Why does my DAW keep skipping when I record?

C

Coops409

New member
I'm recording my band's practices using Reaper. At first when I started I was using Audacity and thought this problem was caused by Audacity just being a shitty DAW, but after switching to Reaper the problem persists. I'm recording 9 channels at once using a Mackie Onyx 1620 (i) and a 2004 (I think) MacBook Pro. I thought the problem might have been with me sending the laptop too high of signals, but even after lowering them significantly, it still happens.

I still think the problem lies with sending too high of a signal and my computer can't handle that much of an input at once. (ie during sound check, bass player barely touching his strings so I think he's got proper gain then when we play, he plucks the shit out of each sting). Either that, or my MacBook just doesn't have a sound card that's capable of running that many inputs at once? I'm not sure.

Please someone help!
 
The mixer should be acting as your sound card and it has nothing to do with how hard your bassplayer is plucking.. or it shouldn't.

Do you know how to best operate/configure a computer that's temporarily acting as a recording device?

What are your computer's specs? Processor, RAM etc.

I know nothing about Macs but in a quick check of the Apple site the earliest tech specs I can find for a Macbook are 2006 and that doesn't look like a machine that's going to handle 9 channels of input at once too easily... let alone a 2004 model, if such a thing exists...
 
If by "skipping" you mean there are dropouts in the recorded audio, Armistice is right that levels have nothing to do with this. The problem is almost certainly your computer running out capacity to handle the signals.

The first thing to try will be to increase the buffer size (and thereby the latency) in your system. Then dive onto the internet and do a search on "Optimising a Macbook Pro for Audio". Like Armistice, I'm not an Apple person but for Windows systems there are tons of sites giving instructions about things to shut down and adjust to make audio recording more reliable.

I wouldn't give up hope of being able to record 9 tracks even with an older computer. As long as you're not running lots of rubbish in background and not using any real time effects, the processing overheads for recording are actually pretty small. It's playback with effects that takes a much bigger toll!
 
I dunno - an 8-year-old Mac probably doesn't have the RAM or process speed for that many tracks, even if everything running in the background was shutdown and the buffers were changed.
 
Really? That's interesting.

In my PC-centric world I was doing that many tracks (well, 8 if I'm honest cause that's what my PCI based card could take) on a low spec Pentium in 2001 and the computer didn't even break into a sweat.

Playback with effects, on the other hand....
 
Well I went to my About This Mac and it says I have a 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor and 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM of Memory.

I have no idea what this means lol.

It says I'm running Mac OS X version 10.6.8

Edit: I just looked on the bottom and it is 2007 MacBook Pro.

Edit (2): What do you mean by "increase the buffer size (and thereby the latency) in your system" ? I don't know what that means.
 
Your computer specs should be ok for what you are trying to do, assuming you aren't trying to run a lot of F/X like reverb while tracking.
Geez, just google if you don't understand what the spec mean - pretty basic stuff these days.

Read the Reaper manual, Chapter 19.5 to understand how to change the buffer settings. Do a search in the manual for 'latency' and read everything it finds.
It's hard to help someone who doesn't have the basic understanding of DAWs.
 
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