Took the plunge and bought a HD24....problems already!

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Joel76

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It was nicely packed, I can say that much.

I put some recording time in on it and after I layed down some tracks I was in the middle of punching in to fix a part....after about the third punch in the recorder begins recording and then stops a few seconds later and gave me a "underwrite error, disc too slow".

What??? !! I have no control over the disc speed and there are no settings for it as far as I know.

I restarted it and it was fine, but did it again a while later. The second time it put a 1/2 second glitch of unwanted earlier audio....like some kind of fragment across all tracks basically ruining the song. Nothing in the well written owners manual about it.

I fired it up last night and ran and recorded with it for 3 hours with no problem. I hate intermittant errors and I hope this doesn't come back to haunt me. I emailed Alesis about it but didn't hear back from them yet.

All the whining aside, every thing else just flat out rocks! It is well constructed and layed out so nice that you don't even need the owners manual to figure it out. I really like it and hope that I don't have to return it for any reason.

Does anyone else here have a HD24? Any problems?
 
Damn home-boy! I got as far as just arming the tracks for recording! I haven't gotten to the punching stage yet!
 
I'm weeks away from picking one up and would be VERY interested about any further burps (scooze me) out of your unit.
 
I'll hopefully get mine this week... I'll slap it if it burps..
 
Heres what I found out on the HD24

If anyone out there has a HD24, you may want the same thing out and see if this is a univesal problem...


Lots of time spent tonight trashing one of my songs. It now sounds like a badly skipping CD after getting this Alesis HD24 to repeat its failures. I got a repeat fail about 90% of the time with the factory HD. The fail apparently framents the song and ruins it.

The actual error reads: "Underwrite Occur, HD too slow" This happens only in record. The recording stops after about 10 seconds after starting and under the following conditions;

Set up is 16 channels selected for the song, 48 kHZ. Loud mic'd amp through a mixer into one (any one) of the channels using the factory HD. The fail occurs in either bay but more often in bay one.

Keeping all the setting the same, my secondary IBM drive would fail also, but only about three in ten trys and only in bay one. The factory 10 GB drive would almost always fail in bay one. I tried about 50 times to see what was repeatable.

Here is the weird part....

If I played higher frequency chords or solo stuff....couldn't get it to fail. If I screamed into the mic...no fails.
Almost three hours of bass tracks last night....no fails.

Heavy rhythm A's, E's and D's....fail, fail, fail!

I wanted to get a cool feedback sound at the end of a song, and I had a Mesa 100 watt head cranked up fairly high, but it should not matter to the recorder......this really doesn't make any sense.

The meters were set right in the middle blue range....not even close to 0 dB or clipping.

I turned amp down and turned up the Mackie's mic input so that the signal was into the orange part of the meters on the HD24....it would not fail try after try. Went back to the loud amp and medium signal.....fail city.

Why the IBM drive would only fail a few times really makes me wonder if it is some kind of hard drive issue and if there is so much information in the chords that I was playing, that the HD could not write it fast enough and the system got backed up? I know that makes no sense because the thing should be able to record on multiple channels all at the same time. I wonder too if the vibration in the room is enough to screw with the HD. Can't wait to see what drums do to it....that will be tomorrow night.

I mail ordered the thing, and wonder if I should return it and accept another? I do have to pay return shipping.
I love every thing else about it...it is a dream to use and whoever designed it had some great ideas...especially the pull out hard drives and the tape record like controls.

Still no word from Alesis.

Other gear used for information purposes was a Ernie ball Axis, shure sm57 mic and a Mackie 1604 VLZpro mixer.

Joel
 
One of the recordrs (HDR or HD24?) had a routine you ran on a new drive to test whether it is good enough (fast?) for recording or just back-up duties. Maybe it was the mackie?

