Dropouts?

What causes dropouts? I've never had this before and the past two days I keep getthing a "Dropout" message. This is probably the biggest project I have had in respect of tracks (about 20 tracks). What should I do or watch out for so I don't inadvertently ruin the project. It did crash once yesterday when I was trying to insert Jamstix. And I did get a memory error at one point, so I rebooted because I hadn't restarted my computer for a long time (bad habit).

Thanks.

Annette

20 tracks???? what are you writing...a symphony? (sic)

All you should ever need is 4 tracks....the Beatles recorded Sgt Pepper on a 4 track reel to reel...

(8D)

I'm not actually mixing yet. I still recording, so my latency is set at 8 ms. What should I increase it to for mixing?

Yes, 20 tracks is pretty excessive, but I have a lot of vocal tracks because I had to do it on 3 different tracks for the harmony and I have a few takes. I don't want to delete them until I'm sure which ones should go. I'm still under 20% of CPU usuage. I have 3 gigs of RAM, so I was surprised at the dropout. Although I probably had other things running. I made sure to close everything was closed today and it still happened. What is it or causes it?

Annette

Just 1 synth actually - TTS. I did have Jamstix at one time but I deleted it because, well it wasn't working right, and the ones I could get, I preferred the midi drums from Band in a Box. I think I just have to many rough tracks. It's time to pick the best tracks and delete the rest!

I don't think the hard drive has ever been defragged. I haven't had the computer that long, but I have a TON of stuff on it. I may have to run that tonight.

Thanks.

Annette

If you fast forward to the end, where does it stop? Maybe you have a stray note way way down there, at the end. I did that once while editing MIDI, misentered the note start time as 1000:03:478 (or something like that) instead of 100:03:478, resulting in a 1000-measure song!!! Something to check.
I bounced a TTS-1 track yesterday, and the song didn't stop at the known end. So I stopped it, rewound it and fast forwarded it to the end and it was fixed. Don't know how that happened.

If no one else can help, set up a loop so it always stops at the end of the loop. When you complete the song and bounce to 1 stereo track, that also should fix it.

I don't remeber what the loop options are, but you'll probably have to hit 'stop' anyway, but at least it won't keep playing for eternity if you go get some coffee.