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When I play a song, and I've addressed this before, the line that moves along while the song plays is not smooth. It's sort of herky jerky.
Anyone else?

Mine is smooth.

And this is usually a function (disfunction?) of your video card.

You could try turning Video Acceleration slider down or off, that might cure it.

--Mac

Tried that. Lappy here. May be why.

Have you tried disabling your network card while running Realband? I've seen jerky video performance as a consequence of some network cards.

Also turn off anti-virus and similar programs while running music software?

Disabling the network card was no help. I use 2 lappies. The music one has no security software at all. It is wirelessly networked to the other for file sharing. I did disable it though with no change.
I did notice that the vid card & Audidgy are sharing the same IRQ.

Well preliminary diagnosis says that the nice picture I was using of the wife and kids ( 2 Dachshunds ) as my desktop was the culprit.

Nope that weren't it. If ya think of anything else. I'm out of tricks.It's actually becoming a big annoyance. It even sort of stops & starts. The music still plays though.

Video driver update?
Being a lappy, if the video RAM comes from system RAM (shared) then increasing the RAM assigned to the video in BIOS may help.

Lawrie,
I new you'd show. OK how do I do that. You never have failed me yet!

I looked and in the BIOS it says only 64 meg for system. Don't see a way to change it though. I have 2 gig installed.

Quote:

I did notice that the vid card & Audidgy are sharing the same IRQ.

Houston, we found the problem.

Unfortunately, Windows does not provide for a workaround here. Lappies are hardwired by the designer.

--Mac

G'day John,
Normally, there will be somewhere in the BIOS where you can adjust this setting - Can't tell you where off the top of my head but I would have thought it was near where you found the amount currently assigned. In any case, 64MB should be more than enough to handle BIAB or RealBand

There are BIOS updates which may help.

G'day Mac,
mate, while I wouldn't discount it altogether I'm not sure that sharing an IRQ with the video is that big a deal. There shouldn't be many, if any, interrupts generated by the video card. However, if the conflict IS the problem then trying different USB ports in the hope of finding a different internal USB host may yield a different IRQ for the Audigy.

That Creative card can't stream right on the same IRQ as the vid. Whether or not it is due to interrupts or whatever. May just be a bandwidth bottleneck.

This is a known problem to Creative -- and E-MU, which is Creative -- pcmcia card users. Seen it time and again on those particular hardware forums.

Adjusting the amount of ram consumed by the onboard vid at startup *may* alleviate the problem, worth a shot IMO. For DAW work you don't need much vid ram, 16 or even 8meg may still run fine. Remember, it wasn't that long ago when 8meg video was the defacto standard.

This should be easy enough to proof, if silvertones were to return to temporary use of the built in sound -- and if its not sharing with video -- a few runs with the program would show if the cursor action is improved or not.

--Mac

Ahh, I stand corrected, I thought his Audigy was a USB device - just checked and you are quite correct, PCMCIA - makes finding an alternative IRQ pretty much impossible - though if he has 2 PCMCIA slots the second MAY be a different IRQ (wouldn't count on it though).

The IRQ is an Interrupt ReQuest line. If a device isn't generating interrupts then the IRQ assigned is irrelevant as it isn't in use by that device. However, depending on the driver, it may or may not chain the IRQ handler stack correctly. This is why I suggested that driver updates for the video might be in order. As would driver updates for the Audigy, but given Creative's history with breaking drivers I'd approach that one with caution.

Mac's suggestion of reverting to the onboard sound for a test is a good idea.

Check the updates. Download and install and report back

Thanks folks. Ok so 64 Meg should definitely be enough. The USB contollers ( both ) are IRQ 16, Audidgy2 ZS NB is IRQ 16, NVIDIA GeForce Vid card is IRQ16.
I'm using 3 sound cards
1. Creative Extigy---USB
2. Audidgy--PCMCIA
3. Realtec--- Built in.

I'm going to uninstall all and see what happens.
The Toshiba is a little dated so not sure about updates being avaiable.

Hey John,
before uninstalling, I'd try it with just the onboard sound active. Just 'cos it is still IRQ sharing isn't necessarily a problem as the test may exonerate it.

