STUCK!!!!! Need HELP BADLY!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Atom Bomb
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Atom Bomb

Atom Bomb

Wtf is a PRS
Hey i have a problem.

Heres my gear...

Roland VS880EX
HP zd8000 laptop. P4 3.0 Ghz 1Gb ram.
Sonar4
And an M-Audio Fast Track USB

What i have done is record my friends band on the Roland unit and wanting to dump the tracks to my laptops DAW via The fast Track.

Here is my problem

I found out that i couldnt do this before i got the fast track and ended up dumping all the drum tracks at my friends computer (ive no idea his card or specs or anything)

And i can load all those tracks (7 in total and about 5 minutes in length each track) and play them back with no problems, droppouts, clicks, pops or anything. I feel my Laptop is more then able to handle this kind of work.

Heres the shit kicker.

I bought the fast track thinikng it would be better then the onboard sound card (mic input)

So i would connect the rolands RCA outs to the fast tracks TRS in (stereo connector) and re-record everything in Sonar track by track (i cant do the stereo panning thing with this FastTrack to get two tracks at a time)

No i have experienced alot of horse shit with this thing. I have one old song on there that with tweaking i was able to dump with no sync errors or dropouts, mind you it took about three hours but it made it in there no problems The song was also only four tracks at about 2.25 mins long

Now when i goto dump the guitars and vocals of this other project everything is in sync for about a minute.... then.... the track im recording gets wildly out of sync, then after a minite or two it gets perfectly in sync agian?????????

Retardedly frustrating. I felt i have exhuasted all the necessary tweaking to death.

I mute all tracks while recording.

I line the clips up to the clicks tracks to the sample!

even different software (cool edit Acid Express and even the windows recorder lol)

I have tried Creating a new project per track then once they are all in, id import the audio clips all together in another new project...that doesnt work.

Ive adjusted latency from one end of the spectrum to the other and all points in between. In both my DAW and the M-auido control panel. And only was was i able to get the two guitar tracks for one song to sync up to the drums. but using those same setting the vocals would import with the said sync issues.

Ive played with different amounts of buffers and sizes of buffers.

Ive tried what i feel to be everything.

ive gone so far as to goto some students at the local tech school and enlist some of their help!

They seem to feel that its the Fast Track trying to change the digital info to analog and then back to digital.

BUt

When we dumped the drum tracks in my friends PC we used the RCA ins on his sound card and it seemed to work perfect and it would have been doing the same thing correct?

they say my Laptop and DAW are more then capeable of doing the work considering it can play those seven drum tracks seamlessly when imported.

So.

If i had the Fast Track Pro? with Optical and RCA inputs would i have this same problem?????? I only sugggest this as the local dealer only sells the m-audio Line of products.

Im pulling my hair out and getting really frustrated and discouraged cause its the same thing everytime? I know i'm missing something, i'm not that stupid, I just wish i knew what !!!!

but i gotta get this project finished. and i need more input.

Thanks for your time.
Hope someone can help me.
 
there's plenty of reasons that you could be having this problem, but I'll like to give you a note: Fast Track sucks ass, and my friend who bought it (which I suggested not to) and has been having troubles with it ever since. Sometimes he'll have no problems, than while in the middle of it, it sounds off beat, and then becomes on beat again. It's kind of strange. I think it's because of it being usb 1.1.

Anyways, it's probably having to do with that your sample rate etc are not all the same. I'm not sure if your also taking a track with a x tempo and slapping it onto a track that is not the same tempo?

Try converting your tracks first to 44.1 16bit, all of them, and try it again. Check your session that you created too.

I also thought it was strange that the recording & mix are played back on the same track (like the mix pot or whatever it's called on there).
 
*Disclaimer*
-I've never used either piece of equipment, so what I say may or may not be relevant :cool: -

After reading your post, I'm still unclear as to how you are recording. Are you recording everything onto the roland first, then dumping all the tracks later??

Or are you using the roland to record to your computer (passing through the fast track of course) in "real-time" as a mixer of sorts, to get more channels? (don't even know if that's possible, but hey, I'm givin' it a shot)

If it's the latter, I would suggest to just keep the recordings in the roland until you don't have anymore tracks available. From there I would proceed to dump them into your recording program.

Once a friend of mine came over with his 8 track, (similar to yours, but different brand and such) wanting to get his song on the computer so he could have more mixing freedom... So what I did was pretty similiar to the way you would bounce down your tracks onto cassette if you wanted to:

Solo a track on your roland,
press record in your recording program
press play on your roland, and keep it playing 'til you're happy.
Repeat each time on a new track until you've "recorded" every track in your roland.

...And if none of this info pertains to you, then damn that was a lot of typing for nothing!!
 
no im recording all on the roland in one lcation and thne dumping on my laptop later.

I find the roland cumbersome to mix and apply effects to. thats the only reason i want them dumped for ease if mixing mastering and applying effects.
 
Does the Roland allow you to back up to CD? If so, you can burn a CD with all the tracks and then put the CD into the computer and import them into your software. No sense going back through D->A and A->D again. Does the Roland have a USB out or some other way to connect to the PC? I can't find a manual on their website.
 
Atom Bomb said:
no im recording all on the roland in one lcation and thne dumping on my laptop later.

I find the roland cumbersome to mix and apply effects to. thats the only reason i want them dumped for ease if mixing mastering and applying effects.
Click to expand...

If you dump them to your computer one track at a time, like the way I mentioned before, there should be no latency/timing issues.
 
Fuck.

I just found out that my harddrive in my laptop is 4200 rpm's.


would that have much to do with what the hell is going on.
 
Atom Bomb said:
Fuck.

I just found out that my harddrive in my laptop is 4200 rpm's.


would that have much to do with what the hell is going on.
Click to expand...

No, it should have plenty of throughput capability.
 
thanks. for your help. I think were all settled that its probably the M-Audio interface. i dont know what else it could be.

I havent actually tried it (fast track USB) for recording a direct guitar like it is designed so i wont say its totally shit yet. Its probably my fault for not buying something like the M-Audio Transit and the like.

Anyways. Id love to get this set up to work so if anyone has anymore ideas thatd be great.
 
Have you tried it the way I mentioned earlier??

I'd like to help you, but you have yet to mention if you have or not.

If you haven't, try it. If you have, tell us and we'll try and think of another fix.
 
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