My computer is freaking out! Please help meeeeee

[scraggs]

Hi all,

I posted this on Nika's forum over at PSW, so apologies if anyone's reading it twice, but i'm freakin' dying over here and really need some help...

I have a P3, 450, win98, a delta1010, running Wavelab 3.0. It's run just fine for a few years now. Lately, when i record, sometimes this happens:

http://www.prod4ever.com/rowdelicate/totalshit.mp3

It's really frightfully bad. The clipping seems to fade out with the signal, but i normalized a quiet section and it's still there. This has happened a few times now, and it doesn't happen every time i try and record. It's like, i'll do a take and it will sound fine, i'll do another take immediately after and it will be @#$%^.

Has anyone heard this kind of thing before and have any ideas? I've never encountered this sort of thing and am basically clueless as to what is causing it. I can go on in much greater detail about this if that would be helpful, but i figured i'd post the link first and see if anyone could say "oh, that's the sound of the clock dying" or whatever.

Thanks!

-scott

[dingo]

Yeah, go into detail about your setup. I take it the problem persists regardless of instrument, mic, pre or di, and cables? Anything been changed recently?

[scraggs]

Hey Dingo,

Yeah the problem persists (intermittently) regardless of pre, cable, di, whatev. it's not particular to any certain inputs either, it's happened on analog 1+2, 3+4, and the digital in as well. always the same sound.

The Delta went back to Maudio a month ago. Two of my input jacks were cracked and it was behaving strangely when i tried transferring drum tracks from my otari 8 track into cubase. there would be this weird fuzzy distortion on certain tracks. and it was tough to predict which tracks would have the problem, it seemed to always vary. anyway, that was a completely different problem than this, but this also started happening before i sent the delta back. when i got the delta back, i transferred some drums into cubase, and everything was perfect, all 8 tracks were spot on, no glitches, nothing. alright. so i assumed everything was ok. i normally track and mix in wavelab, so i returned to that. and my bandmate and i have been trying to record the stupid guitar part for this one song like four times now!! and every time we do, it's like one take will sound fine, the next has this weird clipping sound. i thought maybe it was some weird electrical issue...the cpu is out in the other room, it was just plugged into the wall outlet, so i moved the power cable for it to my furman power conditioner, thinking that might help. the power supply for the delta is on the furman too. no luck, problem is still there. i thought maybe it was an IRQ issue, so i moved those around, and no luck with that either....i'm currently defragging the audio drive. man it takes forever....

the only changes i've made to my computer recently are adding the fish fillets plugs, some of the mda plugs, and some tabla samples for use in reason. none of those would be causing this would they?

someone on the cubase forums said it sounded like there was a clock pulse mixed in with the audio stream, which is what it sounds like to me too...but...uh..how the hell does that happen? i'm stumped over here.

thanks a bunch!

-scott

[dingo]

Nah, I doubt the plugs would cause the problem you're having, and the samples definitely wouldn't. If you still have cubase installed, do you have the same problem there? Since you had problems with your delta before, have you talked with m-audio techs to see what they could come up with? That'd be the next easiest step. If they have no idea and the problem exists with different apps, next thing I'd do is install the delta in a different system. If the problem follows it, then I'd suspect there's something not right about the delta.

[scraggs]

I couldn't imagine that the plugs/samples were causing it, but that's the only thing that's changed....

I mentioned this problem to one of the m audio guys i talked to, he was like "yeah...crackles and pops...". uh, no. much much worse. "reinstall the drivers...". i haven't had the best time with their tech support. one guy was really patient and friendly but...i have more faith in folks here

i'll try recording into cubase and see what happens. i guess i'm assuming it's a problem with the card, but i s'pose it could be wavelab freaking out for some reason. although it's been totally solid every day for 3 years now...

thanks again,
-scott

[dingo]

Hey, good luck with it, and let us know what you find.

[scraggs]

So I defragged the audio drive the other night and did some tests today. I started in Wavelab, in the same song where the problem has been happening, and recorded different takes of a little guitar loop off my line 6 into input 1 on the delta. The first five takes were fine, 6 and 7 had the clipping, 8 was fine. Then I opened a new file in cubase, and recorded the same thing to 8 tracks in succession. Using the same input as before. They were all fine. Next I tried protools free, they were all fine too. "hhhhmmm" i said. So I opened an empty audio montage in wavelab, and recorded 8 tracks there. All fine.

The only conclusion I can draw is this: the song i was working on in wavelab has lots of tracks (about 40) and lots of edits (switching back and forth between a couple different drum takes). Could this be causing wavelab to get weird on recording? It's strange because all the songs in my current project have this kind of track count and editing density, I had to crank up the playback buffers awhile ago to get it to play without stuttering, but I've never had a problem recording before. So why now? And why not all the time? anyway, things are set in wavelab as follows:

playback buffer#13
size: 26624

recording buffer#6
size:16384

disc block buffer size 144k

on the delta the DMA buffer is 1056 samples....

i s'pose i should try cranking up the recording buffers in wavelab...

Thoughts? Anyone? Reinstall wavelab? reinstall everything? go back to the simpler days of recording to the 8 track?

cheers,
-scott