BIOS and driver updates will almost certainly be available - the more so given that it is not a new machine.

Nothing helped EXCEPT... now I'm nervous.
I have the program installed on the C drive. All of my songs are on the C drive. I also have a USB 120G drive for backup. If I move the song onto the USB drive it plays without the video issue. I went back and forth a couple times and it's consistent for now. The C drive is 160G with 47 G left.
When I play the song from the C the disc load runs up to about 48%, CPU 15%. Ram 316M and it jumps along almost a measure at a time.

When I run the song from the E drive the load on C is 1% and load on E is 15%, CPU 7%, Ram315 and it's smooth.

The reason I'm nervous is the C runs at about 42 Degrees Cent and a couple times recently has failed to load Windows. Toshiba is know for high Temps I'm sure that's why the original drive went and I was given the thing.

When the E-MU pcmcia card came out, there were LOTS of complaints from Toshiba owners over on the unofficial E-MU forum and it turned out to be due to the IRQ share situation. Don't know why Toshiba's designers decided to pile up so much stuff on one IRQ, matter of fact yours isn't the worst we've seen by a long shot.

Anyway, quite a few Toshiba owners have reported that the BIOS update from the Toshiba website for their model either fixed or greatly alleviated the problem, so it is worth looking into IMO.

I have a friend who bought a newer Toshiba laptop and was having a terrible time getting his M-Audio USB device to work properly with BIAB and PT. For a couple of weeks, we assumed it was a Vista problem and tried all the typical Vista tweaks to no avail. Finally, the Toshiba BIOS upgrade seemed to do the trick.

--Mac

I can't for the life of me find the update. I go to there site and my model is no longer listed.
Satellite P25-S5262

The jumpy scroller is a sign of system stress, as Silvertones found out.
I was going to suggest just playing a one track file to se if it went smooth.
Taking some of the load off the system, and freeing up resources alleviated the problem.
Good job troubleshooting it

G'day John,
mate, this added information suggests to me that you may have a HDD on the way out. If you were one of my customers I'd advise allowing us to clone the drive and then run some diagnostics on it. Depending on the drive manufacturer and the diagnostic tools they supply you should be able to run non-destructive tests on the drive, but given that I reckon it's suspect I'd clone it first in case the tests finish it off. At the very least you should be able to interrogate the "SMART" database and see if the drive has actually overheated and you may be able to determine if the drive is running out of spare sectors to reallocate.

Drives aren't that expensive. I'd suggest a Seagate 340GB or there abouts (I'm running a 500GB in my HP) and clone the Toshi's drive onto it. We use a separate machine for our cloning efforts - especially for notebooks as it is less easy when you don't have the I/O for a second drive...

If you don't have these facilities available I'd expect your local, trusted computer shop should be able to help for a modest fee. It really only takes about 15 minutes of actual labour to do though the actual cloning process could take an hour or so, and they may do it for free if you buy the new drive from them.

The age of that lappy would very likely mean that any internal drive choice would have to be IDE type and not SATA.

Be careful when shopping, the larger capacity drives all seem to be of SATA type.

Good news is that the IDE interface laptop drives, while being typically smaller in capacity, are also available at many sources at lower prices these days. But such is often not the case at retailers and large outlet stores, where the supply and demand side must kick in or something, causing them to price the IDE drives higher than I can get them at certain online sources. So shop around.

***Many earlier laptops shipped with less-than-wonderful-for-audio-work hard drives in them in the first place. 5400rpm w/only a 2mb buffer is one of the most often encountered, also, depending on the age of the laptop, it may even be a 4200rpm drive in there, which is less than borderline and certainly not optimum.

***Many are tempted by the laptop replacement 7200rpm drives out there. Do your homework. Cooling is a big issue. Lots of reports of failures due to this problem. The 5400rpm drive that has an 8mb or larger buffer will do the job just about as well and like as not won't suffer from the heatstroke that many 7200rpm laptop installations report.

--Mac

I just installed this drive in January. Should be under Warrant. WD
Got to take the wife for her daily outing. Shall return.
This 160G is the only IDE drive I could find at Best Buy. I was on vacation at the time. I'll order a new one and get this one replaced under warranty.

You can also buy direct from WD at very competitive prices, though you may have to dig some to find them. I recently bought a 500 Gb 7,200 RPM IDE drive with a 32 Mb buffer for my DAW for $63 complete--shipping and all. That was partly due to my already owning another WD drive.

Micro Center has the best stock and most competitive pricing of IDE drives (now sometimes called PATA drives) on the open market of which I am aware.

R.

Richard Thanks,
Was that a 2.5 drive or 3.5 ?

RHARV,
Yes the less tracks the better

Quote:

Richard Thanks,
Was that a 2.5 drive or 3.5 ?

Mine were 3.5s but both WD and Micro Center have similar deals on 2.5" IDE/PATA drives.

R.

There are 9- 2.5 PATA drives on the planet. All 5400RPM 8meg cache. 160/320 WD & Seagate. I'll probably go Seagate this time as they were good in the past with warranty.

Well I ran the SMART test from WD and it passed.
If I load the song from the E drive, combine some tracks so I only have 8, bring the zoom down , it looks OK.
Now for the rest of the story.
If I load the same 12 tracks into Sonar, set the zoom resolution the same, the disc load is 11% vs 48% & the CPU is 1% vs15%.
The scroll line is very smooth and the meters react like meters should
Not complaining just observing.

G'day John,
my suggestion the the drive may be on its way out is based on the temps and startup problems you mentioned more than the load and performance issues.

However, if the SMART reports are clean this casts some doubt on the diagnosis - not that SMART hasn't failed to report problems in the past.

So, before you spend possible unnecessary money, just what startup problems are you experiencing? IE do you get partway into the Windows startup or do you not get past the POST?

OR, if you would like more capacity then a new drive is the answer anyhow...

Twice I didn't get past the post. I'm just going to wait and see. My tests with Sonar tell me that my lappy is on the cusp of being inadequate. Sonar is less of a resource user & keeps me below the line and RB puts me above. At least I'm not still using the PII 400

Hmm, OK. Either there is a problem on the M/B or the drive is causing the POST to fail. However it is locking rather than simply not finding the drive properly.

I would locate the RAM SODIMMs and reseat them. May not achieve anything but could have an impact on startup if it isn't the HDD causing the POST failures.

If the HDD is in fact on the way out, then I/O will suffer and thus performance. The basic spec. of the machine may be dated, but is still more than adequate for the tasks you require. Make a good backup and try a defrag. hopefully it will be OK. If not then a new drive and a clone is in order, assuming of course you don't consider the price uneconomic for this machine. If possible I'd test the drive in a known good PC in case there are I/O issues on the M/B.

One thing i see is that you have Two sound cards sharing the same IRQ the USB and Card Buss are both 16 I would disable one sound card maybe even two, and attach a mixer to handle all the connections you are using three cards for.

I had a buddy call just last night with similar problem. We found that by disconnecting a DVD drive he was able to boot up. Something must have been happening when the OS checked that drive, because it would shutdown during boot ... and once in a while when he did get booted up all the way, it would shut down as soon as he put a disk in either of the two drives using that IDE cable
Disconnecting one at a time revealed the culprit drive.

The thing about IRQ's is that they are an INPUT to the system.

Conceptually, the CPU is the computer and EVERYTHING else is a peripheral - including the RAM...

Any peripheral that wants CPU time must generate an interrupt to catch the CPU's attention... So, if a peripheral is OUTPUT only then it will not need to generate an interrupt even if it has an IRQ assigned. Some device drivers can even be configured to make the CPU poll the device rather than depend on an interrupt.

Your video display is an output device. A sound card is (usually) an output device. Exceptions with sound cards would include those with onboard synths - many of these use the CPU and system RAM to power the synth and store soundfonts - these cards would need an IRQ.

In Johns case, the Creative PCMCIA card would use its IRQ. The Realtek that's on board probably would not (though I could be wrong here). I'm not certain about the USB Exitgy but it probably uses the IRQ as well.

