On location, last weekend.

I've actually heard a rumor that SATA may be faster in bursts than IDE but that it blocks longer sometimes. I don't know where I read that, but the first thing that came to mind was how it affects audio recording.

I have heard the same thing phoo. It seems some companies implementations of SATA controllers is less than ideal.

John, do you have another standard paralell ATA drive you can try? I have read posts on other forums where guys have had this problem when using SATA. Especially onboard SATA controllers. The problem was fixed when they went back to a PATA drive on the standard IDE controller. Worth a shot.

TG

PS I have recorded up to 15 minutes of 16 tracks at 24/48 with my Athlon XP2500+ system and two WD 80 gig PATA drives. Everything was flawless with my EMU 1820M using ASIO.

Weekendtracker:<!–QuoteBegin>

Quote
I break the recording down into blocks of 15-20 minutes each.

How do you break it down?

For live multitracking (8 channel), I like to record songs in short sets of 3 or 4, so I don’t have the hassle of huge files to deal with. If there’s a good easy way to chop down, I’d like to know it – I’d use longer recording sessions.

So far, the best method I’ve found is to just use nondestructive mode. With the grid on, drag the end handles on all tracks to the end of the first song (or segment or whatever). Save As … the first song. Drag the end handles to the right, to the end of the second song. Drag the start handles to the start of the second song, and slid all tracks to the left. Save As … the second song. Repeat ad nauseum.

Be there a better way?
Quote (gtr4him @ April 27 2005,12:11)
I have heard the same thing phoo. It seems some companies implementations of SATA controllers is less than ideal.

Go figure... I bought the SATA drive specifically because it was supposed to be faster. Grrr... Yep, I've got a few WD80G-7200RPM drives in removable caddies that I can easily use.
Go figure... I bought the SATA drive specifically because it was supposed to be faster.
Don't believe it! I use 2 SATA, 7200 RPM drives in a RAID-0 configuration and my disk subsystem screams (not literally). I've never had any of the problems people have spoken about concerning SATA. I've been installing SATA drives in all my client's DAW & I've never heard any problem from them.

I'm pretty sure I've set the virtual memory, and turned off the statistics (per winxp.net), but I'm not familiar with "Disable Paging Executive" where is that option found?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management/ DisablePagingExecutive = 1
Quote (Mr Soul @ April 27 2005,14:11)
Go figure... I bought the SATA drive specifically because it was supposed to be faster.

Don't believe it! I use 2 SATA, 7200 RPM drives in a RAID-0 configuration and my disk subsystem screams (not literally). I've never had any of the problems people have spoken about concerning SATA.
Note that I said SOME have problems. Not all. The problems I had read about were ALL concerning a specific SATA controller built-in to the motherboard. I can't remember the specific manufacturer at the moment. Maybe Promise? SATA may be the cats meow IF you know enough to get the right setup. Personally, I ain't gonna chance it. Not until it has matured a little longer. I don't need that kind of throughput anyway, theoretical or actual.

TG

PS HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management/ DisablePagingExecutive = 1


So does this force Windows to NOT page system RAM to disk?
Quote (Mr Soul @ April 27 2005,14:11)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management/ DisablePagingExecutive = 1

Thanks, I'll add that one to my tweak list. :cool:

No offense John, but I don’t know why anyone would buy a laptop for recroding multi track Music, unless my impression of their sound card adaptation is off.
I won’t be untill Orange County Choppers gets done with a prototype, at least.

The result? Mostly OK. The MOTU sounds good. *However* every now and then there is a digital stutter actually recorded into the tracks, rendering the take useless for anything other than a reference for the band. Danm. The hiccups seem to start around 12 minutes or so, and are scattered randomly throughout the rest of the recording.

Ok, I had the same problem with the motu 828mkII on my AMD system - XP/nforce2/1gig/20gigHD/80gigPATA RAIDO addon card/firewire addon card. Mine seemed to be on the occasional peaking samples, such as kicks and on one particular vocalist. I put this down to the RAID card and the vid card perhaps using up too much pci latency.

In your case, I'm going to suggest a couple of things.

1) Reduce the latency for your video card, and your SATA controller. Sata controllers in a few implimentations (particularly silicon image controllers on nforce2 boards) are set at something like 128 or 256. Reduce it to 32 for the sata controller, 96 for a vid card, and increase the soundcard's latency to 128 or 256. This has been an issue with EMU1820's too (in the nforce/sil raid controller config).
2) Service Pack 1, or get the firewire fix for service pack 2.

I understand where you're coming from with waiting after recording for an hour or so. I've got a feelling it's ntrack drawing the waveforms for the track window. First time it happened to me I thought it had crashed...

But yeah, the guy I borrowed the motu off uses it with an ada8000/ASUS laptop for live gigs flawlessly. I'm doing 14 tracks with my Hercules 16/12 ntrack 3.3.

Willy..
Note that I said SOME have problems. Not all.
Understood but I didn't what John to draw the conclusion that SATA was causing his problems when it might not be.

Frankly, SATA is now the standard. To shy away from it would be a little, say over-cautious.

So does this force Windows to NOT page system RAM to disk?
Correct - double negative.
Quote (Tom @ April 27 2005,15:11)
No offense John, but I don't know why anyone would buy a laptop for recroding multi track Music, unless my impression of their sound card adaptation is off.
I won't be untill Orange County Choppers gets done with a prototype, at least.

I bought the laptop to use when I used to DJ.

