Needle drop recording problems

Not sure if any of you can help, I'm hoping you can.

Problem:

after not having done any needle drops for about a month, and eager to do some with my new Shure cart, I tried to do one last nite. Problems galore!

Upon playback of the recorded audio, usually 2 or 3 minutes into the recording, the sound starts to "break up" and becomes fainter in the left channel. By "break up" I mean that the audio has hiccups, or places where data is not being recorded for a split second, not silent spots of pops, just jumps.

I recorded about a dozen times from both LP and from the cd player just to test things last night and today with the same problems occuring each time.

I'm using WaveRepair for my recording, and i'm recording through a Gina20 bit soundcard. My hard drive has 20 gigs of free space, and is only 40% full. I have 256 of memory and i'm running Windows XP. I shut down all other programs when I record, and have never had a problem before.

I reinstalled both the Gina and Waverepair software last night, and the problem still persists.
Diagnostic tests from the Maxtor website tell me my hard drive is working properly. It would seem to me that something is causing the hard drive to slow down at times, as Waverepair records direct to the HD, however I have no clue what it could be since all other programs were turned off.

What should I look for, or who should i talk to?

Thanks

Danny

 

Try the usual suspects (you may have already): defrag the HD, make sure the HD's DMA mode is enabled (check in Device Manager), check buffer settings for the recording software.

 

Hmm.. if I read your post correctly, you were doing OK up to about a month ago and now, having changed only your analog front end, you seem to be having issues on the computer side.

I'd say try to think of things you might have installed during the past weeks that might be 'eating' a bit more of your CPU. Maybe start the PC in Safe Mode and see if there's any difference.

Also.. there's been this tiny program floating around for a while now, it's called EndItAll, made by some dude from PC Magazine. I've used it on PCs at work (cluttered as all hell) when burning CDs, to good effect.

Basically what it does is to send a 'close' command to all running applications and processes, .. many do close and others don't (system processes and stuff). You can also set it to 'kill' in which case it'll close anything that's running, but it's sort of a brute force thing and can render the PC unstable.

See if it's still here
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,697,00.asp
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1935,00.asp

Finally you might want to run a defrag on your disk if you don't do so regularly.. that usually helps.

Best of luck, regards

Damián

 

I've never had XP hiccup, but I'm also running 1.5GB of memory, three large hard drives, and have a very recent processor and motherboard. My new sound card is actually an outboard USB 2.0 device, and it works flawlessly. (Yes, even when I have a dozen programs running. )

Like Damián says, there may be some other process running that is causing problems. Are your dropouts occuring in the same spots, or is it random? You might want to double-check those connections to the sound card also, in case the problem is on the outside of the computer. How about that audio cable plugged into the computer? Do you have another you can substitute? Usually, computer problems will result in odd, digital-sounding noises, dropouts, skips, etc. and are often in both channels, not just one.

Just some food for thought. It's going to take the process of elimination to figure it out in any event.

 

I'm with Damián on this. Something is stealing processing time that wasn't there before. Check to see that some virus or worm or spyware hasn't attached itself into your system.

I'm running Win98 on a 1GHz PIII, 384Mb ram and 5Gb free on a 40Gb drive with tons of standard running programs and even when my openGL 3D intensive screen-saver kicks in (because I forgot to turn it off), I've yet to have a recording hiccup on me. And I'm using a Soundblaster Live card.

Joel

 

Uh, I think you are looking in the wrong places. I think it's time to look at your audio cables. Your problem is not with the computer, Windows, any software, or your soundcard.

If this happens with all audio input, suspect the playback chain.

 

I don't see how cables would produce this symptom:

If there are "jumps" in the audio, something's going wrong digitally. The volume change could be a cabling fault, but not this, if I'm reading the post correctly.

 

The soundcard could be malfunctioning, but I maintain that a place to look is the cabling. Bad ones could indeed cause this problem.

Then there is the output on the reciever...
It's just always too easy and convenient to blame the computer.

To determine if it is the computer, though, all he has to do is take the connection out of the soundcard and hook up the same cables to a cassette deck and make some recordings. If the problem disappears, troubleshoot the computer. If not, it is in the playback chain.

 

Make sure that you have the latest updates and drivers for your software, as you have re-installed it. Many programs need an upgrade to work properly in XP.

 

Ok, some answers.

DMA is enabled, my last defrag was last night after this problem started occuring.
I turn off my internet connection before doing any recording.
I just downloaded and used enditall before making more recordings.
Just did a virus check overnight, totally clean.
All drivers are current
I've swapped all the cables already and the same results occur. I just tried again after using Enditall to turn off unnecessary programs.
I did several recordings from 2 different sources, one was from an LP, the other was from my cd player using the analog outs. Lp was fed into the comp from the phono preamp, cd was fed from the line-outs on the cd player.


Results of this latest test:

Again, the first 2 to 3 minutes of audio were perfect, then after 3 mins or so the left channel became a bit softer, and various low frequency thuds and bumps were on the audio in both channels(yes, on the cd audio too!!!!), with obvious audio info missing(imagine someone cutting one inch sections out of r2r tape then splicing it back together, that's what it sounds like)

I downloaded GoldWave to see if it would work any better, same audio issues, BUT one thing that I did notice confirms why i'm hearing missing parts in the audio. While recording, the counter, in the 10ths of seconds is not counting at an even rate, but it speeding up and slowing down!!