I'm no pc expert, (by a long shot) but I cant see how one signal would be harder to record than another, sample rate and bit depth being constant. Could be wrong.
Very interesting. Let us know what happens.
wayne
 
I have had no problems with the hard drive - although, I did swap out the Fuji drive that was delivered with a 40 Gig Maxtor 5400.
 
I'm a student in Class-kindergarten,subject punch-in 101!
No probs punching (mind you I'm doing the SIMPLEST of tasks)
using samp. rate of 48 w/o fact-installed 10G drive (using 20G)!
No errors or user codes indications. Simple 4-trk recording and playback. I'm taking my tiimmmmmmmme with this baby! Want to learn everything step by baby-step!
;)
 
Wait, just hold on a minute

I am trying to understand why anyone needs this device if they already have hard drive recording on thier computers. I thought these boxes sounded like a great idea but now, I am wondering, why do I need to record twice. The computer still has this box beat, it has a screen, you can use different programs, you can add, subtract plug ins, RAM etc. You can upgrade, you can use as many tracks as you have the power to create. Why do you need a 24 rack box that is a partial computer. For the same 2k you could purchase another computer and sound card and use it as a dedicated audio recorder with all the advantages of a computer. I am at a loss to understand this phenom. Is it just that you all long for something like a tap recorder because it is more "studio like". Becaus it allows you to feel more like a real studio. I don't know, somebody hip me to why the HD24 is any better than a computer.
 
1- its portable.

2- while tracking, it is MUCH MUCH MUCH more convenient to hit play/stop/record in tape like fashion, and play on a mixing board while staring out a window to your clients then being stuck infront of a computer screen fiddling with a mouse.

3- you can send it to the computer digitally for mixing if you want, you can take your project to mix analog if you know someone with a nice board.

4- you have 24 tracks in the space of 8 previously.

5- This is a dedicated system, no windows crashes, no background programs, no modem or AGP bus traffic. A 700mHz celeron at the heart, but its pure audio recording OS going on here.
 
joel, why don't you try recording some other stuff to the same tracks that you were recording the guitar tracks to. Your problem sounds more like a hard drive problem than anything else. There could be:

1- Bad clusters.

2- Thermal failure? (meaning that the drive is heating up too much at some point and is not recording for a long enough time so that the buffers fill up and nothing can get recorded. This is rare as most drives now have a 2MB buffer, and with only recording 1 track at a time, that is not enough data to overfill the buffers. But who knows.....:(

The real test though should be to record something else to those same tracks that keep failing. The way the HD 24 writes to disk is that is dedicates a block of space on the hard drive for the "song", all the tracks for the song (depending on how many tracks to specified originally for the song). If say for instance that tracks 9 and 10 are the two that keep failing, then there is a strong possibility that the space on the drive itself that is reserved for tracks 9 and 10 is bad. Weirder things have happened.

After trying that test, you should try creating a new song altogether. See if the same thing is happening no matter WHERE on the HD it is happening.

Trying another HD is an option too. An 40GB drive can be had for about $80, and that is cheap!!! Buy one just so you can back up your other drive too!!!

Jack Hammer. I have mixed on analog, or digital consoles ever since I started recording. I am now messing around with software recording/mixing. Let me tell you, it takes me 3 to 4 times as long to do the same things I can do with hardware units. It really sucks, and actually detracts from my creativity in a major way! Let's not count in the fact that I once lost my last hours worth of work because of a crash. I have NEVER lost work because of a crash like that with standalone recorders!!!!

I have had more problems optimizing a damn PC to accomplish about 1/5 the processing power I had with hardware units! Try running 48 high quality EQ's, 32 tracks of music, 5 stereo effect processors, and around 14 dynamic processors on your pc!!! Yeah right!!! You might be able to run that much of cheap software, but certainly your final product will definately show! Now if you want to talk a ProTool, Soundscape, Sadie, Sonic Solutions, or Paris system, sure, you can get all the above, BUT, that is gonna cost you around $15,000!!! Go price it. You will see.