So, 2 devices that probably use the IRQ and 2 that probably don't. As long as the drivers for these devices chain the IRQ handlers properly there should be no problem BUT if there are any issues with the drivers then I would expect things to misbehave. Ditto if there are BIOS problems 'cos there are basic IRQ routines in the BIOS that are called by the OS (including the drivers).

Once upon a time you COULDN'T share IRQ's. These days it is best practice to avoid it but if you must then try to choose low bandwidth devices to share. I.E NOT the HDD controller or your NIC (Network Interface Card)

Unfortunately you don't always have a choice.

After all the above waffle, I notice that John had good results with an external USB drive - funny that it still shares the same IRQ thats in question. this makes me feel confident that the real problem is most likely not an IRQ sharing issue but rather points straight back to the HDD I/O.

John, with that in mind, has it always had this problem or has it just developed recently and if the latter then what changed? If you don't know of any changes (particularly to software or additional hardware) then I think I'd have another look at the HDD (either full, fragmented or failing). If its always had the problem the I'd suspect the HDD is a low performance one.

G'day rharv,

Quote:

I had a buddy call just last night with similar problem. We found that by disconnecting a DVD drive he was able to boot up. Something must have been happening when the OS checked that drive, because it would shutdown during boot ... and once in a while when he did get booted up all the way, it would shut down as soon as he put a disk in either of the two drives using that IDE cable
Disconnecting one at a time revealed the culprit drive.

We find that a bit on desktop systems that use IDE - the optical drive gets a bit dodgy and stuffs up the bus*. It seems to that the push to manufacture optical drives a cheaply as possible has resulted in reliability problems with some manufacturers. We used to see a LOT of Sony's do this but they seem to have gotten their act together more recently. SATA devices work differently and shouldn't cause these kinds of issues.

Note that we don't normally see this happen in Notebooks...

* In an IDE based system, the AT bus is extended out to the drives via buffer circuitry. The master device actually controls I/O for both itself and the slave device so if either device has a problem that affects bus access it will prevent the other from functioning correctly.

Well I've done all sorts of tests drive, memory, etc and everything says it's fine.
My final observation is that if I have the zoom level way down it scrolls fine. If zoom in to about 6 seconds showing on the screen it scrolls perfectly. It's just some of the intermediate settings. If anyone has time try setting up 12 RT at 120 BPM and play with the zoom level and see if you get stuttering. BTW I have the audio buffers at 500 and never misses a beat.

Sounds like its a simple performance issue - slow drive?

POST failures may just have been odd glitches...

In an older laptop, a few POST failures might also be indicative of the borderline BIOS battery, too.

--Mac

Yup - good call

Yup right you are Mac could be but the clock keeps good time. The drive is a 5400 8meg buffer IDE so.........That's all you can get.

Quote:

Yup right you are Mac could be but the clock keeps good time. The drive is a 5400 8meg buffer IDE so.........That's all you can get.

The clock might be able to run in time even though the battery cell voltage and amperage is a bit low for running the BIOS boot stuff... I've seen this before, when the voltage is right at a certain threshold.

Worth investigating IMO.

--Mac

I should be ashamed to tell this but I'm old enough not to care.
If you recall I mentioned heat.
I went to Wally World this AM and for $7.00 bought a two piece wire rack thing like you put in the kitchen cupboards to put dishes on. It's the exact length and width of the two computers. It raises them off the desk about 3 inches. The running temp dropped from 54C to 40C. Seems to have helped a lot. Will be better for all in the long run.

'ang on, on the 26th you said 42C - 42 is fine, 54C is another thing altogether. You'll find that 50C is the maximun operating temp. of the drive. Get above that and EXPECT failures. The rack is a good idea, but the drive may already be damaged.

I recently installed a 500GB HDD in my HP. it overheated and failed in 24 hrs - really annoyed I was. Got a warranty replacement which has never exceeded 40C and never played up.

How can you tell what the running temp is?

There are utilities that can interrogate the SMART interface and report.