I"m at a total loss here. If the soundcard has died, why would it work for the first 2 mins then get weird on me?

Danny

 

Reminds me of the time we were made to listen to two free-running (ie. NOT clock-locked) digital machines at an audio course I took.

IIRC something similar to what you describe happened.. they started 'close enough' and then sync started drifting until it was just glitches coming out the monitors.

That's as far as I can think right now. Maybe someone 'll be able to pick up from here?

Edit: This just in (to my head): have you changed the processor bus speed or something like that? I know people who have, in the hopes of making their PCs run a little faster. Maybe the CPU speed is too high (or low? ) for the other devices. Also are all of your RAM sticks the same type? Are you aware of any kind of disk caching processes that might be running?

Maybe it's a bus thing? Just thinking aloud.

 

I had a problem recently that sounded similar. What happened was that part of my system software was set at 48khz while I was trying to record at 44.1kHz.

 

OK, since it ain't the analog hardware, we're back to the computer. Damian may be onto something. Have you done anything to the computer or it's configuration when this problem started, like try to overclock?

Have you gone through every setting in your PC to make sure things were the same?

How's the memory? Have you tried another soundcard?

Download Spybot:

http://download.com.com/3000-2144-1...&tag=button

Download any updates, and run it. Remove anything with a red X by it.

BTW, WinXP runs much better with more memory than 256 RAM! Try at least 512.

 

I switched around all the soundcard settings to every possible configuration, still the same problem.
Did spybot, got rid of a ton of junk, still the same result.
Overclocking? I have no idea what that is, so I'm sure I haven't tried to reset it.
The only new thing on here since my last good needle drop is the addition of a paintshop program.

I do plan on getting more memory soon.

I'm off to Ratshack in the morning, to get an adaptor so I can run audio into the onboard soundcard to see what happens. I'll be pretty mad if that $$$ Gina card has crapped out on me.

Danny

 

Hold it.. are you running a proper soundcard (the Gina) alongside the built-in thingy on the motherboard? I think that's not the best of ideas.

Have you tried disabling the built-in one either from the BIOS setup (when the PC starts up) or by hard-wiring it out with a jumper? (Check your mainboard manual).

 

What is DMA, and why should it be enabled? I'm unfamiliar with this.

 

Oh yes! That's a biggie! Most soundcards don't play nice with each other, especially onboard sound. When installing Photoshop, do you think some settings may have been reenabled by some means? Have you had any reason to use the system restore?

We're just trying to get to the root of the problem.

 

DMA stands for "Direct Memory Access", which I guess allows the hardware to bypass the software. SCkott step in, please! But, it halps the drives to run more efficiently, and perhaps a tad faster. If you use Windows XP, and use newer drives, you most likely already have it enabled. It's nothing to be worried about, really.

 

As I understand it, DMA allows the hardware to talk directly to the memory through the system bus, which speeds up things considerably. If you don't have DMA enabled, system performance takes a very noticeable and significant hit. When people get jerky video playing back a DVD on a computer, they're first advised to make sure DMA is enabled on the drive. Grant's right that Windows XP, installed correctly, will enable DMA (or "bus mastering") automatically for hard drives, but sometimes things get bollixed up and you need to troubleshoot this. Ditto for optical drives. It is something to be concerned about and to check on.

 

:ulls out hair::

Today things seemed to work fine. I recorded some music, but after 30 mins the glitches and thumps came back, then they were on everything I tried afterwards.

I got a new jack and tried recording through the motherboard soundcard. Same problems. So it's not my good soundcard with the problem.

I took off the paintshop program also, still won't work.
Never used the system restore.

I rechecked all the soundcard settings, played with different buffer numbers, still the same problems.

I do need more memory, but I don't see why it has worked for me so well and now doesn't work. Memory doesn't wear out....

Danny

 

Do you notice anything else running strangely when or after this starts to happen?

 

A couple more ideas: have you tried starting the system in Safe Mode yet?

Also, fire up Windows' task manager (right-click on the task bar at the bottom of the screen and select Task Manager on the menu that pops up).

Let it run while you record, play or whatever it is you do with audio that eventually goes wonky and look at the processor load indicator and the process list on the Task Manager.

You should be able to tell if some process has 'stepped out to the front' and started eating away at your CPU.

Let us know how it goes, maybe there's something to be learnt by that.

 

Thanks guys, i'll try that out, soon hopefully.

But first, I've concluded I have gremlims in my house, messing with my comp!

I bought a new stick of 256ddr last night, and put it in and all hell broke loose. The first boot was fine and it all worked; however nothing but problem after shut down. Wouldn't start back up! The bios would load, but the drives wouldn't boot.

I tried swapping the Ram in the slots, no go. Then I took out the old stick of Ram, leaving in the new one. Worked just fine. Restarted and shut down several times with perfect results. I then put the old stick of 256 back in, wouldn't boot again.

Can a stick of Ram die in one day?

Right now i'm running with the one new stick of Ram. gawd!

This is getting ridiculous. I have a friend who's Microsoft Certified and really good with comps; I'm going to try to get him to come by in the next few days and help me get to the bottom of all this nonsense.

Danny

 

Are you sure that new stick of RAM is the exact type as the old one? Have you tried recording with that new stick in there?

BTW, what mobo do you have?

 

That sounds like a speed mismatch.