cheers mark.
tip...003. (some basic stuff.)
1. You hear pops/clicks or other anomolies on playback.
If you get this condition occurring, and your running a pci sound card,
look at what devices are in your pci slots.
heres what happens. Typically another device in a pci slot is locking out
the pci sound card and causeing the anomolies often.
solution..the best approach is not to have anything in a pci slot
except for the pci sound card. Particular problem devices for a pci sound card
that might cause anomolies are net cards, (disable task while recording),
and ive seen some tv tuner cards and fancy gameing cards also cause the problem.
if at all possible use a seperate pc for the internet.
sometimes all the net programs and protection software can create issues
for a pc doing multitracking particularly on pc's that aleady have low real memory less
than 512mb.
In addition if you contemplate running lots of real time plug ins in addition
to softsynths it should be clearly understood that certain tasks of this nature can make major resource demands of a pc.
often even i gig of memory isnt enough. depending on number of instances.
you willl have to run real life load tests to determine what higher levels of memory you need.
a few instances of some dsp intensive plug ins might even tax a 2 gig memory machine.
some people have even had to go to the extent of dedicating a pc just for plug ins/softsynths.
just be aware of these potential issues.
2. your system seems sluggish or you cant record too many tracks on a modern pc.
solution...if your running 256mb ram try a ram upgrade to 1 gig.
also check dma is enabled on your hard drives. if dma is not enabled,
you wont get optimum throughput for daw performance.
IT MUST BE CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD the WIN OS needs memory itself to run.
on a 256 mb memory system there is the potential for problems.
Ideally for multitrack recording you need two 7200 rpm hard drives
with the biggest caches you can get. and a gig of ram preferably.
In addition dont use on board sound cards, your asking for problems.
as the digital convertors in them arent the greatest.
a good proven inexpensive sound card is an maudio 2496 for decent low latency and noise recording.
3. if running a laptop and you have problems, one issue is some internal laptop drives are SLOW.
you can get upgrades now for a number of laptops to 7200 rpm drives.
Once again also consider getting also an external hard drive 7200 rpm
solely for recording with windows on the internal one.
never use the mic input for recording that came with a laptop.
often they are noisy. consider a proper external usb or firewire sound device.
4. BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING OR ANY RECORDING YOU MUST IDENTIFY TO PTW
the midi and audio drivers that ptw should use in PREFERENCES.
IF YOU DONT DO THIS....your asking for problems.
READ VERY CAREFULLY THE PTW SETUP INFO/HELP IN PREFERENCES.
AND REMEMBER TO CLICK THE BUTTON THAT SAYS MOVE SELECTED DEVICES TO TOP.
5. If you get further playback problems with a sound device...
consider trying another. it might just not interface well with your particular pc.
VERY IMPORTANT......IF YOUR USEING A SOUND DEVICE THAT HAS ITS OWN LITTLE SETTINGS APPLET,
make sure you read the manual carefully and that the applet for the sound device
is set up properly.
The basic steps you should follow are to set up the applet for the sound device properly,
and set up ptw's preferences properly BEFORE RECORDING.
6. An additional trick is if you experience playback problems and you
HAVE A LOW MEMORY PC; in AUDIO PREFERENCES in ptw, try reduceing the value of the
TRACK BUFFER SIZE, and see if the playback then becomes smooth.
This will sometimes work for some sound devices.
7. Try not to record to the drive that windows is on,
as i said. Record to a drive specifically for recording.
8. If you encounter problems running asio drivers.
Try the non asio normal windows drivers. asio can introduce its own
overheads possibly. ive found that the normal windows drivers on most sound cards i try these days
(ie...above the cheap consumer sound cards) are pretty good.
particularly in xp. And i'm not seeing some of the probs i used to see.
9. if you dont see waveform after recording an audio track its likely
you dont have the line in fader up or it might be muted in the applet for your sound card.
unmute it or push the fader up in the applet.
10. I cant cover every possibility. But these are typical basic problems folks new to digital recording encounter.

retired puter engr....powertracks on amd......NICE !
"what is the black art of audio engineering ?"
my silly songs...motagator.com/bmanning
see my tips in the tips section.