I have one that is running in my system tray

Lawrie,
You posted twice in a row and I missed one so I'm replying now.
This stuttering of the scroll line has always been a problem. I reported it a while back. I'm going to try RB in my other machine and see what it does.
I sort of was not clear on the temp when I posted. At the time it was @ 42C which was at 8:52 AM. I turn these things on at 6:00AM & turn them off at 6:00 PM . By that time temp is up to 54C. I may have indeed damaged the drive. Elevating the computer the temp never got above 40C. I shouldn't have said the running temp was 54C.
When I removed the old drive I could see what appeared to me evidence of high temp inside.
I'll report back on the test of the other machine

Sam,
I use AnVir Task Manager.

I'm way beyond my knowledge here but tell me what you think.

211 MB---song size / 181 Sec.---song length = 1.2 MB per second.

Drive Spec.
Transfer Rates
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 600 Mb/s (Max)
Buffer to Host (EIDE)
Mode 5 Ultra ATA 100 MB/s
???????????

The other machine was worse.

To bad there's not an option to load the song into Ram.

G'day John,
dunno whether these are published spec's or somehow measured/estimated, but the 600 Mb/s roughly translates out as 75 MB/s and of course the 100MB/s exceeds this - both significantly larger than the 1.2 MB/s you've estimated is necessary for the song (there'll be other things going on too to increase this).

There are other factors involved. One is a question as to whether these figures are sustained or burst. Another is what effect associated hard and software may be having - not to mention what problems may be caused by the overheat.

Well I think I've beat this to death. Things are much improved with the heat reduction. I notice if I move the mouse around while a song is playing the scroll stutters.

I'll keep my fingers crossed.
The NVidia card has a program that is called NView. It's for managing multiple monitors and multiple desktops. It has check boxes to disable it which I did. No more scroll stutter.

Video driver once again!
Thanks for keeping us posted

G'day John,

Quote:

I'll keep my fingers crossed.
The NVidia card has a program that is called NView. It's for managing multiple monitors and multiple desktops. It has check boxes to disable it which I did. No more scroll stutter.

This is good news, but I must say I a bit confused. You weren't having the problems when running from an external drive - something just doesn't seem to add up for me...

I speak to soon. Wishful thinking. It seemed to be OK on the external then wasn't.It seemed to be better with more cooling. It seems to be OK, not perfect, with NView disabled. We'll see. I'll report back in a week.

Hi John - I've only skimmed thru this thread, but I wanted to add something I've noticed: if BIAB or RB are not the focus, then the scrolling on my screen is choppy. if I click on the window and make it the focus window, then the scrolling is smooth. as soon as I click off of that window, however, chop city.

Explain how I experiment with this. I'm not quite sure what you mean about the window not being the focus.Where would I click to make it choppy and were would I click to smooth it out?

"In focus" means that the particular window is activated and ready for input rather than just showing on the screen.

Typically but not always indicated by the bar at top being Blue for In Focus. Grayed bar is out of focus. This may change colors if you've messed with the Windows presentation scheme, but the same logic will apply.

So you click on that bar to bring the window into focus if there is any other window that has the bar turned dark blue instead.

--Mac

didn't seem to make any difference. Everything seemed to help some. Not perfect.

Quote:

Everything seemed to help some.

That is typically a sign that you haven't hit on the root problem and that the problem is inherently somewhat erratic in nature.

The only real and good clue is when you finally do something that makes it either go away entirely -- or sometimes a tweak that makes it get much worse.

--Mac

yup and I'll be darned if i can find either

I've come into this thread late but it brings up several question about how BIAB functions. Does BIAB/RB generate it's file and call the parts of RTs when it needs it or does the program store the completed file with RTs in RAM?
If it has to call the RTs then maybe a solid state drive might be something that could be implemented in the future as a cache drive for the program to use the RTs and take the load off the hard drive. I've been out of building systems for awhile so I may have it all wrong.
Wyndham

Quote:

I've come into this thread late but it brings up several question about how BIAB functions. Does BIAB/RB generate it's file and call the parts of RTs when it needs it or does the program store the completed file with RTs in RAM?

Not Ram, but the generated RT track is stored in C:\Temp for playback.

Quote:

If it has to call the RTs then maybe a solid state drive might be something that could be implemented in the future as a cache drive for the program to use the RTs and take the load off the hard drive. I've been out of building systems for awhile so I may have it all wrong.
Wyndham

I specify solid state for certain tasks on the day job, such as high g or high vibration or temp environments, doubt if there'd be enough gain in other factors to make it worth the while for this use.

