Whats wrong with my set up?

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Roozter

Roozter

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I upgraded my whole set up basically over christmas. I bought sonar 8 studio, which I used with my old mic for a short time, and a Rode NT1A which I just recently bought and set up.

Now everything is working fine, except my mics, now, and before, they are still acting up. Even when I have the latency almost percect, I start getting this kind of glitchy thing happening that doesnt seem to have to do with latency. With the old mic It would do this after awhile of playing with the echo on. The louder I got the more the glitchiness would happen, also the more effects I had on, the more glitchy it would get. Im now having the same problems with the Rode, except its pretty much happening due to any noise.

What is wrong? Im using a 64-bit laptop HP pavilion, and as I said before 64 bit Sonar 8 studio.
 
Unless you got a defective mic, the "glitchiness" probably has nothing to do with the mic itself. What kind of pre and interface do you have?
 
Well, before I was using a simple USB mic. Directly going in to my laptop, and I was having the exact same issues without an interface. Now I have a tascam US-122mk with my mic plugged directly in to it.

I have no pre amp.

Its not the mics, that is for sure. It also is not latency, as I just about have the latency adjusted correctly for the Rode. I doubt its RAM. Im going to clean up my PC tonight and see what that does but I dont have my hopes up.

Im using the Rode to record Guitar (and right now I cant get it close enough without at all that glitchiness occuring to get good quality) vocals, and soon a Djembe.
 
While you're cleaning up your PC, do this.

Go to the Microsoft sysinternals site and get PageDefrag. This is a pagefile defragger that runs at bootup. A regular defragger can't touch the pagefile because it's a protected system file.

Speaking of regular defraggers, the one that comes with Windows is a joke. Get the free MyDefrag and run it in the "consolidate free space" mode. After that, reboot again so PageDefrag can consolidate the pagefile into one contiguous piece. Between the two of these, all of your free disk space will be in one big, unbroken piece - perfect for recording.
 
I set my latency offset to 1000 for my Lexicon U42S. Solved the latency.
I have to avoid plug-ins. If I use a plugin on every channel I get drop-outs.
I use effects send for reverb rather than on individual channels.
I turn off my wireless internet switch when I record. playback or mix.
Otherwise I get stuttering and static cause they are fighting for resources.
I record on battery otherwise I get crackles and pops and static noise on my tracks.
 
ido1957 is correct. Your PC can't be doing anything else while you're recording.

That said, the pagefile defrag is very important. The pagefile is a section of the hard drive used for virtual memory. If it's fragmented, all of your programs will perform poorly. Be sure to run them in this order:

(1) PageDefrag
(2) MyDefrag
(3) PageDefrag again

Here's the reason PageDefrag has to run twice. The first time it runs, it moves all the pagefile fragments out onto the unused area of the disk. This needs to happen so there are no pagefile fragments mixed in with the other file fragments. It clears the way for MyDefrag to do its thing. After MyDefrag consolidates all your files, running PageDefrag again will consolidate the pagefile fragments way the hell out at the other end of the disk. There will then be a huge unused area between the pagefile and your regular files.

You should also run Eusing Free Registry Cleaner to clear all the crap out of your registry. You'd be surprised how much stuff gets "orphaned" there over the life of your PC.
 
I have a button on the laptop that will disconnect my wireless connection. Will this work? or do I need to unplug the modem?

Ill download those two defraggers tommorrow morning, and then use them and see what happens.

Im new to software in general, before I was really pushing the limits of Audacity lol, and ive heard Sonar has a long learning curve. Its pretty overwhelming actually. Mainly its the latency adjusting thats got me confused, and with the static/stutters/fuzz its making it much harder.

Do you think I should invest in a preamp? I was told by a fellow musician who has a home studio, that it wasnt exactly a top priority to record just guitar & vocals.

By the way, im not a hobby musician, or someone who likes to experiment with a studio. I am putting together a home studio to create an EP to use in my press kit, and to send to promoters/venues. I am a musician looking to get signed sometime in the future.
 
I stumbled upon a simple mathematical trick for getting zero latency with Ableton and an M-Audio card awhile back, but I know Ableton was lying to me. There's no such thing as zero latency in analog-to-digital conversion. :laughings:
 
So my US122 has preamps built in to it. So I can rule out that its a preamp I need. I imagine its coming down to having the internet on and possibly programs running that I cant see, or just that the computer needs a good cleaning up.
 