So far, all of my DAW work has been on my main system. While I *can* haul around a mid-tower and flat-screen monitor, and deal with the extra muck of all those wires hanging about, it would be simpler to use a laptop if I can make it work. The recording I did last weekend was with my mid-tower system, not the laptop.
Quote (Willy @ April 27 2005,15:52)
1) Reduce the latency for your video card, and your SATA controller. Sata controllers in a few implimentations (particularly silicon image controllers on nforce2 boards) are set at something like 128 or 256. Reduce it to 32 for the sata controller, 96 for a vid card, and increase the soundcard's latency to 128 or 256. This has been an issue with EMU1820's too (in the nforce/sil raid controller config).
2) Service Pack 1, or get the firewire fix for service pack 2.

Now I feel dumb... WHere do I reduce the latency for the SATA controller and the video card? Is that a BIOS setting?

John, some BIOS systems have PCI latency settings but the drivers can override them. Google up DoubleDawg for a utility that will allow you to adjust it on the fly.

Hang on… HERE is one tool I found. Try it or DoubleDawg.

TG

This is what the Dawg says:



I’m not quite sure what’s what there…

:cool:

Hmmm… well when I run it I get more details than that, but then I’m using a PCI based soundcard. It’s a safe bet that the third device listed is your graphics card. I have yet to see a graphics card that did not set the PCI latency to max for itself. Try 128 there and see if anything happens.

BTW, are you running a PCI based FireWire adapter or is it a MOBO built-in? The reason I ask is MOTU recommends running their FW interfaces ONLY on Texas Instrument chipset based FireWire adapters. Just a thought ???

TG

Quote (Mr Soul @ April 27 2005,11:44)
I also do these tweaks (in addition to others):

- Set Virtual Memory to a fixed size
- Turn off disk performance satistics
- Disable Paging Executive

Also, I personally would always use WDM over ASIO if given the choice. Hope this helps.

Any size for a 160 gig HD that would be good to set the virtual memory to?

Where do I go to turn off the disk performance statistics?

I saw in a later post the string for disabling paging executive. How exactly do I go about changing that (IE where do I change that setting)?

Also, could it be the ASIO drivers? I am using ASIO drivers, as the RME Multiface does not have the option of using WDM drivers, only ASIO or MME.

Thanks.

Any size for a 160 gig HD that would be good to set the virtual memory to?

**Set virtual memory to 125% of physical RAM. If you have 512MB set it to 768. 1GB set to 1.2GB.

Where do I go to turn off the disk performance statistics?

**Not sure on this one… Mike??

I saw in a later post the string for disabling paging executive. How exactly do I go about changing that (IE where do I change that setting)?

**Run REGEDIT and locate the registry key indicated in CAPS in Mike’s post.

Also, could it be the ASIO drivers? I am using ASIO drivers, as the RME Multiface does not have the option of using WDM drivers, only ASIO or MME.

**Dunno about RME. They have an excellent reputation for driver quality from what I have read/heard.

Thanks.

**Wish I could help more… :)

TG

Sorry - I wasn’t very explicit. Here are my tweaks:

- Set Virtual Memory to a fixed size: Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance - Initial & Max. Size of Swap file should be equal
- Processor scheduling set to background services: Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance
- Disable Use transition effects: Control Panel/Display/Effects
- Disable Show window contents while dragging: Control Panel/Display/Effects – some doc’s say to enable this?
-Use 64K cluster size: format [drive]: /A:64
- Turn off disk performance satistics: diskperf –n (dos prompt)
- Disable CD-ROM autoplay: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Cdrom/Autorun = 0 (?)
- Make sure DMA capable devices are run in DMA Mode: Device Manager/IDE Controllers - set transfer mode to DMA if available
- Disable Disc Indexing Service: Right click each disk/Properties/Untick “Allow Indexing Service to index this disc…”
- Disable Paging Executive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Memory Management/ DisablePagingExecutive = 1
- Disable automatic updates: Control Panel/Automatic Updates or Performance & Services
- Turn off Messenger: Services
- Turn off Write Cache Enabled: Device Manager/Disk Drives
- Hardware graphics acceleration: Set it to FULL
- Disable menu scrolling: Taskbar and Start Menu Properties/Advanced
- Use more RAM than virtual memory: Add the following line to the system.ini file:[386 Enh]ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1
- Disable system sounds: Control Panel/Sounds & Multimedia
- Disable screen savers: Properties on Desktop
- Disable power profiles: Control Panel/Power Options

I should point out that I don’t do all these tweaks with my newer DAW because it performed well enough, but I have done all these tweaks in the past.

Good stuff Mike. Thanks!
:cool:

I’ve had my daw get the little pause / hiccup like mentioned. When it happens, after hitting stop the screen takes a while to display the wav files. When the recording is correct (no hiccups or glitches) the screen displays the wave files almost instantly. This was repeated several times and with similar sized files with 6 or so tracks being recorded. Just though this might be helpful.

Quote (gtr4him @ April 27 2005,21:13)
BTW, are you running a PCI based FireWire adapter or is it a MOBO built-in? The reason I ask is MOTU recommends running their FW interfaces ONLY on Texas Instrument chipset based FireWire adapters. Just a thought ???

That's a good question... My mid-tower (the one I used last weekend) has an add-on card, and my laptop has a built-in 4-pin FW port (I have a 6-4 pin adapter). How the heck can you tell if it's a TI-based chip on the firewire controller? I wonder if MOTU has a list recommended manufacturers?

BTW, I put a 7200RPM HD in my laptop... sweet, so far. I'm going to take it out with the MOTU tonight and see how it goes.

:cool: