recordings distorted

[Scott P]

I've set up a few laptops and desktops before and never had any trouble getting things to work, generally on the first try.

I am using Windows 2K, a Dell C640 laptop (just like my other one), an RME FF800 (which works fine on the other laptop) and SawStudio 5.1.

I've checked the drivers for the FF and it's the same one that works with the other Dell.

So, the only difference is that my old Dell hasn't been update from SS 4.5 (which is fine, all I do is location recording on it.) One other difference is that the "new" Dell doesn't have an onboard soundcard driver installed and it only has 1Gig of ram as opposed to 2 Gig in the older one. It does use a different video driver than the older Dell, which is a different screen resolution, but that seems to be the only difference between the two laptops.

The first thing that I noticed was that while I am recording, the track sheet shows solid black after the curser on the armed tracks. It never did this before on any machine I've used. Normally, the curser just keeps moving with nothing on the multitrack. Once I stop, the waveform looks "normal" zoomed out.

The recorded audio is unusable. It has dropped samples, clicks, pops, skips etc. It's like the word clock is amuck, but it shows to be locked.

I've even tried this with a RME digiface with the same results.

Could the SawStudio version make a difference or the lack of onboard sound device driver be the cause?

I really don't want to buy or swap a bunch of stuff if it's just a setting that I somehow missed.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Scott

[Bob L]

Well... SS 5.1 uses a lot more RAM with the 120 track count... 1 gig is pretty low for that... could be Windows trying to swap buffers in an out during the recording... which of course will never work...

Also, make sure you are using the ASIO driver...

The lack of internal soundcard should not be the problem.

Double-check your clock... it should be set to Master clock for the RME...

The video issue is strange... you can select a red recording marker that follows the cursor on the recording tracks in the MT... but not black... sounds like a lack of memory again.

Bob L

[Scott P]

Well... SS 5.1 uses a lot more RAM with the 120 track count... 1 gig is pretty low for that... could be Windows trying to swap buffers in an out during the recording... which of course will never work...

Also, make sure you are using the ASIO driver...

The lack of internal soundcard should not be the problem.

Double-check your clock... it should be set to Master clock for the RME...

The video issue is strange... you can select a red recording marker that follows the cursor on the recording tracks in the MT... but not black... sounds like a lack of memory again.

Bob L

Thanks Bob. This is an old machine and I don't think that I can more RAM in it. The good news is that I rarely need to record more than 24 tracks. On rare occasion, close to 30. I'll try using 4.5 and see if that fixes it.

The ASIO driver seems to be the only one there. I even tried the other options and the FF doesn't even show up.

I'll let you know. I have some recording this week.

Thanks for the quick help!
Scott

[Bob L]

Also... make sure you do a fresh install and do not just copy the folder from a different machine... setup the preferences from scratch on the new machine.

Bob L

[Scott P]

Bob,

Thanks for the tip, but I've always reset preferences, etc. manually. Anytime I set up a new machine, I start from scratch.

I tried it today with 4.5 and the video problem seemed to go away, but I'm still getting distortion. I had to switch to a different laptop for the recording before I could test it more.

I'll try it again and update you.

Thanks again for the help.
Scott