Lots of Questions for AlChuck and Everybody

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DavidK

DavidK

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Hi folks, I singled you out AlChuck because I read
lots of your posts and seem to really know this stuff.

I have completed my midi tracks for many songs,
and am now going into audio mode. I have lots of
questions, so please bare with me, you guys know
a lot more about this than me, and I appreciate any
help. Here goes:

1: I get dropouts easily, even after 5or6 short tracks.
I have a store-bought 566 celeron, 128 ram. I dont
have a dedicated hard drive for audio, which I
assume is the problem. Any ideas about what I
should buy? Is it easy to install an external Hard
Drive? Anything else I should know?

2: I finally learned how to convert Midi to Audio.
Since I often have 32 midi tracks, should I mix
them first and convert them to 2 audio tracks,
or try to record them to seperate audio tracks.
It would seem, in theory, that seperate audio tracks
would be better, but I know my computer would
hit me in the nose if I attempted that. Ideas?

3: If I record 6 different violin tracks, then bounce
them to one track, should I expect that to use
1/6 the processing power of 6 tracks? To me, that
doesnt make any sense. Splain, please.

4: My computer is not dedicated to just music,
I have the typical stuff on here as well. Right
now, it says my system Resources are at 52%.
Ouch. I have lots of stuff I can take off easily
to improve performance, but there is a lot
of stuff I can probably get rid of that I dont know
about. Ideas? How does the system resources
percentage affect audio?

I guess thats enough for now! Cheers, David
 
Pressure, pressure!

1: You shouldn't be getting only 5-6 tracks before dropouts, even without a dedicated audio drive. I would guess something else is going on. What kind of drive is it (that is, UDMA66 or UDMA33 or EIDE, 5400 rpm or 7200 rmp)? Do you defragment it often? Have you tried testing the drive's sustained transfer rate? From Cakewalk's website:

Your audio hard disk must have an "uncached" or "sustained" transfer rate of 3.1 MB per second or higher. A free program called WinTune is available from http://www.winmag.com that will test your hard drive performance and report your uncached transfer rate.
Click to expand...

Finally, could it be in DOS Compatibility mode? ALso from the Cakewalk website:

Go to the Windows 95/98 Control Panel and double-click on the System icon. Click on the Performance tab. At the top of the Performance screen read the entries across from File Systems and Virtual Memory. They both need to say 32-bit. If they instead mention MS-DOS Compatibility Mode then your computer has a serious problem - beyond the scope of what a Cakewalk technician can fix. Your computer is processing the audio data very slowly and Cakewalk will not work properly until the MS-DOS Compatibility Mode problem is eliminated. Help is available on the Microsoft Technical Support web page at http://www.microsoft.com/Support Click on the "Support Online" link and search for the phrase "Troubleshooting MS-DOS Compatibility Mode on Hard Disks."
Click to expand...

2: If you can improve (1) then this might be less of an issue. You might try submixing in functional groups, e.g. to a string track, a brass part, a reed part, etc.

3. Yes. Each track requires a certain amount of CPU effort to create. The actual amount of data streaming around is the same regardless of how many notes were played, how much silence there is, how many parts were mixed to get to this one track -- 16 or 20 or 24-bit samples, and 44,100 or 48,000 or 96,000 of them every second. So, approximately anyway, 6 tracks requires 6x the host's resources required for 1 track.

4. My computer also is used as an everything box -- home finances, work (web and software development), email, internet access, the kid's games, etc.). I think it's really only the stuff that's actually being used at the same time as your recording session that makes a difference -- only tasks that are resident in memory are an issue. Things that are typically a problem are the do-hickeys that certain programs use that run in the background without it being obvious to you that they are even happening. Microsoft's FindFast is a good example; also, things like an active network connection, a virus checker, anything that has a scheduler, etc. -- they all take a little bit of your CPU's available capacity. Some are problematic because what they do can interuppt the audio data stream pretty easily. Here's a few places that describe what you can remove or disable in detail... try http://www.cakewalk.com/tips/proaudio_em_2_99.html
http://musicsolutions.com.au/cgi-bin/secure/articles/optimisingwindows
and/or
http://www.audioforums.com/win95_setup.html

Hope I rose at least somewhat to the challenge...

-AlChuck
 
ALChuck, woah, thanks, my friend. Thats a lot of
great info.

