Help - I've broken my Sinusoidal!! Dither it up please ?

[metamorphosis]

Okie Dokie.......if you say so man. I'll try it tomorrow when I'm more awake. We'll see if it makes any difference. Thanks!

Be aware:
If winxp was installed when it was turned off, you will need to trawl google to find the instructions for changing cpu-core drivers - otherwise you may experience worse performance.
Cool-
m@t

[metamorphosis]

Hi all-
just to let you know:
PCI latency settings - helped in terms of reducing and eliminating cpu-spikes (THANKS!!!) when scrolling/zooming/moving around graphically in tracktion while playing. Didn't remove limitation of 10 24/96 tracks. Worthwhile tweak for _anyone_-

Traction 2: Didn't change anything, and I've said it before, I'll say it again: The default colour scheme (yes, I know you can change them) is totally bugf*k - if I was a newbie user using it for the first time, it would probably be enough to put me off the app straight away!

Hyperthreading: Enabled or disabled, makes no (positive) difference.

Now - just to re-iterate, I have tried running this stuff on two different HDs (1 10k and one 7k) on two different SATA controllers. The only thing I haven't done is tried a PATA drive/controller, but given that the PCI latency settings make no difference, I fail to see how a PATA controller would eleviate anything. So if there's anyone out there with any new recommendations: I'm totally all-ears
Cheers,
M@t

[edit:] oh, P.S: I tried removing all plugins from tracktion - even though this particular project wasn't using any plugins, at all - that didn't make a difference either.[/edit]

[valley]

Hyperthreading: Enabled or disabled, makes no (positive) difference.

Disable it then. I don't know how true this is anymore, but a number of plugs used to rather dislike HT.

[Madness]

Well seeing as thou your talking 96/24 depth tracks, thats alot of bandwidth!! Now if your actually on a motherboard with a PCI SATA controller (have you confirmed this yet?) that will be running at an meezly 33mhz most likely and the theoretical limit on the buss of that controller would be some where probably around that 10 track mark, or 35 or so 44\16 tracks!! I would definately say this is what your problem is even more so if you also are running an OS on a different drive on the same Bus!!

I have heard there is no point recording in 96\24, 88\24 if you for dithering benifits however my mate only runs 44\24 on his pro-tools rig with great results (ie; commmercial radio)

I would definately try an IDE 7200rpm drive if you can get a loaner, and see how many tracks you can achieve streamed playback!!

[djsubject]

48\24 should be more than enuff!

[Mauvehead]

Heck I still go 44.1/24 or else 44.1/16 and feel like the higher rates are still a bit over-hyped by the recording community. "Garbage in garbage out." I mean, dithering aside, CD's only benefit from so much fidelity. Why is it that some well-produced CD's that are 20 years old can still sound more HI-FI than stuff that is done today at 192kHz or whatever? With the proliferation of modern higher-end gear, the bulk of today's users depend more on their equipment's specs to make things sound good than their own skill and resourcefulness.

[Lunch Money]

True dat. I don't bother going higher than 44.1/16 either. It's not that I don't acknowledge the benefit of 48/24 (for example); but rather, as a hobbyist musician who's not producing a commercial end product, CD-quality resolution is plenty for me. If they give me a record contract I bet we'll be re-recording the whole thing anyhow.

A lot of people want the higher quality for personal reasons, though, even as hobbyists. They want the most accurate record of their work possible, within limitations (such as hard drive space). In my case, the song itself is the record, not the resolution of the recording. Just a personal perspective.

Greg

[Mauvehead]

In my case, the song itself is the record, not the resolution of the recording. Just a personal perspective.

Exactly!

[Mauvehead]

Stupid question perhaps........
As mentioned earlier I have a Toshiba laptop with an internal 5400 HD. Are there any sort of latency settings for the hard drive itself that I can beef up? Perhaps the bottlenecking that I am experiencing has more to do with some HD controller setting as opposed to the fact that it is a 5400. Yes? No?

[Madness]

Stupid question perhaps........
As mentioned earlier I have a Toshiba laptop with an internal 5400 HD. Are there any sort of latency settings for the hard drive itself that I can beef up? Perhaps the bottlenecking that I am experiencing has more to do with some HD controller setting as opposed to the fact that it is a 5400. Yes? No?

Nope, your HDD would be IDE and as such its controller would be wired to the SouthBridge of your motherboard. It would be getting as much bandwidth as your CPU can throw at it. Your bottle neck would be your Hard Disk, unfortunately there isn't much you can do to tweak HardDisks besides insure its running in UDMA mode. Your most likely to benifit from a new 7200rpm 16mb cache laptop drive.

[metamorphosis]

Well seeing as thou your talking 96/24 depth tracks, thats alot of bandwidth!! Now if your actually on a motherboard with a PCI SATA controller (have you confirmed this yet?) that will be running at an meezly 33mhz most likely and the theoretical limit on the buss of that controller would be some where probably around that 10 track mark, or 35 or so 44\16 tracks!! I would definately say this is what your problem is even more so if you also are running an OS on a different drive on the same Bus!!

