PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums PowerTracks Pro Audio No PT 9 or PT12 recording VU level action.

Hello all.

Been a long time since I posted on this forum- roughly 7 years, I think. I recognise a few names though, rockstar_not, jford, Noel96, and some others. I've been gone a long while 'cause I got involved with motorcycling again, joined the forum for my model bike (a Harley Davidson XR1200) and couldn't make time to follow too many forums on the net. I had to rejoin as Shackman01, as I couldn't make my old username of Shackman work and couldn't remember the old password anyhow. But hey, I'm 61. I've reached that age when forgetfulness is a given.

Now I'm back because my recording system is giving me issues I can't solve myself. However, be advised everything is kinda old. The PC is a 13 year old AMD Athlon 2.2 Ghz running Windows XP SP3. I use a Delta 1010LT sound card. I have Powertracks 9 and Powertracks 12 on the PC. I record audio through some nice Rode mics (Australian, like me!) into a little Yamaha MG 10/2 mixer and thence to the Delta card. I play out from the card to a home Hi Fi set up, a Kenwood integrated amp and a pair of Tannoy Reveal passive monitors.

I know this setup sounds ancient and probably is compared to the Ferrari gear many of you guys have, but it (mostly) works and my approach is, if it's working, why fix it?

I have no problems with playing out sound from stuff I've recorded in PT 12. Everything works as it usually did. Specifically, the VU output meters within PT 12 show levels appropriately and the overall sound is sweet as ever. My problem is getting input levels. What happens is: I sing or play into the mics as normal in attempting to record. The Yamaha mixer's VU meters show plenty of level, the "Rec Out" RCA's conduct signal to the card and presumably the card tries to forward digital data in to PT 12. However, no level shows on the input VU meters, and nothing is recorded.

I have gone closely through all the audio settings within both PT 12 in the tracks window. All appears normal. I similarly went through the settings in the display controlling the Delta card. All appears normal there too, plenty of input level seen in the Delta's VU meters, and as I said, audio output is played normally.

Now- something is being conducted through the program (I think) because I can hear my check "peak" levels (tapping on the mic screen) coming out through the Tannoy speakers and thus being sent to the Kenwood amp. Not sure if this is bleed within the card, as it is quite loud, or what.

I tried re installing PT 9 via the CD ROM. It re installed, but no change in performance. I attempted to re install PT 12 twice but each time it led to a PC crash- yes, I got the blue screen of death with a message from the BIOS advising me I was treading on thin ice and best to seek qualified tech assist.

I vaugely remember something about "arming" a track when recording in Powertracks. Am I mis remembering or is this required and am I neglecting to do so? I have definitely ensured I have a green tick , not a red cross, at the track I'm trying to record on. Is track arming done in another window? I have a PT 8 manual but can't see anything to this effect.

Sorry to be harassing you guys about details on an old program and hope you can excercise your memory cells and powers of deductive logic to assist an old fart like me. You see, bikes or not I continue to work up songs and have 3 or 4 stored in my own memory cells which are threatening to bust loose and go feral if I don't get them recorded.

Hope you can assist and I'm happy to answer any and all questions you may have as we try to clarify the issue.

Cheers,

John

If you have a 1010lt you have a lot of possible signal routing options when you include the mixer in that sound card.

Do you have input in the 1010's separate mixer?

If so it is likely the input driver selection in PT.
The image below shows how my 1010LT Mixer looks. Note there are separate Input and Output tabs that can complicate things.

Make sure that mixer has signal as expected.

If you do, go to Prefs-Options-Audio then click the Drivers button and make sure you have the desired inputs highlighted.
After selecting these (if using MME), use the Move Selected to Top button, so they become the used inputs.

The second image shows how the ASIO drivers appear in PT for me. The 1010 can use either - MME or ASIO, the MME screen just looks a tiny bit different than my image.
/Ignore the arrows in the image - I re-purposed an image I used in a previous post. The arrows mean nothing in your situation.

At least that's where I'd start.

Hi rharv et al,

It's been a long time again since I posted to this topic because of a number of difficulties I have overcome, some with your help.

Firstly, my input level challenge. After much putzing around under the table at the back of the PC amid the spaghetti junction of power and signal leads, I established I had bum interconnects between the little Yamaha MG 10/2 hardware mixer I use, and the Delta 1010LT card. They looked OK but were not. Two sets of the same make, in succession. These have been tossed and substituted with proper quality gear. I also purchased and downloaded PT17.

However, now with PT17 in use, I continued to have problems with the PC, like emerging latency between tracks, plus occaisional blue screens. As stated the old PC really was old so I gave up and went up to the local computer shop. $1.2K Australian dollars later, say $900 USD, I have ended up with a new iCore 3 desktop machine with 2 X 4.2 GHZ processors and Windows 10. The new MSI motherboard had a slot for PCI cards but the shop did not guarantee that the Delta card would work as it did in XP. I accepted that and started thinking about an outboard recording module, like a Focusrite or similar. They put my existing HDD's back in as requested.