The studio I work at has a HD 24 and a Yamaha O2R. You are looking at about $10,000 for the pair, and I doubt that anybodies standard PC setup using the normal software stuff can get even HALF the processing power and dependability as that either!

Ed
 
Computer vs HD24

Portability as mentioned before is the big thing, plus the fact that you can record 24 channels at one time if you want to.

Kind of hard to take your computer to your friends house, or to a live setting and record it.

I think the problem that I was having with the HD24 is that it is sensitive to high SPLs and it needs to be away from speakers or serious vibrations. In a live setting, it may benefit from sitting on a piece of high density foam. I will do some more experimentation and see what works.
 
I see your points

I must say that you guys do seem to know what you are talking about and, you make alot of sense. I can attest to trying to use alot of processing with only about ten to twelve tracks on a Mac 733 with 256 RAM running Digital Performer and there wer problems. And, just today, I left a project for a moment and forgot to save, there was a crash while I was away for those moments and I lost the mornings work. I was going to scrap the tracks anyway but...It could have been a disaster. So, there I am becoming convinced. My goal is to expand the number of real tracks I have. I have, of course, a 2408 which I run through the aforesaid Mac and a Mackie 24-8 analogue board. I believe the HD24 would make a highly usable set up. Interstingly, it was a guy runing almost the same set up only with an Yamaha 02R that has been lobbying against the stand alone claiming it is redundant and unecessary. I can't understand why he has this opinion becuase I know he is doing some high end stuff with some pretty well known artists and he is very knowledgable and very talented. So, I am obviously swayed by the fact that I know this person which gives his opinoin credibility (and rightfully so). After all, we do rely on opiniions more heavily if we know and respect the source. But, though I do not know the people here, I must admit, the opinions sound smart, well thought out and, credible. So, its looking strongly like the HD24 is winning.
 
Too drunk to reead the entire post. Bit if you experience crashes, why not try Cool Edit Pro?, On the reare occasion that prog crashes, it'll let you continue working just where you left it..
 
How's that hangover

Yo Meshuggah, how's the hangover. I am convinced by the posts on this site that the HD24 will be the right move. Now, the money, must get the money, must go to work and make the money to buy the HD24 to record a hit song so I don't have to go to work and can stay home and play and record music to my hearts content.

BTW, Just a passing thought...how 'bout that Alicia Keys, 5 Grammys..Soul music is back in style me thinks. I guess pure pop stuff a la Britney Spears is not getting it. I, for one, am quite pleased that Alicia Keys won becuase that style is a whole lot more compelling than some of the other styles such as rap and hip-hop.
 
Jack, Alecia Keys is my next wife!!:D I'm glad she got her props
due because she is a fabtastic talent.

Tonite, I'm going to start transferring my songs from my ADAT's to the HD24 (Jack, ya' just gotta get one! This baby is AWESOME!!!)
I'm also going to delve into some it's features like editing,pitch shifting, paste and cut etc! I think I have learned enough to do some simple operations and will try to get a lil fancy 2-nite!
Hope I don;t crash anything!:D
 
Sounds to me like a HD problem not so sure that it is SPL related as hard drives are designed to work with a fair amount of vibration.

I have replaced my stock 20 GB with 2, 30 GB 7200 rpm IBM,s and have had no problems with drive errors on either setup.

The data transfer rate should be the same for silence as for 0db either all zero,s or all 1,s.
 
Hd24 and drums

Hey, ya know I recorded two long drum sessions with the HD24 right beside me by the floor tom tom and it didn't skip a beat.

I guess the 100 watt mesa boogie amps are the only thing it doesn't like. Its a keeper!
 
i've decided to stick with my 2 ADATs for a couple years. When the next version comes out that will handle 24/96 across all 24 channels then i will splurge :) but until then, you have to keep to your budgets. I hope you guys really like them and when i get mine in 2 or 3 years you will be jealous of me :D
 
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