ben m
Joined: 15 Sep 2002
Posts: 337
Location: UK |
| Welcome to the Computer Music Forum! |
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Hi Guys and Girls,
Welcome to the Computer Music Forum at www.audiocourses.com
More and more of us are using PCs at the centre of our home studios, and many professional facilities are now opting for PC's over the previously industry standard Apple Macs or Atari STs. For less than a grand many of us can have power at our fingertips that engineers/producers 10 years ago could only dream of!
This forum will cover all aspects of PC based Computer Music production, from software choices to hardware problems. plug-ins to sample rates, IDE to DMA and son on!. If you have any kind of PC music related question, then post it here and we'll strive to help you!
As well as being an information resource, this forum will also be a friendly community of users who can all offer advice, help and information as well as receiving it from other forum members.
Over time, expect a series of PC Music FAQs to be posted on this forum covering such topics as building a PC for audio and optimising your current PC for audio use. If you have any ideas or suggestions for FAQs you would like to see on the site, please don't hesitate to email Chris or myself.
Enjoy, learn and share! 
ben m
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ben@audiocourses.com |
Mon Sep 16, 2002 10:45 pm |
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Will.W
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 101
Location: NOTinfrontofcRuN |
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Hi Ben,
This new forum sounds great.
I am still having some problems with my PC! The latest problem is with a new song . Everytime I save(Ctrl+s or File save as...)the computer makes a weird, almost 'tape ffw with head engaged' type sound. This lasts ,intermittently for 2-3 secs.The egg timer does not appear but the song is saved.Very weird?
On a more positive note I have cured my computer of nasty digital clicks during playback.For many years I thought buffer size and latency could be cured in Cubase-audio system window .I have spent many hours in this window to no avail. I have just increased the latency/buffer size on my soundcard(click on icon on bottom right of screen) and playback is better than ever!! I realise I will need to reduce the latency again when recording. I am however confused. Do cubase and my hammerfall card have their own separate latencies/buffer sizes or do they share them?
Also, why is it not possible to run software such as cubase/logic etc and connect to the internet at the same time?  I recently did this and the computer crashed.
Will |
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Mon May 12, 2003 9:48 pm |
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cRuNcHiE
Tape Op
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 23
Location: behind you! |
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hey will,
the weird noise you are getting is just the hard-disk whirring away as it saves the song files to disk.
This is normal because the files are most likely quite big... if they aren't though and its making that noise then there may be a problem.
Does the computer seem to freeze up/go very sluggish as its saving by any chance? If it does and you are using IDE Hard-Disks,then it sounds like they are running in PIO mode which is very cpu intensive (ie it makes the cpu do alot more work than it needs to)
To sort that out, you need to make sure the drives are running in DMA/UDMA mode....
If you're on Win98/ME then if i remember correctly, goto Device Manager ( Right-Click on my computer, then goto Properties)
Then goto Device Manager, Disk Drives, and goto the properties of each of your hard-disks.
In the properties there 'should' be a few tick boxes, one of them being DMA, tick it if it isnt already, then press OK and reboot.
If you're on Win NT/2000/XP then goto the device manager again, but instead of going to the disk drives section,goto IDE
ATA/ATAPI controllers, then the Primary and Secondary IDE controllers properties.
In Advanced Properties they should say 'Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA' If not, use the drop-down box to change it to DMA.
hope that helps..
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cheers
cRuNcHiE
Funkybands test site now ONLINE
http://www.funkybands.co.uk |
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Mon May 12, 2003 11:39 pm |
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Will.W
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 101
Location: NOTinfrontofcRuN |
Thanks Crunchie.
The DMA setting was correct. I was running about 5 tracks of audio for 3.5min.Would this be enough to cause those symptoms? |
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Tue May 13, 2003 11:02 pm |
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cRuNcHiE
Tape Op
Joined: 03 Oct 2002
Posts: 23
Location: behind you! |
Yeah that sounds about right, thats a fair amount of data that it will be saving.
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cheers
cRuNcHiE
Funkybands test site now ONLINE
http://www.funkybands.co.uk |
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Wed May 14, 2003 10:28 pm |
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ben m
Joined: 15 Sep 2002
Posts: 337
Location: UK |
| Dskbench |
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Will,
as a sidenote there is a small application called dskbench which runs a test on your PCs hard drive that simulates multi-track audio recording. This software will display all the different disk buffer settings and how many tracks it will alow you to run simultaneously as well as any CPU overhead - this information can then be used to set the optimal disk buffer size within your sequencer.
It can be found here;
http://www.sesa.es/us/dskbench/dskbench.htm
It needs to be run in DOS, and I personally find that you get more accurate readings if using within DOS itself rather than in a DOS window.
Give it a go and see what it comes up with.
cheers,
ben m
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ben@audiocourses.com |
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Tue May 27, 2003 2:43 pm |
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