Digital performer help!!!!

[Manny Grossman]

I am currently recording the final guitar overdubs to an album, using a mac g3 and DP2.7. This setup has been very stable until this point, but last night I encountered a problem which made it unable to record these final tracks. Each song is up to about 22-23 tracks. When trying to record any signal last night, everything being sent to the computer sounded as though there was distortion all over it. My meters on my preamps, the 2408 analog ins and the audio monitor were all within normal limits and never did any signal trigger the red clip light, but everything had this digital distortion haze all over it. My latency was set to 1024 and my cue mix output was down to -12, so I have no idea what is causing this problem. I tried swapping mikes, cables, amps, guitars, preamps and the problem still ocurred. Any help would be extremely helpful. Thanks!!!!!!!!

[3rdpath]

though i've never had this problem, my old g3 did some weird stuff when i maxed it out...

you might have too high of a track count( or plugs)...did you try opening a new project and recording a track by itself just to see if you could get any clean audio into the computer? your buffer setting of 1024 seems reasonable so that shouldn't be a problem. what type of hard drives are you running? with a g3 you really need some 10k cheetahs to keep the track count up.

if you can get clean audio into a new project file then you may have to track the guitars into a session where the only other audio track is a stereo rough guide mix of the project. not an optimum setup but it may get you over the hump.

its been awhile since i changed the settings on my 2408, but maybe you can set your main inputs to the headphone output so you can at least monitor the converted signal to see if the a/d is the culprit. doesn't sound like a clock issue but i'd check it anyway.

btw, did you try any other sources( a keyboard for example) to see if they were also distorted? if your guitars are active the battery might be dying...i know this sounds stupid but surely i'm not the only person in the world who's taken their guitar to their tech only to be told it was the battery....

[Manny Grossman]

After raising the buffer settings, the problem went away. Thanks for the tips though!!

[alphajerk]

i know this might be an idiotic question but i didnt read anything about it in your original post, but are you using a second hard drive for your audio? if so, what and how connected?

[Manny Grossman]

Only one drive

[alphajerk]

there is your problem. im suprised you got that many tracks.

you really need to fully rebuild your machine now. reinstall OS9.2.2/DP2.7 AFTER taking all your information off the drive and backing it up. go buy a $200 80GB DMA drive [or were G3's still scsi? if so, get a PCI-DMA controller with the drive] and use the second drive SOLELY or your audio/project information. nothing should be on the system driver except you OS and applications.