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Subject:Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Posted by: mtb
Date:10/3/2002 4:57:05 AM
I'm starting to dig some of the new bits in 4.0a but have had constant issues with my audio card (got a M-audio Delta 2496). Still having issues with the ASIO drivers I gave up and, on the advice of the US support guys, have gone back to MME standard until M-Audio/SF sort it out. Now I've started having similar audio quality issues - distorted, chopped, slowed playback, constant pops and blips - with the MME. The song I'm doing has around 30 tracks at the moment - 6 beatmapped, 9 one-shots and 15 loops. When I described it to the chap at SF he said it's likely I've reached 'maxmimum capacity' hence my audio issues. He said I should have a maximum of 4-5 beatmapped/one shots in any song, and should make as many of the tracks as possible into loops. In 3.0g I had similar size songs (30 - 40 tracks) and no audio probs. The SF guys said this was 'lucky' and that basically 'Acid is not a heavy-duty multi tracking audio application'. I see his point but there are some serious questions coming out of this: Has anyone else has similar issues? Is 10 - 20 bm/1-shot stracks the max 4.0a can handle? Any other tweaks I can make to increase my capacity to do larger projects in Acid? Please help - going nuts. (Specs and some history below - to pre-empt common responses). PIII 1GHz 376MB RAM XP Home M-Audio Audiophile 2496 PC set to Standard (not ACPI) No IRQ sharing issues Tried rolling Delta drivers back and forth. Tried un and re-sinstalling everything. Tried chanting and goat sacrifice... |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: justifiedalive
Date:10/3/2002 7:52:48 AM
I'm assuming you used the delta uninstaller and followed thier directions closely? I use a delta 44 with the latest drivers and am getting high track count with low latency and no drop-outs. I must admit, I never use beatmapped tracks though. But I do use LONG one shots spanning the entire length of the song. Sometimes as many as 6 plus lots of short one shots too. Video card maybe? |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:10/3/2002 2:34:14 PM
Indeed, the rep from SoFo was correct. You probably got away with it in ACID 3.0 because the audio engine was a little muddier and not as accurate as it is in ACID 4.0. Remember that you're probably limited based upon the speed of your hard drives, especially since Beatmapped and long One-shot tracks stream from your hard drive when a project plays back. Things to do? Try defragging. Also get the fastest hard drive you can afford. Right now, there are Ultra ATA/133, 7200 RPM drives with low seek times out there, but you also need a motherboard that can support the Ultra ATA/133 spec to get that speed. Use a separate hard drive just for audio. You can get a big jump in performance going this route. HTH, Iacobus |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: MyST
Date:10/3/2002 2:48:31 PM
I can't believe people still come here looking for help without giving the needed details!! It erks me to no end!! How often must we say "give all the info you can."? Gees! Now...What colour was the goat? :) |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: spesimen
Date:10/3/2002 6:23:49 PM
>>In 3.0g I had similar size songs (30 - 40 tracks) and no audio probs. >>The SF guys said this was 'lucky' and that basically 'Acid is not a >>heavy-duty multi tracking audio application'. I see his point but >>there are some serious questions coming out of this: >>Has anyone else has similar issues? As long as i use mme drivers, i get similar performance with 3.0g and 4.0a. >>Is 10 - 20 bm/1-shot stracks the max 4.0a can handle? I typically have 30-40 track songs without any troubles in 3.0g and most of them seem to work fine in 4.0a also, although i can't say i've done extensive testing of that. I mostly use a lot of one-shots that are single-hit instruments, not full tracks, but often have at least a half dozen long one-shots or beatmapped tracks. despite not being a 'multitrack' app the performance seems pretty much similar to performance i get in other apps in terms of total track counts. shrug. that's with a 1.4ghz athlon, 512meg ram, 7200rpm drives.. |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: astral_supreme
Date:10/3/2002 6:47:51 PM
I think I can help you. I use acid 2.0 and just got 4.0a demo while my full version is on back order. My system...I use a creative soundblaster live 5.1 live drive ir sound card. I have no trouble what so ever in using acid products. However as i got deeper into making songs I realized the more tracks in 2.0 I added the harder it was to playback...slow and choppy results occured. This is easy fixxed. To finish the song mute the parts you dont need to concentrate on. This will let you playback only the parts you are editing or working on. concentrate on one area at a time using the loop bar for short playbacks during your precise scoring and editing. Add any plug in effects. After you finish the major editing my solution is to take your parts and mute out all of them except 3. Use the loop bar and set it from start to finish of these 3 tracks. Play back the 3 tracks until it sounds just like it would in your song. Go to save the project and as you save it click the save as button. Save it as a .wav and be sure to check the save in loop region only button. Now that your 3 tracks should be one .wav and you need to bring this in from the explorer pool and open it up. Paint it out and realign it to the rest of your project. Any time you finish a few tracks that are complete with there breaks volume controls and plugins you should render it to a new wav. your end song should have 3 wavs. one for drums one for music and one for vocals. When you compress your work in this format I am sure you will have no trouble with playback. Also note that some sound cards (live mine) require you to go into there properties and set the number of .wav it can play back. Good luck. |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: justifiedalive
Date:10/3/2002 10:37:44 PM
"your end song should have 3 wavs. one for drums one for music and one for vocals." This is one of many excerpts that should be ignored in astral's thread. Sure, it's his workflow but it's uneffecient and unnecessary. Rule of thumb...Render as little as possible. Now regarding your issue, mD has it goin on about the cleaner engine and MyST needs some specs. So how about that video card anyway? |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: groovewerx
Date:10/4/2002 8:21:25 AM
be sure your hard drive(s) set to dma not pio and check those cycle wasting system services are stopped and set to manual not disabled (to be safe). here's an article about daw setup: http://www.computermusic.co.uk/tutorial/power/pc.asp they also have the best software tutorials i've found on the web. |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: TeeCee
Date:10/4/2002 10:06:55 AM
I just want to add that hard drive size, speed, and settings should have nothing to do with an Acid project. You should have everything in RAM for an Acid project. Acid is designed to work with loops and one shots. Sure it has a beatmapper and can do disk based tracks, but that's not to be heavily used. The engine was designed for loops and one shots, RAM based tracks. Note that it has a RAM meter present on the main window. This is why pre-rendering an Acid project as a few waves is not necessary. If you also have Vegas, pre-render groups of tracks and throw them into Vegas. Vegas is designed to work with big hard disk based wave files. You can work as if you are using rendered tracks if you use various busses. You can group your audio in sections and send it to a bus and work on each bus independently if you would like to work that way, but it's not necessary. TeeCee |
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Subject:RE: Terminal Capacity? HELP!
Reply by: groovewerx
Date:10/6/2002 1:25:01 AM
hmmm... i just mixed 115 beatmapped tracks in a3. this was impossible under default xp pro. |