system in front of me here, but one of the items inthe list will have the options for enabling dma for devices.

It seems odd that winamp or windows media player does it too.
Older systems use 5400rpm drives and they play music fine. So it seems odd that it could be the harddrive.

 

[dobro]

What's a dropout exactly? That brief pause in the middle of a beat during playback or recording that throws everything off?

 

[drstawl]

>What's a dropout exactly?

I was able to track down the random dropouts by rerouting the output of the Delta from my monitoring system (amp/Events) to my outboard CD recorder. I then fed this recording (with a captured blip) back into the Delta via S/PDIF (that's still working fine) and looked at the recording in my wav editor.

What I saw was a region of silence ~1000 samples wide, or 22.585 ms. long.

Changing the DMA buffer size in the Delta Control Panel from 1024 to 1536 samples seems to have fixed the problem. I'm still wondering how the smaller size worked fine for three months and then suddenly needed to be enlarged.

 

[scottr]

Problem Solved

If the whole thing is slowing down while recording 7-8 tracks of audio I think your problem is your sample rate...I mean 7-8 tracks at once is alot for any computer...its just getting bogged down...

I got my problem fixed.. Just switched back to the original host cable that came with the unit.. Its about 10 feet shorter than the one I was using previously. I had to put a big hole in the wall to use it, but it works like a charm..

Scot

 

[monty]

>What's a dropout exactly?

I was able to track down the random dropouts by rerouting the output of the Delta from my monitoring system (amp/Events) to my outboard CD recorder. I then fed this recording (with a captured blip) back into the Delta via S/PDIF (that's still working fine) and looked at the recording in my wav editor.

What I saw was a region of silence ~1000 samples wide, or 22.585 ms. long.

Changing the DMA buffer size in the Delta Control Panel from 1024 to 1536 samples seems to have fixed the problem. I'm still wondering how the smaller size worked fine for three months and then suddenly needed to be enlarged.

Because computers are like women.

 

[dobro]

Monty, as Captain Beefheart used to say: Women like long neck bottles and big heads on their beer.

He also used to say: None of my women have tears in their eyes.

I like Beefheart - he has a charming, huumorous way with words.

drstawl:

"I was able to track down the random dropouts by rerouting the output of the Delta from my monitoring system (amp/Events) to my outboard CD recorder. I then fed this recording (with a captured blip) back into the Delta via S/PDIF (that's still working fine) and looked at the recording in my wav editor.

What I saw was a region of silence ~1000 samples wide, or 22.585 ms. long."

Damn, trust a techie to actually *measure* one. But maybe I don't know what a dropout is. I get these momentary pauses sometimes during playback of a good track - there's no missing data, but the software doesn't play it back flawlessly and smoothly. It a real bastard when it happens when I'm overdubbing - throws me right off. Anyway, what's that called? I always thought it was a dropout...

 

[drstawl]

>It a real bastard when it happens when I'm overdubbing - throws me right off. Anyway, what's that called? I always thought it was a dropout...

That sounds like a skip. I get those on my Soundblaster system at work (not the Sb's fault) when I'm listening to mp3s and start up an instance of QuickBooks Pro on our network. The music pauses momentarily as the system waits for the network to respond and then picks up exactly where it left off.

The dropout doesn't affect the timing- it's just a blank spot as if a tape recording had a small section erased.

Of course I'm just making up the terminology as I go....

But the facts remain as I (very carefully) observed them.

 

[wfaraoni]

heres a great fix for dropouts from another thread I did it and it works great!!!

Chezz deWitt
Newbie

Registered: Feb 2003
Location:
Posts: 4
I now found the info in Sonar 2´s ReadMe file:


"New AUD.INI Variables for Engine Tweaking

SONAR 2 includes several new AUD.INI variables for tweaking the audio engine. The default values yield the same engine behavior as SONAR 1.3.1. The variables are all in the [Wave] section, and are as follows:

StopIfStarved=<0 or 1> (default=1)

Determines whether the audio engine should completely shut-down and put up a "dropout" indicator if the audio output queue becomes empty. Note that a dropout will still occur if the input queue becomes empty, or if other exceptional MIDI or disk I/O starvation scenarios occur. Setting this value to 0 yields engine behavior where the audio never will never stop during input monitor, but may click or pop instead."

Not really clear on what it means but I think maybe that if you hear clicks and pops with the setting to 0 those are not recorded but only playbacked (?).

There are some other tweaks that I haven´t tried yet. (Don´t need it really ´cause I now have 5ms rock solid latency with my SBLive 5.1 and kx drivers using ASIO in Sonar, what a bliss


I hope that works for you
peace
Bill