us122 and glitching

[shindigger]

Good day.
Newbie here. Finding tracktion 1 a revelation, have always got nowhere, and i mean nowhere, with any other pc music apps.
Im using an AMD Vaio laptop 2200 processor 256 ram. My 40g hard drive came ready partitioned 50/50. My main drive is rather full.
Im using a tascam us122 and managed to record 16 bars or so across five tracks. The minute i add chorus to the vocals it starts chopping up. There is a "direct monitoring" switch on the tascam and when i slide this across the glitching in playback disappears. But then i dont hear anything thru the cans or monitors.
I read on here that someone tracked with no fx at all and then added them afterwards, im happy to do this, but there must be something ive got wrong.
Is it worth me investing in a pentium4 512ram base set up?
Any tips gratefully appreciated. Tracktion is on the cusp of changing my view of PC music. Ive got a mackie 8 buss under the bed, that i may never need again!!

[haydxn]

when it starts going 'choppy', have a look at the CPU bar. i imagine that the bar itself isn't filling up, but i'd wager that you see a "!" on it. if you do, this is related to hard-disk performance

[darcyb62]

I am using a similar setup and have had similar problems. Depending on the effects you are using you might consider adding a bit more memory, but I think the problem lies more with the Tascam Asio drivers (even though the Asio4all drivers add to the problem).
Try increasing your latency on the US122, you should see the problems do away or atleast diminish. Adding memory will help.
If I need extremely low latency for recording and my project is getting pretty busy, I will freeze all the pre-recorded tracks. This frees up resources and you can drop the latency back down. Once I've done the recording I'll pop the latency back up unfreeze all the channels so I can tune the effects from holistic pespective. Not the ideal workflow but it gets the job done relatively.
WIth the "Direct Monitoring" switch, you're US122 inputs should be routed to your speaker outlets as well as going through the USB bus. For recording this will give you 0 latency bou won't hear the effects being used within Tracktion. I've just gone to an external effects box so I am using the direct monitoring feature much more now.

[shindigger]

when it starts going 'choppy', have a look at the CPU bar. i imagine that the bar itself isn't filling up, but i'd wager that you see a "!" on it. if you do, this is related to hard-disk performance

hi cheers for reply.
the green cpu bar at the bottom jumps from around 0 to 60%, never goes higher.and ive not seen the "!" appear.
ive read on here that i should expect 12 or so fully laden tracks from this setup. which is all i need really.

[Lunch Money]

'fully laden' is so subjective. Sometimes it's not the max load size anyhow, but the speed at which it goes from 0 to say, 60. If it's a maintained 60, the edit will sometimes sort itself out. But jumping to and fro might make it nervous.

In general, though, I don't think it's the edit or the machine. I think it's the US122 which is a notoriously 'crackly' interface at low latency settings. I recommended one to a mate (he hasn't complained yet, thankfully!) but when we were setting it up I couldn't get him comfortably below 8ms of latency. Which is still usable, but not extra-quick like some folks are used to.

Greg

[rpc9943]

also make sure you arent using anything else on that usb bus... you know they work in sets of two i think, try to make sure its just the us122 on there.

ROnC

[Lunch Money]

Especially your mouse.

[rpc9943]

i know i could only imagine how itd screw it up lol

RonC

[darcyb62]

Tascam says a mouse and keyboard should not effect the performance. Although I don't use a USB mouse/keyboard at this point in time but I did for a bit and it didn't seem to cause any problems.

[rpc9943]

well youre not the one with the problem now are you

[darcyb62]

well youre not the one with the problem now are you

what's your point?
The point I am making is that I have pretty much the same config as he does and that the mouse and keyboard shouldn't cause a problem. I don't want him going on a wild goose chase.

[Lunch Money]

I agree. If your mouse is interfering, you'll notice it RIGHT AWAY. It does happen, when the mouse shares an IRQ with your sound card. But if moving your mouse doesn't cause nutzo crazy weirdness, you're fine in that department. A mouse-related problem is usually fairly obvious.

[IIRs]

http://www.mackie.com/support/documents ... Q_no.1.pdf

[djsubject]

I'll bet good money you have an IRQ conflict with something. PC laptops are notorious for having USB conflicts with hardware. I'll bet you have your USB sharing with your video card. read this guide that IIRs posted abouve and see if you have a conflict.

[shindigger]

thanks for your input people. will address these points with vim and vigour. think there may be a little bit of everything goin on here.
was gonna maybe get an onyx desk and a new desktop turbo nuutter system but then found out you cant record the "class leading perkins eq'd preamps" why does it all have to be so fugging HARD?????????????????????
i might just buy two 1604 vlz pros and a fostex d160 one vlz for tracking, the other for mixing. thatll work. WONT IT?????????????????????