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Subject:two questions....
Posted by: liquid
Date:1/19/2003 10:41:00 AM
1. I'm using a pentium 4 2.4....I've got really fast hard drives, tones of ram, I paid an arm and a leg for the best mother board etc....I'm recording in 24 bit, and my computer is havning a really hard time doing just about anything. It can't even play through a song from start to end without stuttering and completly flaking out. I have no problems recording, and the stuttering generally only happens during the loud parts. Granted I've got lots of trackes....about 30, but their not all 24 bit. All the loops I'm using are 16 bit. I'm not using any high end effects, only those supplied by sonic foundry. I'm just wondering if anyone else out there is recording in 24/48? Do I really need a faster computer? Is it really the cpu that can't handle what I'm doing, or is there something seriously wrong with acid? Does it cause bugs because I'm using 24 and 16 bit tracks at the same time? grrrr 2. I'm having a really hard time figuring out how busses work. I've never used them in the past when I was recording in 16 bit, but it's becoming clear that I'm going to need to streamline my effects. Busses seem buggy to me. For instance, I have a song in which I sent my accoustic guitar to bus A. I then later decided I didn't want it there anymore, so I removed the bus send from the track, but it's still there! I can' get rid of it???? And I don't understand how pre and post sends work. I understand the concept, it's just doesn't seem to be working logically. Can anyone suggest a way to figure this out? I'm really frustrated with Acid today. I just started recording in 24/48, and I can't go back to 16 bit....it just doesn't sound good enough. What to do????? |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: liquid
Date:1/19/2003 12:19:25 PM
now I'm really confused....I've been reading other posts trying and figure out what's going on with my system, and I've discovered that acid converts all files to 32 bit, and them dithers them back down to 16 bit when being output....If this is really the way it works, it shouldn't make a difference to my system if I'm recording at 16 or 24 BIT...wouldn't it be the same load on the cpu ? I HATE ACID 4!!! i NEVEER HAD ONE PROBLEM WITH 3.5....NOT ONE PROBLEM....NEVER SINCE I UPGRADED, MY COMPUTER HAS SLOWED DOWN, AND I CAN'T GET ANYTHING DONE THE WAY I DID BEFORE........I'VE SPENT A FORTUNE UPGRADING MY HARDWARE AND IT STILL ISN'T WORKING.....THIS IS ALMOST HEART BREAKING. |
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Subject:playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/19/2003 5:21:50 PM
liquid, i'm having the same problems. i have plenty of RAM, a 120gig drive, etc. but i'm getting huge stutters and tempo drags. :( it happens in the same locations consistantly , but i still can't figure out what specifically is causing the glitching. muting different groups of tracks seems to help, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the tracks in the problem location that i can see or hear when soloing the track(s). the song is a large file, about 1.5 GB. 36 tracks. most of the tracks are recorded audio . (beatmapped?) there's a handful of loops and effects are fairly minimal, a little reverb. a little delay. is this just too large of a file for my PIII 850? and why the ERRORS in specific locations? i have noticed that a few of the tracks were recorded at different rates. the project was started with most of the tracks at 44.1 16bit. i've added a few tracks at 24 bit. could this causing the problem? Regarding the bus. i'm at loss as to how to assign the tracks to the bus. i must be overlooking something very simple. but there it is. i want to group the faders, so that i can mute only vocals, only guitars, only synths, etc. all help is appreciated. |
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Subject:RE: playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: knowbody
Date:1/19/2003 5:48:31 PM
I've been having problems with stuttering. Assuming you are using a pentium 4 using dither on all tracks might help (assign it to the bus I think) See: http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/oct02/articles/pcnotes1002.asp And assuming you are using XP, follow the tips at: http://www.musicxp.net/ Both sites previously posted by Iacobus (thanks Iacobus) Regarding assigning a track to a bus: 1. Insert a bus 2. There's a small square box (for device selection) above the volume slider on each track, click that and it gives you a drop down list of buses to use. Select the bus you want. 3. Pressing U on the keyboard shows/hides the bus tracks. You can put envelopes on the bus track here. Hope this helps, Chris |
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Subject:RE: playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/19/2003 6:29:47 PM
thanks Chris. got the bus happening. i am running XP and have done all the tweaks. i'll double check anyway to make sure i'm not overlooking something. i have no problems like this with Reason or ProTools. does mixing the bit rates cause problems? |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:1/19/2003 10:38:50 PM