Bandwidth isn't a problem, I would've thought-
I'm not running anything off the pci bus-
both HDD controllers are integrated into the motherboard-
one is 'pure' sata (0% cpu usage), one is 'southbridge-converter' sata (uses cpu for some operations, but this doesn't have an impact on the situation at hand- as noted earlier).
And therefore the 33mhz limit doesn't apply-
also, the HD with the OS is on a different controller to the 'data' drive- so no conflict in terms of bus usage, there...

I have heard there is no point recording in 96\24, 88\24 if you for dithering benifits however my mate only runs 44\24 on his pro-tools rig with great results (ie; commmercial radio)

Sorry, I can hear the difference-
it's noticable to me- It's not as noticable as going from 44k->48k (that's quite a large aural perceptual difference) but 44-96 it is most definately there. Do a simple test-
rig up a midi channel running to an external keyboard/synth- have a midi pattern playing the same notes, and run the audio out into your d/a converter-
record once at 44k, then a second time at 96k-
using a ***decent*** dithering algorithm (not talking ozone, goldwave, soundforge or anything else here - I'm talking cool edit/audition-level non-realtime dithering quality, here) dither the result down to 44k.
Listen to both on decent headphones or excellent speakers, in a reasonably goodish (not too noisy) environ (randomly using shuffle in an audio player of some sort - preferably one that doesn't distort the signal by using directsound (such as winamp 2.9 or any asio engine) - if you can't hear the difference... well- it's there, anyway.

I would definately try an IDE 7200rpm drive if you can get a loaner, and see how many tracks you can achieve streamed playback!!

Won't worry about that idea, for reaons listed in my final post- but cheers anyway, dude-
Matt

[metamorphosis]

Heck I still go 44.1/24 or else 44.1/16 and feel like the higher rates are still a bit over-hyped by the recording community. "Garbage in garbage out." I mean, dithering aside, CD's only benefit from so much fidelity. Why is it that some well-produced CD's that are 20 years old can still sound more HI-FI than stuff that is done today at 192kHz or whatever? With the proliferation of modern higher-end gear, the bulk of today's users depend more on their equipment's specs to make things sound good than their own skill and resourcefulness.

I agree with you-
however you forget that most of those old recordings are done on tape, which has a much higher res than cd- and every worthwhile audio engineer I've talked to or read about says the same thing-
when you work at the higher res, then use decent dithering to get down to cd-level, you do lose something- but nowhere near as much as if you record 16/44/48 the whole way.
The whole idea of 88k being better for dithering down to 44k is mathematically bollix, if you know anything about sample-theory (and, I do). Having a high res which happens to be the exact double of the low res does not equate to a better dithered signal - it means that it's less mathematically complex to make decisions- what it *doesn't* mean is: that those decisions will ensure better response-
having said that, I very much doubt that anyone will be able to hear the difference between a 88k/96k signal, so 88k is probably fine for higher-end recordings-

And by the way, I totally agree with the garbage I/O statement. It's just that you can't polish a turd (as my dad always says) - but if you get real gold - you can try and make it as shiny as you like -
it's just that gold is getting rarer and rarer...

[metamorphosis]

P.S another test you can do is the following-
get a mix, and export it at 24/96, and at 16/44. Then run it through the same mastering software with the same mastering settings (e.g ozone, waves, t-racks). Make sure you're using all the features (just compression/limiting alone won't suffice for you to hear the difference in this test)- then dither the 24bit signal as per instructions above - if you can't hear the difference in the randomly played results - I'd be very surprised-
Cheers everyone,
m@

[metamorphosis]

Lastly, I would like to make something absolutely -clear- to everyone:
THIS IS A ""Tracktion-SPECIFIC"" PROBLEM.
I can run 28 of the same tracks in cubase sx 2, all at once and the cpu/disk bars barely go up at all - the disk bar peaks at one quarter usage!
Ditto in other DAWs.
Tracktion is the only one which has some problems with going over 10 24/96 tracks, and this is either an inherent flaw, or an incompatibility between my system and the way tracktion does disk-buffering. The problem is not resolved by updates or by changing shit on my machine-
if anyone from mackie sees this - I'd love for someone to fix it - because I ain't buying v2 until I can run 20+ 24-96k tracks without stuttering...
Goodbye all-
m@

[Mauvehead]

Nope, your HDD would be IDE and as such its controller would be wired to the SouthBridge of your motherboard. It would be getting as much bandwidth as your CPU can throw at it. Your bottle neck would be your Hard Disk, unfortunately there isn't much you can do to tweak HardDisks besides insure its running in UDMA mode. Your most likely to benifit from a new 7200rpm 16mb cache laptop drive.

One more stupid question: the higher the # of the HD's cache the better, right? How about seek time stats? Granted I could look all of this up on some online retailer's site, but it seems simpler to ask such things here. Understanding PC hardware has never been my strong point. Programs I can relate to, but hardware settings have always been sticky. Thanks!