Subject:Oh...my...God...

Posted by: jeepman83706

Date:2/5/2003 9:25:30 PM

I am about to break something. So now all of a sudden, when I try recording audio with Acid 4, like through a mic, I get the "blue screen of death" everytime. It is the first track I am recording. The only setting I tweaked is upped the playback buffer a little. I did get new RAM recently, but it is working just fine and it is NOT generic, it's from Micron Technology so it's obviously good. What the f****** h*** am I supposed to do??? Someone PLEASE help me before I go postal...

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: SHTUNOT

Date:2/5/2003 9:51:54 PM

What soundcard? Driver version? OS? Did this happen before? System specs?
Reformatted as of recent? What exactly did you do to have this start happening? Did you install the ram or someone else?

Ed.

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: jeepman83706

Date:2/5/2003 11:12:39 PM

lots of questions...that's good!! ok, so i should say first that this did not start happening until i started to tweak with the playback buffering slider to try to fix skipping of recorded tracks while playing them back. and it only happens when i record audio i.e. acoustic guitar through a mic, and it does not happen when recording midi. i have an intel celeron 800mhz processor, 512 mb of RAM that my very computer saavy friend helped me put in, and have the sound card that came with the computer - AC Link 3d Game Audio with all current drivers. I am also running xp. so i changed 2 things before this started happening...added RAM and tweaked the playback buffering settings. the ram is very reputable, from micron technology, and all the other programs on my computer work great, and the RAM is recognized and has no errors. so what's the dealio?????

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:2/6/2003 6:57:59 AM

When was the last time you actually recorded any audio with 4.0? Or have you ever? And before I get real deep into this - why are you using a soundcard that is built into the motherboard? Acid is a pro app....you need to at least use a pro soundcard with it to get results. 4.0 works wonderful over here and I am pounbding it with all sorts of nonsense from MIDI to VSTi to straight audio....I am using a Delta 66 with Omini Studio and ASIO drivers....never had a glitch or anything.

So some detailed system specs would certainly help. Like OS...motherboard...important stuff...I certainly doubt that RAM has anything to do with this...also - how many hard drives does this box have?

Cuzin B

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: jeepman83706

Date:2/6/2003 8:58:04 AM

I just got Acid as a gift, and right now I'm just using what came on my computer to run it before I make some serious upgrades, that's why I am asking all of you these questions. So here are all of my specs for my computer, and yes I have recorded audio before successfully, it only started crashing after I 1) installed new RAM and 2) tweaked those playback buffering settings. Specs:

Gateway Essential 800C PC, Intel 800mhz Celeron w/ Int Sound and Graphics
128 mb RAM UPGRADED to 512 mb RAM
Integrated Video
20 GB 5M Ultra ATA Hard Drive
Recordable/Rewritable CDRW
3.5" Floppy
Integrated Sound Blaster compatible audio (currently AC Link 3d Game Audio built into motherboard)
Linksys PCI 10/100 Card
Windows XP

All the other stuff doesn't matter, that's the major stuff. I would like to get a good soundcard like Echo or Audiophile, but not with this f'n computer if things are still going to crash, please advise:)

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: vanblah

Date:2/6/2003 9:54:29 AM

It's hard to say ... one thing you could try is swapping the RAM back. If the BSOD goes away then you may have a bad RAM chip. This has happened to me before (Kingston RAM). Everything seems to work fine, but when some app tries to access a particular portion of memory I got the BSOD.

You might also try re-installing ACID to start with a clean slate so to speak.

Are you running any other audio software (RealPlayer is notorious for screwing with audio for instance).

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: Vocalpoint

Date:2/6/2003 9:56:24 AM

Well...off the top, this box ain't going to cut it in the long run. Acid 4.0 (if you haven't already seen) requires horsepower. While an 800mhz Celerlon will be fine for word processing...music production is quite another issue. Also - a single hard disk is an instant recipe for clicking, gliches, weird noises etc. The soundcard - can't even begin to tell you the problems I have waded thru with no name cards. I can't comment here on this one but I guarantee it is contributing to the overall problem.

Considering most of us are running Acid 4.0 successfully, the fault could be with the app but I am going to estimate the chance of that being very low. I would bet on hardware or driver issues here.

One very important note - XP is usually very, very good at telling you what is wrong. A blue screen in XP gives up several clues:

1. Almost 99.9999% of the time, a BSOD goes hand in hand with a hardware issue. Takes a lot for XP to grind to a halt.
2. A very rare event indeed these days (I have never had one yet in almost 24 months with XP...betas...pre-releases etc...) But if it happens, you will see some info on the screen. Try and recreate the blue screen and copy down everything you see. Especially file references like things ending in .sys etc. IF you can get a file reference for me...we can nail this thing quickly.

Cheers,

Cuzin B

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: coolout

Date:2/6/2003 10:18:41 AM

things that come to mind are: has the hard drive been defraged?

it's bad enough you using a unpartioned boot drive to record audio and not a dedicated drive.

have you played with the latency settings and audio driver?

oh yeah...i wouldn't run acid 4.0 on a 800mhz celeron. the cpu requirements are too high.

if you don't need to mess with asio and vsti (with a celeron you shouldn't) i'd sugest finding a copy of acid pro 3.0g

i'll work much better on a celeron than 4.0

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: pwppch

Date:2/6/2003 10:56:19 AM

BSOD can only be caused by a driver or something very low level - like bad memory.

Do you get the screen dump when you get the BSOD?
What does it say? Any meaningful "names" - i.e. something that ends in .sys or .drv?

I am thinking that it could be the memory?
Double check your BIOS version as well - that is make sure it is the latest available for your box.

Peter

Subject:RE: Oh...my...God...

Reply by: jeepman83706

Date:2/6/2003 11:11:16 AM

Everyone is being such a great help!! Thanks! So Acid is the only program I have running, disabled Norton and all other junk. I called the manufacturer of the rAM I bought and they suggested running DocMemory, a free RAM Diagnostic checker that will detect any errors in RAM. Unfortunately I am at work so I will have to do that later today. Please check back so you can see what happened with that and possibly answer additional q's I may have as a result :):) In terms of the content of the blue screen, yes it does say something about dumping memory. I will try and make it happen when I get home and try and capture what it says for you guys to assess. I did tweak the latency settings in Acid as well, because I was having a delay between sounds from my keyboard and it sounding on my computer. That's all good now, except for the whole crashing thing when recording audio:( So I will give an update after the RAM test so please check back. Out of curiosity, many of you have commented on the apparent crappyness :) of my system for running Acid 4.0. What do you guys have that works? Processor, RAM, hard drive, yadda yadda. Thanks all, and stay tuned:)