Hey all,
 
I do live multi-track recording and, in the past, that had always been through dedicated hardware (HD24, Fostex etc) but after the venue I was based at stopped doing live music, I opted to go down the laptop route.
 
This has been a bit of a nightmare by comparison. I've recently upgraded the hard drive twice; First to a standard 7,200rpm HDD and then to an SSD. The HDD was a bit hopeful, but at £25, it wasn't a major outlay compared to say a Velociraptor, but when that was definately not going to manage 16 tracks of 96/24 at once, I went down the SSD route thinking I'd go as good as I could scrape the cash together for.
 
But...
 
That's turning out to be even worst! I can barely manage 30secs of recording before either the audio engine stops, or I get a message suggesting the SSD has run out of space! There's only Vista and Sonar on it, 60Gb free, so I'm completely lost on what's going wrong
 
I've got RAM on the way (as it's currently 3Gb and not running in dual channel mode) but I'm begining to wonder if that will make any difference, considering the out of space angle.
 
Any ideas?
 
Laptop Spec:
 
AMD dual core 2.2Ghz
3Gb DDR2 6400 (800) soon to be changed to 8Gb
Tascam US-1641 16 channel 96/24 USB interface
Win Vista Home Premium 64bit
 
Everything up to date, running in performance mode.

why are you needing to run at 96kHz?

and 60G is not much for a recording of your magnitude using 96kHz!  let's look at the file sizes you're creating:

Bit Depth Sample Rate Bit Rate File size of a three minute song
16 44,100 = 705600 bit/sec/mono track * 16 simultaneous tracks = 11.29Mbit/sec * 180sec = 2.03GB file space.
16 48,000 =768000bit/sec/mono track * 16 tracks = 12.29Mbit/sec * 180sec = 2.21GB
24 96,000 = 2.3Mbit/sec/track * 16 tracks * 180sec = 6.64GB file space

if you are recording for 6 minutes straight (or 2-3 minute songs), that would be 13.28GB file space
12min straight or 4-3 minutes songs = 26.6GB file space.

with windows and Sonar on your drive you'd fill up your hard drive in about 12 minutes probably.

that's just the problem with the hard drive.  depending on what latency you have your soundcard set to, dropout could easily occur in 30secs trying to record at 96k for 16 simultaneous tracks.  especially with the US-1641.  sorry, but my opinon of tascam's drivers are quite low.  their drivers are not the most efficient.

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.

+1 to Beagle's comment. No need to run at 96KHz. You also should get more memory and disk space. That should do the trick. 

Should be easy to test, just set it to record overnight and see what you have in the morning. 

Beagle


why are you needing to run at 96kHz?

and 60G is not much for a recording of your magnitude using 96kHz!  let's look at the file sizes you're creating:

Bit Depth Sample Rate Bit Rate File size of a three minute song
16 44,100 = 705600 bit/sec/mono track * 16 simultaneous tracks = 11.29Mbit/sec * 180sec = 2.03GB file space.
16 48,000 =768000bit/sec/mono track * 16 tracks = 12.29Mbit/sec * 180sec = 2.21GB
24 96,000 = 2.3Mbit/sec/track * 16 tracks * 180sec = 6.64GB file space

if you are recording for 6 minutes straight (or 2-3 minute songs), that would be 13.28GB file space
12min straight or 4-3 minutes songs = 26.6GB file space.

with windows and Sonar on your drive you'd fill up your hard drive in about 12 minutes probably.

that's just the problem with the hard drive.  depending on what latency you have your soundcard set to, dropout could easily occur in 30secs trying to record at 96k for 16 simultaneous tracks.  especially with the US-1641.  sorry, but my opinon of tascam's drivers are quite low.  their drivers are not the most efficient.

I'm not sure on those calculations, having got around 8.5Gb per 30min session for 16trks previously. I also do things at home at 96 and don't eat up space at that rate. Infact, on the home setup, I've nearly 2/3 less remaining on the audio drive as what is left on the laptop one. As it was potentially a real issue, I did all the sums before paying out for the SSD, but didn't conclude anything close to your figures.
 
It's a work thing and I need to at least be able to do 30/45min sessions at 96 because that's what's offered by others. It's a selling point as much as anything else. 48 hadn't yielded better results, with the same capacity error coming up, so figured something else is going on with that.
 
The laptop originally had Vista 32, but on a 5400RPM HDD, which was pointless, but I had tried an old Raptor I had mounted in an external USB case and that did all 16 at 96 without a glitch. Trouble was, I needed to cut down as much as possible for carting the whole thing around town, hence upgrading the internal drive. I've only Vista 64 available, so it was going to be that and I had always thought that was going to require more RAM, but with the error being about capacity...
 
Sorry for the late reply, just came to and realised I'd missed out on the 8Gb of RAM I was likely to get on eBay

[]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.

I'll check that out. The rig is in storage at a studio at the moment, so won't get to try it just yet.

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

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

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. 

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.

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. 

It's more a case of being able to offer 96/24 to those that wanted it, to have that option alongside others offering that sample rate. There really is no reason why it shouldn't be doable too - as previously mentioned, I had managed 16trks of 96/24 in it's older 32Bit Vista + raptor external drive.
 
The capacity thing just doesn't add up for me - the SSD has 60Gb sat there doing nothing, certainly more than enough to manage more than 30secs of recording.
 
The laptop has been dedicated fot this task. I had to sell other recording gear, like the HD24, in order to get this rig together and is in a far cleaner state than it was when I'd been successful with it as mentioned above.
I'll look to get the RAM issue sorted, get it into dual-channel mode and see if that turns the tables. I had noted that with 3Gb of RAM, on a 64bit system, that there was very little in the way of free memory, very quickly. But something bugs me that won't sort out the capacity error(?)