1. What soundcard are you using, Matthew? If it's something like the Audigy, note that the Audigy, not ACID is doing the dithering back and forth. The Audigy does 16-bit/48 kHz internally, even if you do 24-bit/96 kHz (for example), so the Audigy has to do extra work, potentially bogging your system down. Try knocking back your video acceleration a notch or two. Video card drivers nowadays are souped up so much they hog the system bus away from just about everything else. 2. Busses do indeed help to streamline certain tasks. This from ACID's own online help concerning Post and Pre Volume: "Assignable effects are post-volume by default. In Post Volume mode, the following settings are applied to the track before it is sent to the bus: track volume, track volume envelopes, track panning, and track panning envelopes. To change to pre-volume, click the label on the multipurpose slider, choose the appropriate effects chain from the menu, and then choose Pre Volume from the submenu." Let's say you add a pan envelope to a track, and then send this track to FX 1 and put it to Pre Volume. Essentially, ACID will bypass the panning envelope and go straight to the FX send. The same applies to Busses but are the reverse——they are pre-volume by default. On the Contents tab ACID's online help, click "Signal Flow Diagrams" and then "Audio signal flow". You'll get a good idea on how it works. HTH, Iacobus |
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Subject:where is it?
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/19/2003 11:20:27 PM
"click the label on the multipurpose slider, choose the appropriate effects chain from the menu, and then choose Pre Volume from the submenu." ...... did that, but dont see it anywhere. where exactly is this selection for pre/post?? |
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Subject:RE: playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: liquid
Date:1/20/2003 10:19:42 AM
I seem to get the exact same problems as you. It stutters and gets flaky in the same parts everytime. It's almost as if the file itself was damaged at that part. I was talking to a computer tech at my local music store, and he seems to think that my computer should be able to handle this without a glitch. Last night I took the effects off of everything and I managed to get it to play through the song without any problems. I keept a close eye on my cpu and it seemed to fix the problem. I was usuing one external reverb, and when I took this off completly, it seemed to help a lot. But there is something buggy for sure about the new acid. What I liked best about 3.5 was it's stability. That's why I sold logic, I was sold on making music, not fucking around with my pc...now it feels like I"m back to sqare one. Have you tried taking off all the effects, and applying them back one by one while watching your cpu? |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: liquid
Date:1/20/2003 10:50:51 AM
Hi md I'm not using an audiology card, I'm using an edirol ua-700. My card seems to function superperbly. My video card has a 128 megs of ram.....I don't think it uses my cpu at all.....as for the busses, it still doesn't seem to make sense. I found a tutorial on their web site which I'm going to watch when I get the chance...I'll let everyone know if it's worth it or not. I've used buses in the studio, and in logic, so it's not as if the concept is foreign to me. But that's for everybody's help with this. It's conforting to know that I'm not the only one havning problems. |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: justifiedalive
Date:1/20/2003 11:00:15 AM
Reformat and reinstall. |
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Subject:RE: playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: liquid
Date:1/20/2003 11:04:17 AM
hey everyone ...good news...I just read http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/oct02/articles/pcnotes1002.asp and I get the feeling that this is the problem I'm experiencing!!! Please read it and let me know what you think! and let me know if anyone's found an effective solution to this problem! |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: dorkus
Date:1/20/2003 11:49:38 AM
You're using a usb soundcard, and that always means problems. I had similar issues until I upgraded XP to service pack 1. You may want to look into it. Also, there's a hotfix at http://support.microsoft.com/default.a spx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q310507&LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Q310507&rnk=1&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000. This resolves some sort of USB problem that I've heard helps alot of people. -Jim- |
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Subject:RE: playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/20/2003 1:11:06 PM
Liquid, I'm having the same problem, but I'm running a P3. didn't you said removing the effects solved the problem? Im going to try removing the effects now. |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: DKeenum
Date:1/20/2003 1:16:30 PM
I tried that address without luck. Can you give me more info? |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/20/2003 2:04:39 PM
DKeenum, the aricle discusses the issue of CPU 'spikes', which have been causing problems for Pentium 4 users with particular music software, try copying the address and pasting it into your browser. http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/oct02/articles/pcnotes1002.asp |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: knowbody
Date:1/20/2003 4:50:48 PM
Hi Liquid, You wrote you that using buses doesn't make sense. Can you be a bit more specific? What are you wanting to do? Using buses in Acid 4 seems much easier than assigning everything to individual tracks as was the case with Acid 2. I only dabble in music so perhaps you are looking for something beyond my understanding but I'll be glad to help out if I can. Chris |
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Subject:RE: where is it?
