problem with layers

[Cary B. Cornett]

I recently took my SS road rig to do a remote session recording drums. This was 8 tracks for the kit, and I recorded takes to all 8 layers. All of this plays flawlessly on the road machine. Now I need to edit in my studio, in which I use a different computer. I copied all session files to an external USB drive (Toshiba Canvio). I connected that drive to my studio machine to play the session from that drive. A couple of the layers in the drums play just fine, but others mostly give me loud random noise, or play normally for a second or two and then go to the loud noise, or in one case sometimes plays sounds backwards before making the loud noise.

At first I assumed a corrupted EDL file, so I re-copied the original EDL files from the source machine. No help. I then re-copied all of the audio files. Still no help. I tried copying the session files to the internal drive on my studio machine, and got the exact same problems.

Both machines have worked well with other sessions. Both machines are running XP, tweaked in the standard way. Both are running version 5.4 of SS.

There are no plugins of any kind running on any of the drum tracks. There is a compressor on the vocal track, and no other plugins of any kind anywhere else. Session load is running at about 2 or 3 per cent. Both machines are running MOTU 424 cards for interface.

What the heck am I missing here?

[Ian Alexander]

Some shots in the dark:

Problem with USB on road machine.
Problem with USB on studio machine.
Problem with USB drive.

Try a different USB port on both machines.
Try a different USB drive.
Try running an error check, defrag, or low level format on the USB drive.
Try a DVD-R.
Try a direct network connection.

HTH.

[Bob L]

The first thing to check is whether the troubled playback is caused by corrupt files... what happens if you take one of the troubled layer files and add that to a new track on layer 1... does it playback ok?

I am trying to establish if it has anything to do with layers or not.

Bob L

[Cary B. Cornett]

The first thing to check is whether the troubled playback is caused by corrupt files... what happens if you take one of the troubled layer files and add that to a new track on layer 1... does it playback ok?

I am trying to establish if it has anything to do with layers or not.

Bob L
One of the things I tried was to blow away the file copies on the USB drive and copy the files to it again from the original source. The problem was not fixed.

As I said before, some layers seem to play just fine on the studio machine from the USB drive, and other layers are all messed up. For example, layers 2 and 8 play OK, layers 4 and 5 are hopeless. With different attempts, the same layers behave consistently as they did before, no change. Yet on the original recording machine, from the original drive in the machine, all layers appear to be just fine.

My next thing to try, I think, is to create track export files on the original machine, a separate set of wave files for each layer in the original session tracks, and see if these can be carried over to the other machine.

Are you saying to copy the regions of a "bad" layer to another open track and see if they play OK from there? I suppose I could try that, if that's what you mean.

[Angie]

Are both machines using the same OS?

[Bob L]

I'm saying to simply pick one of the wav files from a bad layer and add that to a fresh track on layer 1... see if it plays.

Bob L

[Dave Labrecque]

Crazy left-field idea: delete and force rebuild all WPD files.

[Cary B. Cornett]

I'm saying to simply pick one of the wav files from a bad layer and add that to a fresh track on layer 1... see if it plays.

Bob L I set my drum tracks to layer 4, which is a bad layer with loud random noise. I copied the layer 4 region from its original track to layer 1 of a fresh track. Playing from the fresh track, I get absolute silence. Playing the same part from the original track, I get the bad noise.

[UpTilDawn]

I set my drum tracks to layer 4, which is a bad layer with loud random noise. I copied the layer 4 region from its original track to layer 1 of a fresh track. Playing from the fresh track, I get absolute silence. Playing the same part from the original track, I get the bad noise.

The silence in the copy to layer 1 seems to indicate to me a corrupted soundfile...... and I think I recall having run into that one long ago.

Have you tried importing one of the known bad tracks from your folder into a fresh track/layer just to see if it continues to sound bad, or maybe even silent like the copy? It might at least give you some hint.

Can you hook up the road gig with the original tracks to your network and copy the entire folder onto your editing machine? Try opening the session from this fresh copy to see if it copies clean directly from one machine to the other via the network? Seems to me that the files were corrupted in the original copying to the USB drive.

[Cary B. Cornett]

The silence in the copy to layer 1 seems to indicate to me a corrupted soundfile...... and I think I recall having run into that one long ago.

Have you tried importing one of the known bad tracks from your folder into a fresh track/layer just to see if it continues to sound bad, or maybe even silent like the copy? It might at least give you some hint.

