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anonymous 25 March 2004

Hey guys, I have the MOTU 828 interface, and I've been using n-track, simply because it is cheap and supports ASIO. It is very unstable for some reason. I use it only to record my tracks, then use adobe audition to engineer. It constantly locks up my computer, which no software has ever done before. I'm thinking it's time to upgrade. Any suggestions? Thanks!

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arcanemethods Thu, 03/25/2004 - 23:59

tonio wrote: Didn't you get Audiodesk with your 828? You could use that no? All within MAS.

T

Adobe Audition implies he's on a PC. Give Mackie's Tracktion a spin. There is a demo version. It's GUI paradigm is different, not a mixer workalike, and I've grown fond of it. It supports ASIO and VST. You need a VST->DX bridge if you use DX but those are available and work well.

FWIW, and it's a lot to me, the product is identical on the Mac and the PC not using either's native GUI conventions. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a Linux version reasonably soon. Its downside is the lack of much of a track editor.

Bob

anonymous Tue, 04/13/2004 - 18:39

Software Choice

One of my standard comments about which is best is to have you try several demos and friends real packages. I know this is going to make it a pain choosing but you will have to live with the features and the interface of the software package so get something thats user friendly to you. I've only run Pro Tools LE, Logic (light edition), and Sonar here. I found all three to be friendly for me when I was running them as my main package. I ended up running Sonal 2.x SL for my final choice as a matter of evolution.

When it became time for me to aquire a full package, not scalled down, Pro Tools was out of the question in price with their hardware/software, Logic was on shift to Mac only and I'm not a Mac person (not Mac bashing just not my comfort zone) then that left me with Sonar as my choice. True I also briefly tried several others demos but they were found real fast to be not for me. You realy should try others also because one of the others may be found to be just your way of working.

Once I was up and running Sonar I installed a dual display video card in my system. Now I normally run track view on main monitor and float plugins to secondary monitor and sometimes mixer view there also but not often. I find dual display to be a big plus here for me. Reason I'm adding this is so you will ask questions before you jump on a package about how it works with dual displays sooner or latter you need to at least try that out also. Again this may not be your way of working but at least try it once.

Also note Cedar Flat Fats post about him using and older version. I'd bet he's in his comfort zone and acheiving good results with his package so he's decided to stay with an earlier version rather than upgrade for newer bells and whistles.

BTW I assume you are PC, I can't advise on Mac, but the lockups could well be limited hard drive free space and/or limited memory not your software at all. If its limited memory you'll see a lot of drive activity by watching the drive light flash more than it should. That's telling you Windows is using the swap file on the hard drive hard for extra memory. If your hard drive has been in serivce for any length of time you may have it full of deleteable files with little free space left to work. You may try deleting unused programs and backing up old unused files to long term storage such as CD then defrag the drive. One or two unused programs may free up 100mb or more space. File fragmentation on a fairly full drive will make the drive seek for free segments to write to slowing the drives response to a crawl and with multitrack audio that shows up real quickly in performance. You might even check up on your built in sound card in combination with the MOTU, could be some conflict there also. As I said above I do not know MOTU but sometimes two audio devices on a system causes problems. Try disabeling the original sound card in hardware manager then try your sofware again to see if it helps. Some reason, even if it's called an educated guess only, I see a red flag waving on computer performance issues not software problems even with me not being familiar with your software package.

You've gotten some respectable opinons from several posters but don't just take our word. By all means try out some options before spending your money. If you do not take time to review your options you may find yourself with a program you can not work with and then have to spend more money for another.

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