--Mac

It might be a power supply issue. Is your Lappy a 110 with a transformer then plug in to the Laptop? I had a Samson portable 2 channel mixer that had a transformer go out, there might be a way to check the output voltage. Maybe Mac knows.
Wyndham

When I load a *.seq file that is all RT does it load these into the temp folder? I didn't see that it did. I've been trying to find a free program that lets you assign a portion of RAM as another drive.

Everything Realband or PTW does once a .seq file is opened takes place on either C:\Temp as the default unless you've changed that to use a second hard drive for streaming purposes only, not really needed unless using a multichannel soundcard and using all the channels on it.

--Mac

I've tried everything.I even opened a NEW file with nothing on it and hit record. It's even jittery there. Most of the time it's sort of smooth. Other times it's almost as if the scroll line stumbles over the audio graphic and then catches up. I would think that if there's any streaming issue it would be noticed in the audio. Audio's perfect. As I said I'm not going to obsess on it. What's your thoughts on refresh rate. It's locked to 60Hz

Refresh rate is only really evidenced by screen flicker - as you have an LCD monitor it is pretty much irrelevant.

I seem to recall asking if you'd updated your video drivers?

Long thread, hard to remember now, but--

Did you ever check your IRQ table, specifically to look for shares with Video and/or soundcard?

I still suspect that issue here, having seen it too many times in the field. Have always found that getting the soundcard on its own IRQ solves stuttering audio and sometimes this kind of video stuttering. Of course, the laptop IRQs are hardwired so there's little chance of changing that, but sometimes choosing a different aftermarket soundcard type can be effective. For example, a pcmcia slot that shares with video is bad, but replacing the sound device with a USB type can often be the cure.

--Mac

Yes drivers are up to date although the last update was 2004. Found an update for BIOS.
Video card, Audigy & usb sharing the same IRQ. The internal card is on a different IRQ. I uninstalled the USB sound card & the Audigy with no real change.

If you have other programs like cakewalk or some of the free ones like reaper or audacity, do the same problems occur when working with those programs with large audio files. Just trying to find a common thread to the problem.
I remember a similar problem in another program several years ago and I believe it was an irq conflict on my desktop. There are several areas that are suspect but hopefully there's only one that the problem.
Wyndham

In decades of troubleshooting various systems, I can probably count on the fingers of my hands the number of times a problem was caused by more than one thing at the same time.

And most of those were "catastrophic" failures anyway. Lightning, surge, that sort of thing.

Occam's razor says it is caused by only one thing, too.

The real skillset involves the detective work that consists mostly of *process of elimination*, *isolation* and *critical thinking*.

And avoiding doing the same thing over and over. Because you've already proved it ain't that...

--Mac

Sonar, Dart, Adobe Audition are not as smooth as they were on a CRT but they never seem to stumble over the waveform graphics.Read above about the IRQs

I did read about the IRQs.

Um, I assume that Audigy is a USB device. If it is a pcmcia device, that may be a problem, but I don't think it would be enough to cause the screen stutter unless you are also using that USB port for something high bandwidth...

Easy enough to isolate that one, dismount USB devices, disable temporarily in Device Mgr and test.

--Mac

Audidgy is PCMCIA
Extigy is USB
RealTech is onboard

I uninstalled the Extigy & Audidgy. There was no change. I reinstalled everything but put the Audidgy in the bottom slot. It now doesn't share IRQ with the Video Card. It shares with the RealTech. Usb shares with the Video Card.
Still no change.
2more things to try tomorrow. I acquired a free working CRT. I'm gonna try that.
Last my internal 160 G drive only has 49G left. I'm going to offload PGMusic products from it and try running from just the 160G drive they just sent.
After that F... it. I quit.

