KVR Audio

ford442 · Post by **ford442** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:59 pm

i am going to have company soon and be busy until tonight.. but, i am still up for helping.. it is true that you may want to re-evaluate your sample-related issues..

USB 2.0 has a bandwidth of 400 megabits = 50 megabytes per second - spindle hard drives rarely go above 40 megabytes at maximum efficiency, so it can stream audio just as well as firewire or eSATA in this case.. you might lose a tiny fraction of a second in response time as opposed to internal or eSATA, but not enough to ever interfere with audio i think..

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:02 pm

I do know that my RAM does get used up very quickly, and that there's also a lot of wired virtual RAM...still the problem persists, even when there is definitely some RAM left over. I think that something is chugging, because sometimes the audio crashes for a whole minute because it's loading a new instrument/samples. I'm not sure, but in any case, I DO need an external Hard drive, because I have about 65GB left after installing another sample library. Before, I had about 98GB.

Thanks for all of your help. I don't mind if this search waits a day, so hopefully it will all be solved eventually.

ford442 · Post by **ford442** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:10 pm

cool.. i will be here tonight/tomorrow..

if i were to load a sample bank whilst playing in real-time i would experience the same thing you are describing - it is best to load all samples/plug-ins that you want to use when you first load your project.. just to be sure that we are on the same page..

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:13 pm

Oh, they're all loaded, but the sound crashes and stutters when the CUbase program first attempts to play the samples. It's like the hard drive isn't recalling the samples fast enough. Maybe it's the OS that's helping to cause problems. I already made sure that the hard drive never sleeps, but I can't exactly trust Apple 100%. In any case, I need some sort of external hard drive very soon, no matter what causes my problem.

Keep in touch.

ford442 · Post by **ford442** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:27 pm

your sample player should be loading samples into RAM.. there should never be a time when you press a note and it has to load the note from hd - i think there may be a different problem at work.. unless you are trying to start playing before the samples have been fully loaded? that can happen with any sample based instrument - they need sometimes minutes before they are fully loaded..

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:13 pm

Hmm, my problem only shows unusual spikes in the ASIO meter that coincide with the program locking up and sound abruptly stopping even though the song is playing. Well, I know that at one point, the disk musty be put under strain because some instruments start dropping notes.

and every time I stop playing the song, it locks up, and displays the rainbow beachball from Mac OSX. Sometimes when I move notes or add some it locks up. I guess my system isn't good enough. Well, I need a new hard drive for other reasons, so if it doesn't improve anything, then I guess I don't have much else to do. Hope to win a Mac Pro in a contest?

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:49 pm

Here's a massive, but important bump:

I'm considering these two hard drives, and I'm hoping that some power users will share their opinions on the products:

GLYPH GPT50 1TB

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GPT50-1TB/

OWC MERCURY ELITE PRO 1 TB

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20 ... Q7S1TB32M/

I'm looking for something that is very durable and lasts a long time. It also must be quiet, since I will be using the drive for sample streaming.

GLYPH is also releasing an external SSD drive soon; I am not going to purchase it, as I doubt it will be in my price-range. Still, I'm interested.

In any case, would anyone be able to corroborate the quality/lack of quality of the two products?

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO IS THE CAHCE SIZE: OWC 64mb, GLYPH 32mb. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR ME?

Thank you everyone!

ford442 · Post by **ford442** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:53 pm

64mb of cache generally means a faster drive - but, the faster you go, the louder the drive will be overall.. i just had to replace a Caviar Black in my tv pc with a Caviar Green - now the sound level is non-existent..

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 9:55 pm

Ah I see... well answer me this: If I ever find a better internal drive than the one placed inside of the enclosure, can I remove the original hard disk that was there in the first place?

Anyway, the main question is, would anyone be able to offer his opinion on these two drives, assuming that he knows about them or hard drives in general?

ford442 · Post by **ford442** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 10:30 pm

you would need to find out exactly what drives are inside these enclosures in order to compare - yes, you could later swap out the drive inside..

i have learned that hard drives can go up to 100mb/sec, so you are correct that USB might be a bottleneck for really fast drives..

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 10:52 pm

Yes, it's too bad that my macbook pro doesn't support eSATA, but I'll go with fw800.

My plan was to either go with one of the aforementioned hard drive/enclosure bundles, or to get the WD caviar black and an unknown enclosure.

Both hard drives seem to contain Seagate drives (not very good?)

1.0TB* Seagate Barracuda Hard Disk Drive ---> OWC

The Glyphs use Seagate too, but I'm not sure which. The 1TB has a 32mb Seagate while the OWC has a 64mb cache.

ford442 · Post by **ford442** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 11:14 pm

i will caution you - i am on my second Black drive and they are pretty loud at times - you might want to go with the Blue or even Green for a music drive..

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Wed Apr 11, 2012 11:15 pm

I think I'm going with either the Glyph or the OWC, so that is another matter entirely. Does anyone have any experience with either of them?

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Thu Apr 12, 2012 1:07 pm

Where should I go from here? Does anyone have any experience with these hard drives?

synchronizer · Post by **synchronizer** » Thu Apr 12, 2012 5:55 pm

Laptop Hard drive---internal/external? cache size? priorities discussion