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:1/20/2003 9:31:45 PM
Try right-clicking. :) HTH, Iacobus |
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Subject:RE: two questions....
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:1/20/2003 9:43:01 PM
Hi again Matt, Your video card may have 128 MB of RAM, but it will still hog your system's bus if the drivers are designed that way. That's why I suggested turning down the video acceleration a notch or two so that other devices such as your audio interface may have a chance at getting the system's attention. A lot of the time video gets the upper hand over everything else. You should be OK with the Edirol at that bit-depth/sample rate. Another suggestion (if you're using USB 1.1) is to make sure that the UA-700 is the only USB device on its own USB controller. Note I said controller, not port; they're different. A USB controller typically has two ports. If your UA-700 is on one port, for example, and you have another USB device on the other port, the UA-700 must share the already-limited bandwidth with the other USB device, potentially causing problems. HTH, Iacobus |
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Subject:RE: where is it?
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/21/2003 2:23:38 AM
I right clicked mD. still don't see it. |
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Subject:RE: where is it?
Reply by: knowbody
Date:1/21/2003 4:10:10 AM
Yes, what exactly are we looking for - and how do we reverse the pattern on a bus as opposed to an individual track? Chris |
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Subject:RE: playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: liquid
Date:1/21/2003 11:35:24 AM
I removed all the third party effects.....the acid ones don't seem to cause problems. I'm was hoping to use higher quality effects, especially reverb. As soon as I removed all third party effects, the problem went away completely. This is unfortunate bc I don't find the plug-in's that come with acid sound all that great. I was really hoping to take advantage better sounding effects.....but I'd rather have a computer that works than good effects. Hopefully one day we won't need this sacrifice. As for the problems I’m having with busses, I'm going to do my best to figure it out by myself, and I'll do another posting when I can narrow down the problem more specifically. By the way, I'd just like to thank everyone on this forum for his or her help. This is an amazing place for information exchange. And the people here are amazing and helpful. Ciao. |
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Subject:RE: where is it?
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:1/21/2003 11:49:20 AM
Exact steps: -Click the multipurpose fader mode menu. (If you don't see it, you may have to stretch your track vertically and/or horizontally.) Click FX x (where x represents the Assignable FX number). -Right-click and choose either Pre Volume or Post Volume. HTH, Iacobus |
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Subject:RE: two cents....
Reply by: aress
Date:1/21/2003 2:59:27 PM
sounds like the buffer is not large enough in the audio card to handle 24/96 and plugins......... |
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Subject:RE: where is it?
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/21/2003 3:52:37 PM
OK!. i found it. thanks mD. my selections are for Volume, Pan, and Bus. No selection for FX though. i do see the Pre and Post selections for the Bus. I guess i need to assign an FX to the Bus, yes? |
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Subject:RE: playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/21/2003 3:55:06 PM
liquid, i wish i could say that i was in the same situation. I'm not using ANY third party plugins. just the ones in 4.0. when i remove them, things seem to run much better, but still not flawless. |
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Subject:RE: two cents....
Reply by: fulani
Date:1/21/2003 3:56:38 PM
aress, can i adjust the buffer for the soundcard? and yes, i agree with liquid. MANY thanks to all the helpful people here. :) |
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Subject:RE: playback stutters and drags // ///
Reply by: liquid
Date:1/21/2003 7:43:09 PM
I think "aress" might have a point. I was so up in amrs about things not working smothly, that I didn't bother to really play around with the buffer size too much, have you? What is the trade off to increasing the buffer size, is it just a little more latency? |
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Subject:http://support.microsoft.com/default.a spx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q310507&LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=Q310507&rnk=1&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000
Reply by: liquid
Date:1/21/2003 7:44:40 PM
I can't find this hot fix link....anyone know more about it? |