Mac, the more I think about this thread and the 3 last remain brain cells of mine wake up, I kinda think there was an issue with a usb hub setup that gave problems years back, it was something about conecting thru a hub for several USB devices.
Also John, have you checked to see if you have usb driver 2.0, I had problems once when I still had usb 1.1 Hope something here sticks on the wall. Later Wyndham

Quote:

The jumpy scroller is a sign of system stress, as Silvertones found out.
I was going to suggest just playing a one track file to se if it went smooth.
Taking some of the load off the system, and freeing up resources alleviated the problem.
Good job troubleshooting it

Worth trying again,... eliminate tracks, shutdown processes, see if it improves.
Video, especially shared RAM type, suffers under system stress. Its better than the audio suffering. I think Jeff made it this way. Shared IRQ's and such will contibute, but I think it's a symptom of the computer being stressed on either the HD in/out or other system resource sacrifices.
Just a thought

It is a Toshiba.

Some do audio well, some don't.

That's judging from problems seen on several different forums for several different products over the years.

I hear the newer models of Toshiba laptops are doing much better of late, nothing is forever, so don't hold it against the brand or anything, although I'm sure some will.

--Mac

I have dismounted the USB Extigy, Dismounted the PCMCIA Audidgy, Disabled the network cards, reduced all processes.
It'll start fine sometimes and all of a sudden like an old man it'll stumble and start stuttering.
The good thing is that the audio never stutters even with the output buffers at 500. I run them at 1000 to be safe.
The Chord sheet never stumbles.
When I play I only have two lines of the track view showing with the chord sheet on the bottom right & the words ( comments ) on the bottom left.
I just started a song, everything is enabled now,and it immediatly stuttered. Stopping for a quarter not and then jumping ahead. Stop, jump. Restarted the song played fine for about 30 measures and back to jumping. Towards then end it was stopping for over half the measure. Close your eyes though and the music was perfect. PS the Audidgy,is no longer sharing IRQ with the Vid.

Now I'm getting to the bottom of this. I think Jeff needs to comment hear. I've said that any given song plays perfectly in Sonar, Audition & Dart. The way I tested was to take a sturring song and save as individual wav files and then load them in one at a time.Never thought to load the individual wav files into RB. Well I did and guess what? I've never seen the thing scroll so smoothly. I played the song from end to end 6 times without even a slight hiccup. Everything is active. I'm networked to the other computer. All processes turned on even stuff I don't need. Reloaded the SEQ version of the song--stutter. No real time effects on either version. Figure this one out. There must be a difference the way RB handles imported tracks vs loading SEQ files.

By exporting the tracks as wav files you are consolidating them before importing into the other programs - not a fair comparison.

Try consolidating the original seq tracks, then save, then re-open.

RB is performing just as well as the others using the exact same data, according to your post!

That's the answer my friend. I remember now this being an issue in the days when I used Cakewalk Pro Audio 8. Now here's hoping I can't highlight the whole song and consolidate all at once as I presently have 150 songs like this!!

It appears that you can so that won't be too bad.It is increasing the file size 10%
This is a message that needs to be made REAL CLEAR to everyone.
THANKS MUCH to everyone who offered help.

File size is increasing because blank sections that were previously not part of the track are being made part of the track. But performance will improve. Hard disk space is cheap, performance matters.

Glad you got it whooped!

rharv,
I did the diggin' but you did the whoopin'
Thanks much

By doing this it's truly flawless AND I'm running the output buffers at 250. The CPU usage is down to 3-4% for RB and disc load for RB 1% & less.
It's a different program. Meters react in time. Controls are immediate.No video stuttering. I'm a happy camper.

RHARV!!!

Glad to help.
By using a few good practices, I always get great performance out of PT and RB.

I have said 'consolidate often' quite a few times, and others have complained that it eats disk space - I'll say it again; disk space is cheap, it's performance that counts. Wasting time dealing with issues to save a few meg of space seems silly to me.
Plus the wear on the poor drive thrashing around looking for sections of audio is more costly in wear and tear!

