Most stable OSX DAW for mobile recording ?

[matyas]

Originally Posted by Don S

Why not use bootcamp? I use a MBP and XP w/Sequoia and it's pretty solid.

Sure it's solid - I've run Sam on Bootcamp myself, but some people prefer Mac OS. I use Windows as needed, and I'm no fanboy (and don't want to start a flamewar), but I'd rather stick to one OS if possible, and in an ideal world, that would be Mac OS X.

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Originally Posted by LX3

Oh sorry, you're absolutely right, now I'm home and listening on something better than a laptop, it's clearly not an earth thing. My bad.

Yeah, that's pretty disappointing. FWIW, I'm finding Nuendo to be the most reliable and useable software for recording with Mac laptops.

Choice of interface (and the ability of the interface manufacturer to write a decent driver) is a big factor as well.

Hi LX3,

I've now uploaded a more obvious example and edited my post to show you weren't commenting on the new file : )

I could'nt agree more about your driver comment. The Lightbridge is great for its small footprint and bus powering... but I don't think MAudio have written a new driver for a couple of years... the same driver keeps getting "qualified" for new OS's.

[Adebar]

Originally Posted by jglamar

Hands down the most bombproof platform for recording on location is MIO Console. Only works with Metric Halo gear though. Outside of that, I can give a +1 to recording on-location with DP. It never crashed for me.

Yes, the recording panel in the MIO Console is rock solid. Even recording 32 channels at 24/96 with 2 ULN-8 is stable together with a MacBookPro.

And the preamps and converters of the ULN-8 are great too and even win if it is powere by the ZZ2416 power supply from Michael Zaehl.

[RobAnderson]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all your input.

I went with a defragged, fresh install of Pro Tools 9.0.2 and OSX 10.6.6 in the end.

3 hour show... and I had a weird , buffer, distortion thing happen 7 times.

I tried changing the Disk Cache, Buffer Settings etc for the second half but still had the same problem.
I was recording a maximum of 29 tracks split across 2 FW 400 drives using the PCI Express buss and was getting a disk access load of 10% and a CPU load of 4%.

It didn't drop out of record but it put this noise across all tracks for about 2 to 3 seconds at a time.
The noise is not the same for all tracks, but equally horrible.

I stress tested the setup the night before for 6 hours but as I was recording blank the problem didn't show up (or I didn't look hard enough !)

Thank god for the HD 24, worked like a charm... and was able to edit the needed parts no problem.

I'd definitely go with for boom recorder next time if it had a decent mixer. Instead I'm going to try PT 7.3.1 like -therecordinghouse- says, and I'll give Reaper a go...

I'll stress test both with non blank tracks and report back my findings.

I've posted an example of the distortion thing I was getting incase anybody else recognises it, and can identify the problem.

Nice one,

Al

For a while I forswore ever using a laptop DAW for a live event EVER again - there are simply too many "moving parts" in such a scenario.

One of the biggest causes of errors such as those you describe are often attributed to not disabling all of the networking cards and wireless communications (like Bluetooth). You seem pretty sophisticated, so I assume this was taken care of.

Also, as you no doubt already know, disable any and all "automatic update" searches in any and all programs on your machine.

The other thing I would say is that you may have over-complicated the FW HDD setup - recording simultaneously to multiple drives may be another possible culprit. FW should be able to handle the bandwidth of that many tracks to a single drive, even if your interface (Lightbridge?) is daisy-chained.

Then there are your Playback engine settings in ProTools itself - making sure you are not connecting through "Aggregate Playback Device" - keep it on 3 processors (assuming you have 4) and less than 85% (apparently having "error suppression" enabled requires you to reserve less processing power for PT itself), and setting for the buffer of 1024 samples

I finally just managed to nurse PT 9 through an entire concert without incident this past Saturday. But as you say, thank God for an HD24...

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Originally Posted by RobAnderson

The other thing I would say is that you may have over-complicated the FW HDD setup - recording simultaneously to multiple drives may be another possible culprit. FW should be able to handle the bandwidth of that many tracks to a single drive....

Hi Rob,

Thanks for that, you may be onto something there.

For a large chunk of the rehearsal I was running to just the one drive, then got cold feet and split across 2 for the remainder.

This "one drive" - chunk was about an 1h15 long and there were no problems.

The first occurence of the "freak out" happened about the same time into the first half... so I guess there's no way of being absolutely sure this was the cause.