Expecting my rig to record 16 tracks of 88.2k/96k forever or til the HDD is full too much?

Knowing nothing about your system/soundcard that <20% disc usage sounds really fine to me. It's a lot of data with that high sampling rate. I'm interested to hear comments from the heavy users. My rig can't be used for comparison :o) :o)

The disk buffers won't affect input monitoring, they just govern the ability to read and write to disk in the most efficient manner.

I'm not very good at being habitual about posting specs.

GA-Z77X-UP5 TH mobo
i7 3770k proc
16 gigs RAM
Win7/64
Audio Drive RAID5 2TB via onboard Intel controller in the Z77 chipset.
Other Data (picture cache) standard SATA drive.
OS drive 256 gig SSD
Audio interface Apogee AD16x -> Tascam DM3200 with a IF-FWDM-mk2 connected via a FW to Thunderbolt adapter.


I'm okay with the 20-30% range of disk load. One thing I noticed while working with X1 and X2 in the 32 bit versions is that sometimes the click track would have an unusually quiet beat every so often, sort of like it was glitching. It didn't seem to be late or early, just not as loud and then back to normal for awhile. I could see this difference reflected in the meters on the board. It would happen every several times a minute and was pretty random. When I tested this in X2a 64bit I didn't notice any change in click volume.


The session I'm using to test is a template using plugins that I would typically have setup for tracking drums, bass, guitars and vocals. It's not a full mix but there is eq/comp plugs via PC or other plugins on channels and some reverb/delay available via busses. If I disable all the plugins I don't think there was any glitching with the click. The deal with the click isn't a show stopper but I'd rather not have that happening and didn't have it before on a much spec'd system.



GA-Z77X-UP5 TH mobo | i7 3770k | 16 gigs RAM | Win7/64 | Audio Drive RAID5 2TB via Intel Z77 chipset | Data (picture cache) standard SATA drive | OS drive 256 gig SSD | Apogee AD16x -> Tascam DM3200 -> IF-FWDM-mk2 via Apple FW to Thunderbolt adapter - not ready for primetime yet

+1 Charlie  

Good time to cut and paste them there while ya have it already wrote out

while rec ording, hit the fx button that diables all fx.  you dont need tjem if youre not using input monitoring.  

I downloaded ATTO benchmarking software and it appears the write speed of my RAID5 is abysmal. I'm looking into solutions including the possibility of RAID10 or buying a RAID controller card or dumping the idea altogether and just going with a single disk. Performance was never a problem in that area before but I thought RAID would provide a measure of security since a failed disk could be recreated.

I think the forum is messed up. I added all that information to my signature earlier today and it wouldn't take it. I didn't exceed or even come close to the character limit.

chuckebaby

wmb,i dont know if you put your system specs and soundcard in a post yet,but if you did,most users dont like sifting through posts looking for your set up.
this way we can answer your questions and more than anything...give helpful information.

go to USER CONTROL PANEL(its at the top of the page)
then go to EDIT PROFILE
click on SIGNITURE AND COMMENT

In that box just put your computers specs,your operating system
and your soundcard.

you will be amazed at the ammount of responces you will get and helpful suggestions/people that can relate.

To be honest very rarely do i respond to questions or comments by users who have a blank signiture.

i run the risk of giving misleading information by fact of guessing due to hypothetical estimations.

good luck.

Testing my sig...

seems to be working now.

Hi wmb,

 What I do, when I am shaking down a system to see if I am confident in its ability, is I casually lay out all the microphones, 16 to 24, and turn on the TV or stereo and then I hit record and let it go for an hour.

 I never actually record for an hour without hitting stop and save... but I like to know I can.

 Having some constant audio source makes it easy to see if you have any big problems.




 Now, here's the important part... I don't listen to the whole hour for drop outs... I actually use Steinberg Wavelab and I scan for errors using the tool built i to that app. That's how I know for sure if it's ok or if a small problem is surfacing.



 Every time I see someone bragging about running 16 channels on a HP DV7 laptop over USB I think to myself... I'll bet that person has never actually checked to see if they are getting dozens of errors.


 I'm not an audio engineer... but I try to act like one, and I think that actually checking for errors with a dedicated error scan tool is a real good way to know if you should assume that your tracks are error free.


 If this is really important to you.... skip all the time it takes to listen for the short errors that are really hard to find by ear when buried in a stack of multi tracks and go straight to the real info with some quick scans.



 all the best,
mike

Hi Skook and Mike, 

Just to clear a few things up after a long night. 

Firstly, I don't listen to the entire recordings that I'm testing. When I recorded the rehearsals I just started dropping the cursor randomly and the dropouts were audible. No further analysis necessary. I do use wavelab for that function frequently when I'm checking final mixes or if I hear something odd in a mix when I take out of the studio. 

RAID5 in my setup may be suffering some configuration issues. Presently all the drives are on the same controller but two of them are on SATA III ports. I misread or thought I read something about this being okay. When I get to the studio later I'm going to move the RAID5 onto the SATA II ports and see if that improves things before I confront getting rid of it completely. I knew that RAID5 was not the highest performer but I didn't expect lower write performance than a single drive. Also, I didn't know that RAID5 actually requires some parity calculations to be performed by the CPU. Of all the on board raid solutions it has the highest probability of being a lower performer compared to on board implementations of RAID0 or RAID1. Furthermore I never expected really high performance raid in terms of massive

 transfer rates but I also didn't expect lower performance than a single drive. As you can see from the graphic above the write speeds are terrible. Some online searches also targeted the Intel Z77 chipset as having abysmal RAID5 performance. I found this out the hard way. I wanted a RAID5 setup for the affordable security. It can fix itself while offering some RAID0 benefits. At this point I can add a 4th HDD and try RAID10 and move my data drive to the Marvel controller or abandoned the on board RAID solutions and get a dedicated card for a few hundred dollars. I don't need server level performance of hundreds of MB/S transfers and I thought the on board solution might get me a little performance boost while adding the security of self repair. It's looking like I will continue nightly backups to a USB drive during sessions. Those have never really made me feel all that secure because I've had three external backup drive failures to zero audio drive failures. I'm getting close to dropping the raid concept entirely. 

Cheers