Beeps, pops, tracks slowing, when I try to record

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Sat Mar 21, 2009 9:09 am

I am running a Dell laptop running Windows Vista (32). The laptop has 2 gigs of memory. When I try to record the audio track starts creating bad noises, and sometimes pauses. This happens even if I only have one previous track recorded. If I try to record while playing back several tracks the garbage coming out gets worse.

Oddly enough, the new recording I lay down on the new track seems fine.

More info. My audio out and audio in is controlled by a Boss GS-10 preamp and effects box. The GS-10 connects through the USB port. The Boss GS-10 comes with its own ASIO driver, which I tried without success. (I have downloaded the latest drivers for the GS-10). I also tried ASIO4All. No luck.

I have tried discounnecting the GS-10 and recording straight in the computer, using just the microphone preamp, which has a USB output, but this did not improve anything.

While tying to record I watched the CPU usage and it never went above 50%.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

(Note that I had better luck running Mixcraft on my Dell Laptop running Windows XP. That laptop had 4 gigs of RAM, and is faster than the Vista machine. However, I want a machine dedicated to recording, and I have to use the XP machine for work.)

YouTube · Post by **Acoustica Greg** » Tue Mar 24, 2009 4:41 pm

Hi,

What happens when you use the GS-10's ASIO drivers? Make sure you've got their latest audio drivers for Vista.

Greg

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 9:06 am

I have the latest GS-10 ASIO driver, and it does not help.

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 9:07 am

Actually, I discovered that my laptop has only 1.5g of RAM. I ordered a 1g chip. Perhaps this will help. Also, the speed of my processor is 1.8ghz.

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 9:13 am

Also, I downloaded a trial version of Sony's Acid and I have no problems with recording while playing back, and no noticable latency. Unfortunately, I do not like Acid nearly as much as Mixcraft.

Is Mixcraft targeted primarily to the new, more powerful, machines, with dual processors, 4 to 8g of RAM, and speeds up to 3ghz? If so, for those of us old machines (i.e., more than 2 years old) is there some way to turn off features in Mixcraft that suck up processing power and memory?

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 9:14 am

One more thing. I have turned off every conceivable process in Windows Vista. I am right down to the point where if I turn off one more process then machine will actually shut down. When I look at the applications open the only one that is really using power is Mixcraft.

Still, I cannot record properly.

screamingcheeto · Post by **screamingcheeto** » Wed Mar 25, 2009 9:51 pm

Hey man, I doubt it's a hardware issue. I know some people on XP recording with like 1gb of ram and mediocre processors. I'd appreciate if someone could actually give this topic or mine some attention because it's ridiculous if I've paid 65 dollars for something I can't use.
I'm keeping an eye on your thread.

Batman · Post by **Batman** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:12 am

Guys,
I am new to Mixcraft (am still on the 14 day trial at the mo, but have ordered a boxed copy

I too run Vista (32 bit). I too have been having problems with pops & bangs and speed issues (especially yesterday when I was playing my bass guitar into an audio track (via an M-Audio Fast-track pro).

Like MarinDave, I have a laptop and have disabled pretty much everything I could to improve the performance (I have a dual core 1.86gig processor and 2 GB of RAM).

You may not like my solution, but (after this semester when I finish my second year of a degree), I am going to install XP as I think that Vista is (for me) the main source of my woes. XP is less demanding all round and, lets be honest, at the end of the day, we want to make music - not have fancy 'eye candy' (which I have permanently switched off anyway)! This will leave more of the hardware free to be used for the program.

I have done all that the Acoustica website also suggest to improve performance, but found the main improvement(s) were making the changes within Vista itself..

So, although (depending on how comfortable you are with computers and software) my suggestion might seem quite drastic, I am expecting (and looking forward) to improved performance using XP - That said, I understand that Windows 7 (in Beta testing at the mo) is better performing than Vista, so I'll be checking that out when it comes out

Batman

Post by **Acoustica Eric** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:39 am

Well said Batman! I did some tests on Vista vs XP for recording quite some time ago, the articles are here http://www.demondigital.com/backstage/tutorials.php
Although Mixcraft works on my Vista laptop (after manually installing some older driver files and modifying them to get the mic jack to work), I would certainly never try to use it for anything serious or important.

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:01 am

I installed more memory (now I have 2g), but there is no improvement at all.

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:04 am

What bit rate is the program using. I have no problem using Acid (I can have six tracks playing back, and still record without problem), but Acid uses 16 bits, I believe. Is Mixcraft using a higher bit rate, which would require much more processing power than Acid?

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:11 am

Batman -- I am sure you are right. There is something about Vista and Mixcraft that causes them not to work together as well as they should. My office laptop was downgraded to XP because our office Tech would not have Vista messing with our office network. That laptop seems to handle Mixcraft quite well.

I tried to get Dell to send an XP downgrade to me but they stopped doing that (so they said). My only choice now seems to be to buy a copy of XP off the shelf. Consdidering what that costs I might as well buy another computer that comes with XP.

Post by **Acoustica Eric** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:31 am

One ray of hope here is that MS is giving a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it is released to people who purchased Vista after June of 2008 (I think that's the time line anyway).

Post by **Acoustica Eric** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:36 am

MarinDave, when you get this behavior it is generally the processor having trouble keeping up, not the ram.

MarinDave · Post by **MarinDave** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:46 am

Acoustica Eric -- For what it is worth, I monitored resource use while running the playback on two tracks (one midi and one audio) and recording on another. The memory use never went above 35% and the CPU use never rose above 40%. I examined the processes open and the only ones of significance were Mixcraft and and the resource monitor.

I checked again for processor speed and it says my processor runs at 1.86ghz. That is not as fast as some, but it seems like it should be adequate, given I am running only one program.

If I start Mixcraft fresh the problem seems to get worse as the recording progresses. Then, if I leave Mixcraft open and restart the recording the problem is worse at the beginning of the new recording track then it was at the beginning of the previous recording track.

It is almost like the computer is storing up data that is clogging the system, and cannot get rid of the information without shutting down Mixcraft.