I had a huge stroke of good computer luck for a change when I found at the M-Audio web site that a worker there had posted a link to drivers for the Delta 1010LT card to work in Windows 7. To my suprise and great joy these work also in Windows 10 so my prized Delta card is still working, playing my existing .SEQ files made in PT9 and PT12, although now in PT17 of course. So far, so good. Here is my remaining problem: everything seems to be in mono. Bear with me as I try to explain this because I'm wordy but not highly tech.

The tracks I recorded in PT9 and PT12 play fine, but I can't pan any more. That is, I can move the panning "knob", but the recorded instrument or voice on the track doesn't move across the soundstage any more from L < to > R etc. Neither tracks recorded in stereo or mono can be panned- I just get a decrease in volume when I go hard L or hard R, the max value is 63 in both cases I think. I get the desired volume when the pan value is 0, ie centered. Consequently the whole song, though playable, sounds somewhat unclear.

Take a percussion track for example, recorded off my Casio keyboard. It is generated and recorded in stereo, with a L and R clearly audible out of the keys headphone socket, also out of the Yamaha mixer headphone socket, and clearly visible in PT 17 as a stereo track with differing although complementary content in the L & R sub tracks making up one percussion track. Say a hi hats at L and a ride cymbal at R. Now when I try to pan the whole track to the L or R of the sound stage as I listen through headphones or through my amp and speakers, I just hear either the L side content , or both, or the R side content. But I cannot move the content as a whole to the L or R of the sound stage as I used to be able to do! Very frustrating when you're trying to construct a song as a whole with a clearly defined location for each source, eg. vox, keys, bass, gtr etc!

In Audio Preferences in PT17, I have the input channel for mono tracks set as L + R (2 tracks). I am now using ASIO drivers, after seeing rharv's example in his reply of last time. In the Delta card control panel, all sliders are equalised and all the L & R pan knobs are centered. Sample rate is 44,100. Best quality. Other than the ASIO choice, all these are the same settings I have had in PT9 and PT12 for years.

I have searched through the Help answers but can't quite understand the explanation of ports, etc. I am too dumb etc. for that stuff. Besides it doesn't cover my specific issue.

Can anyone shed any light on this problem? Thanks in anticipation,

John

If it doesn't pan at all, I'd first check the Mixer window in PT to see if the MONO mix option is enabled. I think it's on the bottom of the mixer.

After that I'd check the audio options in Windows.
Since W7 the 1010 mixer is also controlled in the Windows mixer section.

Right-clicking the speaker icon in the lower right taskbar can reveal the Windows related options (Windows playback devices and recording devices etc.).


This is something I've had a lot of trouble explaining/expressing.
It is better to record everything as a MONO track, and use 2 separate MONO tracks to record a stereo signal.

Why?
Because then you have better control.
If you use a stereo track, in order to move something to the left you lose some right, and vice-versa.

If they are 2 MONO tracks you can make a stereo piano still have some 'space' (L/R) but be towards the right side of the sound stage.
Ex: Panning one side of a stereo track -80 and the other side of the track -40 (by using 2 MONO tracks) still gives it some space, yet retains direction and place.

Your 1010 will record either 8 MONO tracks or 4 stereo tracks.
I ALWAYS prefer the 8 MONO tracks. In RB/PT this is determined by the Track Type you are recording to.
If the armed track is a MONO audio track, the program will record the rest of the tracks as MONO and insert them on the next available blank track(s) as MONO tracks.

If the armed track is a Stereo track, you'll end up with 4 stereo tracks instead.

Like I said I much prefer 8 MONO tracks, as I may be recording 8 separate audio inputs, and have the bass on 7 and guitar on 8 .. I want total control over each of them as individual tracks, and not have to lower the bass to increase the guitar (like a stereo track would), or pan them in a restricted way.

Check if your default track type changed to stereo. If so, make sure the track you arm is MONO (and change the default setting in Options if you can). Then later you'll have all your panning options available for mixing.

Hi RHarv and any interested others,

Firstly, thanks for your generous help with my issues so far. Much, much appreciated.

I struggled on for some time trying to work out why my set up wouldn't truly pan as explained above. I put into place all the suggestions RHarv offered, but no go.
Now, I have a Jam Vox as well, which is basically a USB powered external sound card for gtr practice, but with which it is possible to record to a PC. I found I could pan track content within PT17 as desired using the Jam Vox, so concluded the problem was with the Delta PCI card.
Although I focused closely on the Delta and did everything I could over about 2 weeks to get it to work fully, I just could not find the causitive issue. So I went out and got another interface, an M-Audio M- Track Quad ($349 AUD). Also USB (2.0) connected, but additionally using 6V 3A power. It is taking a bit of time to come to grips with this unit but the signs are good that it will work well with the new PC. And yes, I can pan track content now. So I said to myself "what the heck" and indulged in a nice pair of Beyerdynamic DT 880 Pro Studio headphones as well.
So all up, a mere $2K AUD to get a happening combination but what price sanity?
Again my thanks for your willingness to help a mug 10,000 km way. I hope I can post the results here before too long.
Cheers,
John