Can you hook up the road gig with the original tracks to your network and copy the entire folder onto your editing machine? Try opening the session from this fresh copy to see if it copies clean directly from one machine to the other via the network? Seems to me that the files were corrupted in the original copying to the USB drive.
One of the things I tried before was to make a completely fresh copy from the original source drive to the usb drive. No joy. The same USB drive has worked fine for all other work I have done with it.

[UpTilDawn]

One of the things I tried before was to make a completely fresh copy from the original source drive to the usb drive. No joy. The same USB drive has worked fine for all other work I have done with it.

Nonetheless, if it were me, I'd try making a copy as I suggested - across the network and directly onto the other PC and not onto a USB drive. The problem may reveal itself, or may not........ at least that's another good line of investigation to try in my book.

[Bob L]

If I am understanding correctly, the same region plays bad on layer 4 and then plays fine on layer 1 of a new track... this indicates that the soundfile is ok... my guess is that perhaps some plugin you are unaware of or other setting on layer 4 is causing the problem.

Bob L

[UpTilDawn]

If I am understanding correctly, the same region plays bad on layer 4 and then plays fine on layer 1 of a new track... this indicates that the soundfile is ok... my guess is that perhaps some plugin you are unaware of or other setting on layer 4 is causing the problem.

Bob L

Actually, Cary said he gets silence on the layer 1 copy.

[Cary B. Cornett]

If I am understanding correctly, the same region plays bad on layer 4 and then plays fine on layer 1 of a new track... this indicates that the soundfile is ok... my guess is that perhaps some plugin you are unaware of or other setting on layer 4 is causing the problem.

Bob L The region that plays badly on layer 4 of the original track plays nothing at all on the new track. It is not supposed to be silent (I should hear drums). The other thing is that, on the original track, sometimes I can start playback and hear the drums for a few seconds before it goes nuts with noise. It is not consistent. So, I don't think the sound file is corrupted, because if it was I would always get exactly the same result every time.

There are absolutely no plugins on any of the drum tracks. The only plugin in the entire session is a compressor on a vocal track, and the vocal track plays just fine.

[Angie]

There are a few things I would try.
First is to play the effected files from another wav player like VLC to make sure the files are ok.
Then I would do as Dave suggested and delete the peak files and have SAW rebuild them.
I would make sure the files in question were copied to and are being accessed from the hard drive and not the USB stick.
Then I would play the whole session on the traveling machine to see if the same thing happens there.

[Cary B. Cornett]

There are a few things I would try.
First is to play the effected files from another wav player like VLC to make sure the files are ok.
Then I would do as Dave suggested and delete the peak files and have SAW rebuild them.
I would make sure the files in question were copied to and are being accessed from the hard drive and not the USB stick.
Then I would play the whole session on the traveling machine to see if the same thing happens there. The USB drive I use for this is not a stick, but a regular spinner. When I had trouble playing from the USB drive (only the drum tracks had problems, everything else in the session was fine, and layers 2 and 8 of the drum tracks played from it without trouble), I copied all session files onto the internal drive in my studio machine. Playing from that set of files gave me the exact same problems as playing from the USB drive. Playing the session on the road computer, from its original internal drive, worked perfectly.

Also, on the "bad" layers, the peak file display on the tracks would sometimes change unpredictably.

I have exported all the drum layers as separate wav files to see if I can fix things that way...

[Angie]

The USB drive I use for this is not a stick, but a regular spinner.

Ah. An external drive.


When I had trouble playing from the USB drive (only the drum tracks had problems, everything else in the session was fine, and layers 2 and 8 of the drum tracks played from it without trouble), I copied all session files onto the internal drive in my studio machine. Playing from that set of files gave me the exact same problems as playing from the USB drive. Playing the session on the road computer, from its original internal drive, worked perfectly.

I wonder if moving the road computer's internal drive to the studio computer would give you anything different. I know what a pain that would be, but...

This really is a mystery.

[Cary B. Cornett]

I still don't know what the cause of the problem with playing certain layers on this particular session is.

This is how I got around it.

In the original session, on the original drive in the originating machine, all layers of the drum tracks played without any trouble.
I went back to that machine and exported track files for the drum tracks, a file for each layer for each track.
I copied these 64 (8 layers of 8 tracks) files to my USB HD, then from that drive to the drive in my studio computer.
I did a "save session as" to a new name for the EDL, then removed all drum regions on all layers and deleted unused regions from the EDL.
Saved as under another new name.
Then added the newly extracted drum sound files, one for each layer for each track of the drums.
Now each and every layer plays flawlessly.
I can go forward from here.

[UpTilDawn]

Awful lot of work, but at least you get it done!
I can sympathize with situations like that.

[bcorkery]

And the kicker is we still don't know what the cause was! :mad: