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So here it goes with my first post...

I have a 1.5 Ghz G4 Powerbook and two Metric Halo 2882's that crash when there are more than eleven tracks being recorded simultaneously. I am using Cubase SX as software. The machine will record for a while, and then there is a glitch and the many tracks become misaligned. From what I have read on this forum my machine should be able to handle sixteen tracks easily. Is there a way to get the machine to save to the hard disk earlier, and not save so much info in the RAM? The problem happens as the CPU meter spikes up considerably.

The problem was kind of fixed when I made an adjustment in the OS X program called, “Terminal” but this was rather annoying to do.

Thanks for any help any of you can offer.

Comments

henryrobinett Tue, 05/03/2005 - 16:16

I wrote a detailed answer to this about 3 hours ago or so, hit send and the forum went down, or it went down for me and has been for some time. Arrgh.

It should work fine. I regularly record 18 channels on my 1 gz Alum 15" Powerbook no problem. Then at home with my tower I record and mix a lot of tracks. One thing I use however for live recording is Metric Halo's Record Panel. Very low on cpu and is virtually crash free. I say virtually because it's never crashed except for once when the drummer stepped on the power cable. And even that could've been preventable had I doone something different.

What software version are you using? There's a new one. 3.0 with new firmware. The new software comes with the record panel. I use the 2882+dsp and ULN-2, along with an older MOTU MkII to get an extra 8 in via adat optical.

I use DP, but not for recording live gigs with a lot of tracks. Most DAW software, read DP) is smply too bloated. For recording I just want to record, unless I'm doing a lot of overdubbing. That's a different scenario.

Hope sending this it don't crash the system again!

anonymous Wed, 05/04/2005 - 06:44

The problem seems to be in Cubase because the tracks become misalighned even when I use the computers built in microphone instead of the MIO's. When I watch the VST performance meter the cpu remains low, but the disc meter will be almost inactive, and then suddenly jumps to 100%, this is the point at which the tracks get messed up.

gdoubleyou Wed, 05/04/2005 - 07:36

I tried SX2 on my Powerbook for a quick minute, my conclusion was that anything short of 1.2 GHz dual G4cpu, cannot handle SX.

I also own DP4, and Logic7, and they are 40%-60% more effecient with cpu usage.

DP, and Logic work fine on my ancient G4/400, I'm able to do sessions of 32-48 stereo tracks, with effects, and liberal dose of the freeze functions.

With SX2 I could not playback Cubase5 sessions reliably with my 1GHz Powerbook. The sessions were created on the G4/400.

I didin't get any satisfaction from SX2 until I put it on my PC, where it ran flawlessly.

Truth of the matter is that SX2 has the highest minimum system requirements of ANY mac DAW's.

Hope this helps, I sold my SX2 licence after recovering my old sessions, It was useless too me without a hardware upgrade. The only happy Mac SX users seem to be dual G5 owners.