Let's not jump to conclusions. We can't rule anything out until after you've done the cleanup.
 
Disabling the network. i.e. Push the button that turns off the wireless. Should help a lot. Windows is a chatty cathy by default. It's not so much disabling the network as it is ensuring that there is NO traffic on the network. Which is next to impossible to accomplish in windows. Without taking the physical device offline. i.e. Turning it off with the blue button, or pulling the wire out for wired connections.

By default computers get slower with age. You add peripherals and those use resources. Your hard drive has more stuff on it and that takes more resources to manage. You use more ram with all of those little icons in the taskbar. The operating system has to refresh that ram to keep it in a known state and the task manager has to check in with ALL running applications to see if something has changed. So more RAM used, less available, more cpu cycles used, less available, and a slower disk drive all combine to limit what you can do. Defragging a HDD can really boost things, more so in the old days of FAT32, than some of the more recent file systems. But disk I/O is still a pretty slow action and a common bottleneck. (but not as slow as most networks)

Windows kind of sucks in that it can hide running applications from the task manager. And does hide them. So you really have no ideal what is actually running on your machine. Baring a few semi-honest applications. It does sound like your issue is computer resource related. You might try only adding effects in post, and not WHILE recording. That should go a long way to freeing up resources. A latency offset of 1000 is quite high IMO. It should be closer to 300 on a well conditioned system. But that will shift with how many tracks you're using and other things. It will definitely shift if you get a faster computer.

And other we're all joined at the hip technologies. i.e. one unrelated resource like networking, negatively affecting another. Bad RAM can also do a lot of limiting and is a reason for a lot of issues (stabilization) on some computers. Bad power, and other things. You might try some power conditioners and/or UPS type things to help better manage that end. You're only as strong as your weakest link scenarios...
 
Shadow_7 said:
Defragging a HDD can really boost things, more so in the old days of FAT32, than some of the more recent file systems. But disk I/O is still a pretty slow action and a common bottleneck. (but not as slow as most networks)
Click to expand...

My NTFS volume gets horribly fragmented. It makes a noticeable difference in system performance in short order under heavy usage. You really don't want a lot of thrashing while streaming multiple channels of audio data onto the disk in realtime. None at all, if possible.

Shadow_7 said:
Bad RAM can also do a lot of limiting and is a reason for a lot of issues (stabilization) on some computers.
Click to expand...

The pagefile emulates RAM. A fragmented pagefile emulates RAM very badly. The expensive fix is to add more physical RAM. The free fix, while not as effective, is to defrag the pagefile.

And yes, definitely turn off networking and any unneeded system services in the management console. You can Google tons of pages that will give you a list of services to shut down, and other Windows optimization tips.
 
Shadow_7 said:
By default computers get slower with age. You add peripherals and those use resources. Your hard drive has more stuff on it and that takes more resources to manage. You use more ram with all of those little icons in the taskbar. The operating system has to refresh that ram to keep it in a known state and the task manager has to check in with ALL running applications to see if something has changed. So more RAM used, less available, more cpu cycles used, less available, and a slower disk drive all combine to limit what you can do. Defragging a HDD can really boost things, more so in the old days of FAT32, than some of the more recent file systems. But disk I/O is still a pretty slow action and a common bottleneck. (but not as slow as most networks)

Windows kind of sucks in that it can hide running applications from the task manager. And does hide them. So you really have no ideal what is actually running on your machine. Baring a few semi-honest applications. It does sound like your issue is computer resource related. You might try only adding effects in post, and not WHILE recording. That should go a long way to freeing up resources. A latency offset of 1000 is quite high IMO. It should be closer to 300 on a well conditioned system. But that will shift with how many tracks you're using and other things. It will definitely shift if you get a faster computer.
Click to expand...

One thing that is also free that you can do is redo your system by setting up HD partitions. On the first one install an OS, do so on the second. For all your NON-studio related work, do it on your second partion and OS install. Do all your studio work on the first OS install. I did this with my system where I run WinXP for my studio work and Win 7 on my other partition. By doing this, you can strip down one install to the barebones and not clutter it with tons of other apps, drivers, and so on. You can prevent network traffic by just not even installing the driver for your NIC. This will greatly aid in keeping the speed of the one install up for all your audio work. Then simply restart and boot into the other install when you want your regular OS for web browsing, games, email or whatever else you use your system for.
 