How often should I defragment my disk drive?
I have only done it once, 8 months ago.

I did the wintune test, everything is fine, and
I am not in DOS-Compatability mode.
I dont know what kind of hard drive I have
(It is an HP 6745C). How do I find out? I searched
their website, to no avail, and I dont really want
to open the case again, my computer is too hard to get to.
I guess I will just assume its a slow hard drive, the
computer was cheap! Any ideas for a good external
Hard Drive?

As for my Question #3, great, thats the answer I
wanted to hear! I will be recording 20-30 violin
parts, and bouncing them all to a few tricks will
be simple, its going to have a violin section sound,
so individual mixing wont be important.

One last question (at least for now), can I take
off my virus checker and feel safe, as long as I
am careful checking e-mail?? Thanx so much,
I owe ya bigtime. Cheers, David
 
Defragging -- depends on frequency of use, but lots of folks suggest once a week at a minimum.

If your drive was too slow it would have given you low numbers in WinTune.

External hard drives probably won't help you avoid opening up your computer because you can't just connect one to a parallel or serial or USB port and expect any reasonable performance. You'd need Firewire or SCSI, so you'd have to add an adapter card. Cheaper to buy a new 7200rpm UDMA66 or UDMA100 drive (45 GB for less than $200 these days!) and a UDMA controller card if you need it ($25-50). Either way, you gotta open it up.

You can (and should) disable the virus checker while you are recording; as long as you enable it when you are pulling down email, etc., it'll do its job.
 
Thanx again ALChuck, I took your advice, did a lot
of stuff, and Cakewalk is working much better.

When I said I didnt want to open my computer,
I meant I didnt want to open my computer
to see what kind of hard drive is in there!

When I do get a dedicated audio hard drive,
I would be glad to crack that sucker open,
as I did when installing more ram and Two
soundcards.

When I do add a second hard drive, what exactly
is involved? I am a bit murky on that subject.

Thanx again, and if you ever need something
translated from German or need help
with 18th Century Violin Music, I am your
man! Cheers, David
 
To check your hard drive: Go into the computers BIOS. On most PCs you do this by holding down the DELETE key while it is powering up (before you see the "Loading Windows.." screen). On some other you hit F2 instead. Once in the Bios screen go to the "Main" section (again names vary on different PCs). You should see a listing showing your hard drive parameters and size, and on most newer computers it will tell you the brand and model too.
If that fails, you can always shut it down and pull off the cover.

As for virus software, you don't need to uninstall it. Just go into your software before you do any recording and turn off its "autoprotect" feature. This means don't autoscan every file as you access it. You may also wish to change the configuration so it does not load this "autoprotect" feature every time you boot up.

As for defragging, any time your drive says 3% fragmented is a good time. If you are going to be doing a night of recording run it before hand regardless.

Its also a good idea to get rid of the garbage on your PC. If you are using Win98 you can just run Disk Cleanup from Accessories.

Last suggestion, EVEN MORE RAM. 128 may sound like a lot, and it is, but you can never have too much. And its cheap. I would recomend 256 myself.
 
DavidK,

Thanks for the offer! I have an idea of having some really silly phrases translated into German and then record them spoken and put them over some really hardcore, ominous-sounding industrial/techno/electronica backdrop so they sound sort of sinister and meaningful, when in actuality what's really being said is totally innocuous and goofy... so I'll take you up on it.

As far as 18th century violin music, I have been wanting to study standard practice western harmony for some time, and might actually do it within the next year or two...

Re adding a second hard drive... these days it's pretty easy. I presume that you have two channels of UltraDMA33 on your motherboard, and probably two also of standard EIDE. Your best bet is to put the second drive on its own channel rather than as a secondary drive on the same channel. Depending on what else you might have in the equation (CD-ROM and/or CD-RW drives, ZIP or tape drives, possibly), you might be able to just power down, open up the chassis, add a controller cable between the 2nd channel UDMA connector and the new drive, plug a power supply line into the drive, mount in in a free drive bay, and turn it on. The PC should autodetect it. Then you can format and partition the drive. Recommendations for how to do that can be found on this and other sites. Check out some of the PC hardware sites for more information about adding or swapping drives. Some ones I like: Tom's Hardware Guide: http://www.tomshardware.com/index.html
Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/
PC Mechanic: http://www.pcmech.com/

Good luck!

-AlChuck
 
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