new hard drive problem

[Foreverain4]

i have just added a 3rd hard drive to my computer. a dell 1ghz with 512mb of ram. it is set as master on the secondary IDE controller. the other two are on the primary. the third HD is a western digital high performance 7200rpm. when i check dma in the properties for this drive, everything was screwed up! i can play stuff back from this drive with no problem, but when i try to playback and record to this drive simutaneously, the playback is very slow and chopped all to verboten! anybody have any expirience with this?



lynn

[TeeCee]

You may want to check the DMA level the drive is set to (use a utility from Western Digital) and then verify that your interface supports that DMA level. If it doesn't, drop the level using the Western Digitla utility. If Western Digital doesn't have such a utility, maybe someone else will have a better suggestion. Also, are you using an 80 wirw cable? Is there anything slaved off of the Western Digital?

[Justin]

You mention 3 hard drives...where is your CD-Rom ?

I've seen problems with stutter or slow response with the cd and heavy use hard drives both being on the same IDE cable. First time many people notice this is when trying to burn MP3 files from the hard drive to CD-R on the same cable.

[Foreverain4]

on my primary IDE controller i have as master my application drive and as the slave a drive for audio and video. on the secondary, i had both a DVD rom and a CDRW, i have taken the DVD rom out and replaced it with the new WD hard drive. this new drive is the one that has been giving me the trouble. so i do have a CDRW slaved to the hard drive.



lynn

[Justin]

If it's not a huge hassle to rearrange things a bit, you might experiment
with putting both your recording drives one the secondary controller, and putting the application/os drive and the CD-RW on the primary, and see if that helps any.

You could also disable auto-insert notification on the CD-RW, see if that helps, but I doubt it's the source of the problem.

Keep in mind this might mess up your drive lettering conventions, so you may have to manually reset the letter assignments via the control panel.

I'm not sure if that will help much, but it's worth a try.

[Foreverain4]

i have always dreaded changing anything on my computer. for the last 8 months or so, my machine, running ME mind you, has not crashed at all! well maybe once! i new that as soon as i added something, it would start freaking out on me. i really dont beleive it has anything to do with the cdrw as auto insert has been turned off since i got the puter. there is nothing more annoying than not being able to control a cd rom. lol my question was more along the lines of not getting dma to work on this drive!

[TeeCee]

Lynn,
Did you try my suggestion above? What about your cable, is it an 80 wire cable? Also, try working with the CD-RW off of the chain.

[Foreverain4]

teecee,
i have not tried your suggestions yet as i have not been in my studio for the last couple of days. i am planning on working in it tonight, so i will try the above. where do i find that utility you are talking about? there website? as far as i know nothing is on the floppy that came with it except the driver. the cable is a standard IDE cable. (dont know if this is 80pin). thanx for your suggestions guys!


lynn

[TeeCee]

The utility would be a download from Western Digital's web site. The standard IDE cable will potentially result in errors when used at high speeds. The cable connectors are nearly identical, usually varying only in color, but there are twice as many wires as pins, twice as many as a standard cable. If you remove the CD-RW, be sure to put the hard drive at the end of the cable. It is supposed to help reduce reflections which can also cause errors.

[Foreverain4]

alright! the only thing i can think of is that it just cannot handle recording 6 tracks at 24bit simutaneously. i can record 4 at 24bit very easily with no hickups. i changed my bit depth from 24 to 16 and recorded 6 tracks, no problem. when i go up to 8 at 24 bit there are dropouts all over the place. and when i record 8 at 16 bit i get about the same dropouts as 6 at 24. guess i will just have to start using my adats. :(

[TeeCee]

Your issue certainly looks like a speed/data transfer issue. Did have this problem with the previous hard drive or is this the first time you are trying to accomplish this task?

It looks like you're using some version of Win9x. Is that right? Did you try my previous suggestions? If so, what level DMA is the drive set to and what level is your controller capable of doing?

There are some system tweaks that you may have to consider to get this kind of throughput on your machine. If you have tried the things I've mentioned and your hard drive is installed and functioning properly, you may want to get with the manufacturer of your software to see what they recomend. Sweetwater may also have a tweak list for your OS.

This is where Jeff is going to step in and point out that this is why regular people that want to make music should not concern themselves with the details of PCs.

Good luck,

[AcousticPro]

Thanks for the foreshadowing TeeCee ;) I just want people who don't have to concern themselves with non musical stuff to take advantage of their position and focus on music like they have the opportunity to instead of messing with what you and I do.

[TeeCee]

Jeff,
I'm with you. This thread looks like it will be a good one for you to reference others to in the future. I hope this works out for Lynn, but it's deeper than I would want to deal with on a regular basis while I'm trying to make music. Recording and playing 8x24 bit tracks simultaneously is a bit more real than the typical home studio ever gets. I play back all kinds mixed to stereo, but only ever record 4x24 bit while playing back MIDI to drive my synths. And we haven't discussed sampling rate, yet.

[AcousticPro]

TeeCee,

So you're only doing 4 tracks of actual recorded audio at 24 bit? Wow. I can do a 40 track session with plug-ins on my G4 with 64 tracks of MIDI no problem. I could get 24 on the PC easy as well. Maybe I misread what you wrote though. Maybe I'm doing more "high-end" projects than most home studio composers too.

[Foreverain4]

i think he means recording 4 tracks at a time. i have had up to 26 tracks on a project already. it played back with out any problems.

[TeeCee]

Jeff,
I only record 4 tracks of audio simultaneously. I have worked with up to about 20 tracks of MIDI with some audio thrown in and up to 24 stereo tracks in Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. Projects up to about 32 stereo tracks in Vegas with track and buss FX. Remixes with about 40 mostly stereo parts in Acid with track and buss FX. Mostly before I built my AMD system, I was using a Celeron 300a at 450MHz.


I have been doing mainly bootleg remixes for the last two years (since my studio got flooded) so it's been a while since I did a full production from scratch. The way I used to work was to get all of my MIDI parts straight to where the song sounded about how I wanted it to in Cakewalk, only recording audio if I wanted to re-use a synth for another part. Then I would record each MIDI part as a dry stereo track and a 100% wet stereo track (where I was using my outboard FX processors), splitting the each drum part up as at least bass, snare, cymbals, and stuff with usually two drum parts. Then I would do the mix as an audio project.


I started on an idea Tuesday night that may work in Sonar depending on how their looping actually works. I've gotten used to working with loops since I've been doing remixes (parts of the original song along with my own loops, nothing from loop CDs) and I recorded a handful of vocoded drums and vocals along with a clean drum beat that I threw into Acid to get an idea of where I might go with it. Vocoders aren't the easiest thing to work in real time. If I want to vocode a beat, I have to dedicate a synth and a drum machine/drum synth to the effect. Also, The clean beat and the vocoded beat were on the same drum machine. But now I'm way off topic.

[AcousticPro]

I can record 16 simultaneously on my G4 no problem... I guess I have never pushed the PC that far.

[Foreverain4]

well, my dad can beat up your dad! lol :)

[TeeCee]

Well if both of my dads gang up on your dad...

[Foreverain4]

hahah! thanx for your input yall!