How much would it cost to totally revamp the laptop for recording purposes? and what upgrades would that entail?

Earlier this morning I turned off everything I could, unplugged my computer and used the battery, and turned of the internet connection.

It seemed slightly better, but I am still getting fuzz/stutters when any noise goes through the mic.
 
Shadow_7 said:
Disabling the network. i.e. Push the button that turns off the wireless. Should help a lot. Windows is a chatty cathy by default. It's not so much disabling the network as it is ensuring that there is NO traffic on the network. Which is next to impossible to accomplish in windows. Without taking the physical device offline. i.e. Turning it off with the blue button, or pulling the wire out for wired connections.

By default computers get slower with age. You add peripherals and those use resources. Your hard drive has more stuff on it and that takes more resources to manage. You use more ram with all of those little icons in the taskbar. The operating system has to refresh that ram to keep it in a known state and the task manager has to check in with ALL running applications to see if something has changed. So more RAM used, less available, more cpu cycles used, less available, and a slower disk drive all combine to limit what you can do. Defragging a HDD can really boost things, more so in the old days of FAT32, than some of the more recent file systems. But disk I/O is still a pretty slow action and a common bottleneck. (but not as slow as most networks)

Windows kind of sucks in that it can hide running applications from the task manager. And does hide them. So you really have no ideal what is actually running on your machine. Baring a few semi-honest applications. It does sound like your issue is computer resource related. You might try only adding effects in post, and not WHILE recording. That should go a long way to freeing up resources. A latency offset of 1000 is quite high IMO. It should be closer to 300 on a well conditioned system. But that will shift with how many tracks you're using and other things. It will definitely shift if you get a faster computer.

And other we're all joined at the hip technologies. i.e. one unrelated resource like networking, negatively affecting another. Bad RAM can also do a lot of limiting and is a reason for a lot of issues (stabilization) on some computers. Bad power, and other things. You might try some power conditioners and/or UPS type things to help better manage that end. You're only as strong as your weakest link scenarios...
Click to expand...

You mentioned network traffic. I live in a condo, and when I look at available connections, I can pick up on 4 different peoples wireless modems?

Could being so close to other modems be screwing with my network?
 
Specs on the Pavillion, please. My money says its a hardware issue.
 
Roozter said:
You mentioned network traffic. I live in a condo, and when I look at available connections, I can pick up on 4 different peoples wireless modems?

Could being so close to other modems be screwing with my network?
Click to expand...

I doubt that. It will only connect to the networks you tell it to.
 
diggy_dude said:
My NTFS volume gets horribly fragmented. It makes a noticeable difference in system performance in short order under heavy usage. You really don't want a lot of thrashing while streaming multiple channels of audio data onto the disk in realtime. None at all, if possible.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but even a badly fragmented NTFS filesytem isn't going to be as bad as a FAT32 system. We're talking what? A 50% reduction in performance. It helps if you keep 50% unused space on your active drives. Fat32 systems would have like a 300% reduction in performance.

-----

You might not be telling it to connect to all of those other networks, but guaranteed that one or more of them is trying to connect to you. If only because it's infected with a virus. Especially if your neighbor is a school. Just run tcpdump in linux (ubuntu) or other flavor of the month and watch the traffic. If it's a linux box on the other end, nice and peaceful. If it's windows, what the hell? I've never seen so many packets...

-----

For all of these optimizations we're not talking about making your system 200% faster (in the absence of Fat32). But it will make it more consistent and not surging and starving for resources at the worst possible moment. And it will be slightly faster. Something that took 30 minutes to process might only take 20 minutes. Not really much, but for larger projects, processing that might have taken 4 days, finishes in 3... Significant.

If you can't turn off or physically remove your wireless card, perhaps you can pull the antennae. Or build yourself a little tinfoil igloo, shiny side out to shield you from your neighbors. Why do you think that you've been saving all of those empty pizza boxes? Some of the larger pet cages can also aid in the effort.

Also turn OFF auto updates. And 50 or so System -> Admin -> Services that you could disable that are enabled by default. Not all of them, but a good chunk of them. If you've got a couple of days of your life to waste fiddling. And keeping that OS separate from your main one is a good ideal. You don't really need a beefy machine for small audio projects. But you can't load it down like a pack mule either.
 
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