Recording problems

Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 3:57 pm

When I am playing back my recording, or recording along side it. It keeps on struggling like its struggling to load or something. How ever it does not exist when I export my audio mixdowns.

I have a quad core cpu with 4 gig of ram, it should not be struggling..im doing about 12 tracks. And my ctrl alt del tells me im using 2 gig ram, so i have a spare gig at least, so it can't be ram issues.

My sound card is a m-audio delta 1010lt which is alot quite a good card for my level of expertise and tracks in use, so any one got any suggestions on what I should check ?

Oh and if it helps my m-aduio sample rate is : 44100Hz and buffer size is 256 samples.

Second question which isnt a problem but more curiosity:
I have a midi synth that plays through out its a straight line all the way through the song, yet it will not play the midi if i start playback half way through the song. It only plays the midi if I have the play cursor begin before the midi synth kicks in thus it loads up not half way through the song if you get me which is a pain in the butt! Is there a way to change this?

Thanks for any help you can provide in advance Smile

Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 5:53 pm

What's running in the background of the CPU?

Have you killed all unneeded services and programs that run at startup?

Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 6:36 pm

Well i am using vista just to add using Nuendo.

Umm there wasn't much the second biggest ram eater at the time was svchost and explorer which is vista and cannot do much about that. But they are minimal. No other programs were running that I could really turn off.

Heres a screen of just 6 tracks of the 12 I have in use, using my CPU.
6 is the most that happens at any one time.

Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:59 pm

By the look of that picture all the RAM is getting eaten up. would be nice to see processes though.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 6:44 am

Are the digital tracks on the same drive as Vista? How is your file fragmentation? Maybe your hard drive is having trouble keeping up.

I have had trouble when multi tracking about 8 tracks 24 bit x 44kHz on the same drive as my system. I think it was a 7200 RPM drive (maybe slower). Now I run a SATA 10k RPM dedicated to digital audio, and have run up to 20 tracks of simultaneous recording 24 bit x 44kHz.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:18 am

GeckoMusic wrote:

Are the digital tracks on the same drive as Vista? How is your file fragmentation? Maybe your hard drive is having trouble keeping up.

I have had trouble when multi tracking about 8 tracks 24 bit x 44kHz on the same drive as my system. I think it was a 7200 RPM drive (maybe slower). Now I run a SATA 10k RPM dedicated to digital audio, and have run up to 20 tracks of simultaneous recording 24 bit x 44kHz.

I am unfamiliar with the technology that your talking about here, is there some way for me to find out on my pc to help answer your questions ?

And in response to my proccesses :

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:53 am

Hmmmm, given that's like a 3rd of your process tree I would assume you have a bloated PC.
Malware, spyware... All that jazz.
Unless you got Alexander the Greats untying skills I'd say format and redo from start.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:32 am

My computer has only just formatted like 2 weeks ago.

And 50 odd proccess is usually the normal on my pc once I got most of my programs installed.
Plus my above image clearly shows I have a good spare gig of ram which is why i highly doubted it was a ram issue.

How many processes does it say you have when you ctrl + alt + del ?

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 9:45 am

21, win xp here. I'll get the vista box out.
*waits*
It's a laptop with about 400 doo-dahs running, touchpad, hotkeys, camera, virus and firewall blah blah blah... When will people realise just because you have the processing power doesn't mean you should use it _all_ just running the OS.
*still waiting*
57... Jesus.
Umm yeah, looking through I could lose quite a few of these. But nothing is a real cpu whore...
When you run nuendo, have you got it set to the highest priority?

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:05 am

Why do you have appache web server running on your music computer? Kill that for sure. Also with the number of svchost instances I suspect a virus. Is it possible that some of your software installs are corrupted?

from a google search on cledx.exe:

The cledx.exe from H2O contains a trojan called Win32:Rbot-cxl

I think you are hit hard with a virus. I would suggest on a your main music machine, reformat, and only install software you bought.

As for the hard drive question:
If you didn't buy an additional hard drive, then you probably only have one. If it's a desktop, look for a 10k RPM SATA drive.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:12 am

I see alarms. How legit is your system? Be honest now. I see "Team H2O CLEDX" there. I don't know what CLEDX is but I know that H2O is a hacking team.

I run XP with 2 Gigs of ram and I've never seen more than 512 megs in use at a time when running Tracktion. Gaming, maybe but not using my DAW.

Just to add another bomb, I don't think Nuendo 3 is compatible with Vista. For that matter, I'm not sure that Nuendo 4 is compatible with Vista.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:50 pm

sirchick wrote:

My computer has only just formatted like 2 weeks ago.

And 50 odd proccess is usually the normal on my pc once I got most of my programs installed.
Plus my above image clearly shows I have a good spare gig of ram which is why i highly doubted it was a ram issue.

How many processes does it say you have when you ctrl + alt + del ?

Physical Memory:
Total 3325
Cached 1826
Free 22

22 is not a gig.

Try a ram checking program (Memtest is a great app.) and remove the Trojans/Virus's the other people spoke of.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:06 pm

Sorry. Just more nitpicking. In that one frame of what looks to be quite a long list of processes, I can see seven instnces or svchost. SEVEN!? Looks dodgy. Also, why is apache running? Are you running a server from your machine? Two instances of that going on.

I'm wondering what else is running. You've definitely got some bugs in there. I wouldn't be surprised if there someone in Tuktayuktuk using credit cards under your name by now.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:23 pm

And getting back to hardware...how many physical hard drives do you have in the computer?

If you have only 1, I'd be willing to be that this is the main problem - not ruling out bloatware/malware. Audio recording systems perform much better when you have multiple drives, one for your OS and programs and the other to record your audio on.

Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 4:12 pm

Agree with everything said here. That cledx.exe file is a software emulated dongle that emulates the security key, so it's probably not a virus although it may show up as one. Another problem may be if you have your disk drives set to cache to memory. You want to write directly to disk, bypassing the memory cache. Just switch to XP, your DAW will thank you. Smile

Expose all hidden files and do a Panda online scan -

http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/

Then read this and adjust appropriately -

http://www.blackviper.com/

This is what mine looks like, and I'm sure a few people here could show you something with even less. Just to give you a ballpark idea of what it should be for better performance -

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