CPU and closing n-track
Hi everybody,
first i have to thank all the active members of this forum, since i have gotten a lot of support from your questions and answers. Thganks to the search function i never had to look for “my topic” long.
Well, now i encounter the point where the search button didn’t work for me.
I am using a AMD Athlon XP 3000+ CPU on my ASUS mainboard. I got everything brand new, just two months ago. My workstation now has 1GB RAM and i have a ESI Juli@ Recoring Card installed.
Although i am a beginner in recording i got around pretty well with n-track, but for the last few days some thing weren’t quite right.
When i wanted to close n-track (i usually click the x in the upper right corner) my whole system reacted with a break down. I can still see the whole song in front of me, yet the mouse cursor is not moving an inch. I had to push the reset button to get it running again.
What is wrong with my system / n-track???
Well i thought, may be an update could fix this problem. So today, i downloaded this update, installed it and ran n-track.
Opening the old song files wasn’t a problem, but when i came to play those songs the CPU activity was unusally high. It ranged from 50% to 80%, i am used to see 12% to max 35%.
since i am a beginner none of my projects have more than 10 tracks, never needed more or never got far enough with a song to add more tracks 
And usually i only use one or two VST, meaning Amplitude for the guitar-parts and Battery for the drums. the main problem actually is that since the CPU is so high, i have clicks and cracks and pauses in my song, when it is playing.
How can i lower the CPU activity?
Okay those were my main problems, now the not soo important ones…
When i first started using Battery i wanted to save the song file, and i thought the system broke down, since nothing moeved for quite a long time. later i found out that i just had to wait some time. Did anyone have the same problem or anything comparable? Or is it just normal?
A couple of times it has happened to me that n-track had to be closed by winXP. When i wanted to open it again i got the message that ASIO-driver had been changed or couldn’t be found (can’t remember the exact message). so i had to reboot the system to make everything work properly again. This can’t be normal either, right?
Well that’s about it. If anyone has some more tipps for me how i can make my system and n-track run more stable i would be happy to hear about it.
I also appreciate all your effort you put into helping me. Thnkas a lot guys (‘n’ gals).
Plant
EDIT: OOOPS longer than i expected this post to be…oh well…
And another problem appeared. For the third time now, i couldn’t open n-track at all. Two times in between (i wanted to start n-track 5 times now) icouldn’t open my previously saved song files. N-track siply shut down and when i wanted to open it up again, the message “ERROR/failure initializing ASIO driver” appeared again (just a i described in my previous post).
HELP!!! I don’t know what else i could do.
Eyup!
I am not familiar with the soundcard you have Plant, but from the symptoms you describe, it would appear there is some incompatibilty with the driver.
I would try uninstalling and re-installing the soundcard and driver, preferably with the lastest version from the manufacturer.
The fact that the whole system froze is an indication of low-level problems with hardware. XP does a pretty good job of protecting itself against higher level software faults.
You say your installation is two months old so, presumably it has worked for two months and the faults have just appeared? also, you say you installed an update, what update?
Troubleshooting is best done methodically. Try one thing at a time. If that does not solve the problem then restore your system to what it was previously and try something else. Otherwise you may be inadvertently introducing other faults.
Steve
| Quote (Beefy Steve @ Sep. 19 2005,16:00) |
| The fact that the whole system froze is an indication of low-level problems with hardware. XP does a pretty good job of protecting itself against higher level software faults. Troubleshooting is best done methodically. Try one thing at a time. If that does not solve the problem then restore your system to what it was previously and try something else. Steve |
Thanks for your answer
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| I would try uninstalling and re-installing the soundcard and driver, preferably with the lastest version from the manufacturer. |
i’ll try this first.
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| The fact that the whole system froze is an indication of low-level problems with hardware. XP does a pretty good job of protecting itself against higher level software faults. |
What do you consider low and high level problems?
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| You say your installation is two months old so, presumably it has worked for two months and the faults have just appeared? also, you say you installed an update, what update? |
I installed the newest n-track version.
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| Otherwise you may be inadvertently introducing other faults. |
… ehich most likely already happened.
Thanks anyways.
Steve is right.
Go to your sound card manufacturer’s website (so if it was a sound blaster extigy, you would go to www.creative.com) - you will have to find out who the manufacturer of your sound card is - a simple google search should be easy enough - then download the newest drivers for your sound card.
Install the newest drivers - especially the ASIO drivers if separate - and then reboot your machine. If you can get into n-track - you may want to reset the configuration somehow and point it to your re-installed ASIo drivers again.
This definitely sounds like a corrupt driver issue.
Mike