Please help FAST!

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ad0lescnts

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I JUST had to kick a band that I'm recording out of the studio because my computer couldn't keep up. They're paying me and this is a BIG problem.

So far there's only about 14 tracks per song layed down, wiht a decent amount of fades, and four send effects being used. I'm running this all on Cubase SX 1.0 with a PC containing 2.4GHz and 1 GIG of ram.

When I try to record more tracks my computer starts cutting out as if it's having trouble with all of these proceses. I've had this problem before, but never to this extent. Does anyone know what I can do to fix it? Is there a problem with my setup? Anything extra for optimum performance i can add?

Please help, the band seems very impatient with it.

Thank you so much,
T

PS- when I press CTL+ALT+DEL it says my Cubase is taking up almost 60 of my CPU.
 
Do you have a dedicated harddrive for recording the audio? Do you have IRQ conflicts?

Optimizes can be found all over this board.

Danny
 
I have a separate hard drive that I use for recording that my operating system is not running on. There are lots of files on it, however, except none of them are being used while I'm recording.

I'm not sure what IRQ is. And i have done many windows optimizations that were on that windowsmusic site, or something that was named similar.

Thank you,
T
 
I looked into changing the buffers. It was set at 128 which seems REALLY low compared to what others I have seen, so i put it as high as i could, 256. Shouldn't it be able to go much higher than 256?

Is it a problem that Cubase is installed on my C drive, and it's writing and taking files from my D drive?

Thanks again,
T
 
ad0lescnts said:
I have a separate hard drive that I use for recording that my operating system is not running on. There are lots of files on it, however, except none of them are being used while I'm recording.
Click to expand...

Definitely try defragging that hard drive. If you've got a lot of files on it, it's quite possible that it is severely fragmented.

Also, what audio interface are you using?
 
Yes and No .....
Yes you should be able to raise the buffers higher than that. I don't have SX 1.0, so I can't really help in how to raise them nor if that version has some form of limitation.
If it's anything like SX 2 then you would click devices>device setup>VST Multitrack>control panel .... double click the value listed for the buffer size and enter the value you want to use. If it does work in this manner, try entering in the value 1024. Double click the value .... key in 1024 and hit enter.

No ... it shouldn't cause any ill effect by having Cubase on the drive with the OS and the projects working directory on the second drive. This is the normal practice of doing it.
 
sile2001 said:
Definitely try defragging that hard drive. If you've got a lot of files on it, it's quite possible that it is severely fragmented.

Also, what audio interface are you using?
Click to expand...


This is also good advice .... always keep your drives defragmented.
I'm still inclined to believe that you may be running your buffers a bit low for the number of tracks you are trying to record/playback.
 
I'm using a MOTU 828MKII.

Cubase won't let me raise the disk buffer size. It wont go above 256. However, you can change the 'number of disk buffers.' It is currently set at 4. Will it help if i raise this? It goes up to twelve.

Also, When i changed the buffer size from 128 to 256 it didn't help.

Thanks,
T
 
ad0lescnts said:
I'm using a MOTU 828MKII.
Click to expand...

Then something definitely has to be up with the configuration. I'm using an 828MKII on my notebook computer, which is a P4 2.8 with 512MB ram and a freaking slow 4500rpm hard drive and I can manage about 24 or so simultaneous tracks.

It could also still be fragmented drives, as this can delay the audio streams for certain tracks and force Cubase to drop out on the playback.
 
Are you using the MOTU FireWire Audio drivers?
If so is there a button for ASIO control panel somewhere within SX 1.0?
If there is .... it should take you to the MOTU control panel, where you should be able to set the Samples Per Buffer as high as 2048.
At least thats how high my 828mkII lists.
Maybe you can try closing Cubase, then launch the MOTU control panel and set the buffers. Though depending on what version of drivers you are using in Cubase, they may get reverted back to whatever Cubase is set for.

You may even want to go to MOTU and download the latest drivers for your OS.
 
list your confign.
remember you MUST have dma enabled on your hard .
do you have it enabled ?
 
