Struggling to do live multi-track recording :-(

[]tarsier


First, run the DPC latency checker. If it spikes in the red, then that might be the answer right there. If it's in the red, then you need to figure out why. Wireless drivers are frequently the problem.

Do you have an external hard drive you can try recording to? Like a large USB drive?  As a test, try that and see if Sonar still drops out. If it does, then it's not necessarily the hard drive. It might be the laptop or the Tascam driver.

Also, use a large sound device buffer size, and perhaps bump up your disk buffers. I forget where it is exactly in Sonar 8, but try setting them to 1024.

Beagle

davii


Just to add, this is the info I was using to calculate capacity:

http://www.tweakheadz.com/16_vs_24_bit_audio.htm

Ok, maybe I miscalculated.  but nearly 800MB for a 3 minute recording is still a lot of drive space.
 
when you say you need to record at 96kHz because that's what others offer, I'm not sure I'd use that as criteria myself, but it's your business to run, not mine.
 
so your latency is probably set too high to be able to do 16 simlutaneous tracks at 96kHz rate.  increase your latency buffers and you might be able to record that many tracks.

Cactus Music


I record live with the Tascam us1641 , but I use 44.1/24.  I'm using a 2004 Acer Travelmate. 1.7 Mhz, It has 2 Gigs RAM and a 200Gig 7200RPM drive. I only use it for live recording and it has never failed me yet ( knock on wood) I practice regular housekeeping and delet everything ( backed up 2x)  not currently being used.
I also recommend the Latency meter
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

With Laptops its usually the battery management and wireless networks that cause trouble. I also nuke the onboard audio card 100%. Only Sonar and Wavelab are installed. Laptops are cheaper than those digital multi tracks so why not dedicate one to the task. 

Beagle


no worries - yes, it should be able to do 96k.

but tascam has never been top on my list of DAW hardware to buy because of their drivers.  their drivers tend to be "hit and miss" and may or may not work on any given system.  I've yet to see a real correlation narrowed down as to what might be the common denomenator other than their poor drivers.  I had high hopes that their drivers would be better for the new units like you have, but so far I still am seeing problems on the forums with some of them and some of them work fine.  status quo for Tascam.

so even the message you're seeing is about the disk drive being full, if you think that's not happening, then I might at least try the higher latency buffers and see what happens.  it can't hurt to try that.

Cactus Music


Seems odd that these customers demand 96/24 when in the end they will post it on the net as a 128kbps MP3. Very, very few home stereo system these days could distinguish between a file at 44.1/ 16 and anything higher. But I do understand your issue with the storage. There's something not working right.
Beagle is correct regarding iffy results with Tascam drivers. Mine works great with my laptop but will not work with MIDI and soft synths on my much more up to date desktop. It's a bargan for the having 16 inputs but it's not what I would buy again if I was involved in serious recording. I'm afraid that caliber of gear still costs big money.

Scoobie

davii
 
I've got 8Gb of RAM arriving in a few days, then I'll look to heading back to the studio to see how much of an impact that has. 
 

Ram has absolutely nothing to do with recording live audio.   Spend your money on something eles.
No need to record at 96K, it's just a wast of space on your harddrive.
 
Love my HD24, it fits in my rack with all my outboard gear !
 
Tim

wintaper


Hate to say - your laptop is old and you are exceeding its capabilities. you can remain in denial or step it down to something your laptop can handle. Or you can keep spending money chasing the big white whale.

Oh, and please enlighten us to the exotic audio equipment your live gig uses that merits 96kHz sample rate.