You can set the number of samples per buffer directly on the 828mkII by going to, Start/Programs/MOTU/MOTU FW Audio Console, on mine it goes up to 1024 samples per buffer.
 
He shouldnt have any problem running that many tracks even at 128 buffer size. At least it shouldnt mess it up that bad.

Higher buffer size will help but dont forget this intruduces latency while playback monitoring.

We also need to figure out what drivers he is using. ASIO, WDM, MME, i know Steinberg lists DirectX. If you are using anything but ASIO i find in Steinberg stuff it doesnt work very well with a low buffer.

Danny
 
I looked into the DMA thing, and it is set at "DMA if available," and then under that it says "Ultra DMA mode 5" for my primary drive, and "Ultra DMA mode 2" for my secondary drive.

I also tried setting the amount of samples per buffer in start-->programs-->MOTU-->MOTU firewire audio console. I it went up to 2048, and i set it to 1024. However, when i look in Cubase, it still only goes up to 256??

When i was messing around with it I probably messed something up, because now when i try to play my tracks nothing goes to the MOTU or out of the speakers unless the driver is set for the specific MOTU driver. It won't work with 'ASIO multimedia' or 'ASIO full duplex'. This is all just a big nightmare.

I tried deleting my drivers and downloading the latest version from the MOTU website, but it's the same thing with the same problems. When I try to enable all the different ins and outs in the Cubase control panel it asks if it can 'do some tests' to make sure they work probably. When I press ok the program just freezes up.

I also forgot to mention that I tried deleting and reinstalling cubase itself, but it didn't fix a thing.

Thanks to anyone that can help and for all the attempts so far,
T
 
adolescents. a question . is that udma 2 drive the one your recording to ?
or are you recording to the 5 drive ?
please also look in control panel. device manager which lists all your system devices. do you have any devices "flagged" ?
please list your system configuration.
thnx.
 
Hmm it should have an ASIO Motu or something like that. The ASIO Multimedia and Full Duplex is Steinbergs own drivers, which is why it tries to check your hardware so it knows what your hardware can do. This would mean also that the buffer setting in your Soundcards control panel (the one you got up to 2048) wouldnt even effect the buffer setting its using because its not using those drivers. Somehow you should be able to choose those drivers.

The buffer setting in Cubase shouldnt be affecting your real buffer if you have it set to the drivers you want. Maybe the harddrive buffers.

But the UDMA 2 is a bigger concern than that now. If thats your recording drive thats the problem for the low count there. That means your harddrive is old or you have something set wrong. That means you are running file transfer i believe slower than an ATA-33 hard drive or equivalent. Cant remember what all the layers are. Most likely at that DMA is also a 5200 RPM or even an old 4800 RPM. How big is this harddrive even? UDMA is i think an ATA-100 7200 RPM. Though i cant remember what all the UDMA numbers really stand for.

Danny
 
Yes, I'm recording to the UDMA 2 drive. Something must be configured wrong though, since this is a farely new drive. I do not have the box anymore, but it is a 120GB drive. Is there a way to change it to a higher number?

I looked in the device manager and the only thing that was flagged was a PCI simple communications device. I had windows automatically repair it, but I think this was just a modem that I don't use and that is unrelated to the problem.

there is a pull down menu labeled 'ASIO driver.' My three options are "ASIO Full Duplex Driver," "ASIO Multimedia Driver," and "MOTU Firewire Audio." Since it's in the ASIO driver menu, does that mean that the MOTU firewire audio driver IS ASIO? (this is the only one that is working, but still with the skips).

Thanks for all the help,
T
 
After you've defragged, check your swapfile size and maybe increase that just to be sure.

Also have you tried overclocking? What sort of mobo have you got? Those 2.4 chips are great clockers, a lot of them will go to 3.2 easy. Just keep an eye on the temp, & maybe install a bigger fan if needed
 
Ah,
I'm extremely sorry I don't know how to increase swapfile size.

Also it's an intel D845GBV mother board. I'm not sure how to mess with it.

THanks again,
T
 
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