I'm still learning from others here, so I am thankful to contribute.

rharv.
re drives.
spot on mate.
hi performance drives with big caches like 32mb are dirt cheap these days.
heck people are throwing at me for free these days dual core systems
cos they are upgradeing to quads. the freebies just need some tlc n cleaning up
and they are good for 70 traks. just add a spanking new drive to record to for 80 buks.
why people do work now on old slow systems beats me when there are free or nearly free
dual core systems to be had beats me,.
ive got a bunch of old systems ive been given here , and i just take the old drives outta em ,
put em in a cheap usb enclosure n use em for backing up songs etc from the new pc.
like you i always consolidate.
rharv , if ya want a whizz bang time you sometimes see phenom quad motherboards with processor for 250 buks on special.
or something like a i7 processor will make you smile huge with a couple of raptor or veloci drives. lol.
the i7 is a lovely processor.
ive always been amd but the intel i7 i gotta say is superb.
give me an i7 system any day over a mac. or anything else.

manning -- Bear in mind that the "system" involved in this particular thread and problem (solved) -- is a laptop and not a desktop.

More and more people are turning to laptops for home recording/demo/music work these days and for many it is working quite well.

I've been using laptop plus E-MU 1616M pcmcia sound device, added 8 channels of A-D into the E-MU's ADAT input to yield a rather nice and portable 16-track input recording machine for onlocation work. Laptop plus 1616M w/ADC, one external Firewire hard drive for the Temp storage and the system flat works fine.

--Mac

I'd like to see a check box in the audio prefs.
" Consolodate audio when saving"

Good idea.

BTW, you'll probably need to run a defrag after consolidating all those files. You did a lot of them, and there will likely be a lot of small half-track size spaces leftover.

Well I"m afraid the fat lady hasn't sung yet.
Yesterday a consolidated song 1 played it through 6 times perfectly.Saved , reopened played perfectly.
Did this for a couple more songs perfect.
Spent the rest of yesterday and this morning just going through all 150 songs. Then I defragged the drive and made copies to 2 other drives.
Went to town & when I got back thought I'd settle in and play a few songs.
STUTTERING GRAPHICS JUST LIKE BEFORE.
Checked the event list and no multiple audio parts.
Redid the consolidate on a song and it plays perfectly. Saved & reopen it plays fine. Open another song and then reopen the one I just consolidated and stutter.

What is going on here!!!!!!!!!1

Quote:

Redid the consolidate on a song and it plays perfectly. Saved & reopen it plays fine. Open another song and then reopen the one I just consolidated and stutter.

What is going on here!!!!!!!!!1

Well either BIAB takes the file and does something to it or it might be a bad stick of ram. There should be a free ram test you can find on the net. It is a possibility that as you are moving files in and out of ram that a bad section comes up. I don't know if this is it, just another guess in a long line of head scratching. Wyndham

Done all the tests. HD, Ram, everything.
I've just deleted RB & BB. Ran CCleaner & Registry mechanic. Then I'm gonna try and run from the supplied external drive. The C disc is now only 30% full.

silvertones
as your aware the net is littered with problems with laptops.
yes some folks luck out and get one that works well, but lots dont.
if you havent run this yet..
please do so and report back.
cos i'm finding the vast majority of lappies fail this test,
and that includes over 6 i tried this week.
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

please report back if you get red spikes etc etc.
when you get the stuttering probs...
how many audio traks does it start at ??
are you useing 44.1/16 ?? or higher rates ??
another question....
do you get probs at low trak counts ??

ps..is this your lappie with the slow internal drive ??
http://uk.shopping.com/xPF-TOSHIBA-P25-S5262-P25S5262-Factory-Serviced
please confirm.

Manning1
I'm reinstalling the program now so will have to wait until tomorrow to run the test.
Yes that is the lappy. I've upped the Ram to 2G & HD to 160.
Most recent test results.
Running the program from the external drive and songs on C stutters.
Moving songs to External, I say this carefully for now, seems fine.
Lawrie originally questioned the drive now I'm starting to wonder but if you've read the whole post It's confusing.

silvertones
please run that dpc utility i linked to at the earliest.
cos it will report usefull info.
and post back what it says.
the fact that you report no probs with an external drive leads me to suspect that
win is cutting in to do its thing if useing internal drive for daw work.
a common problem with lappies.

when you get the stuttering run a process/task monitor at the same time..
to see which tasks are useing resources.
what many folks do is replace the slow internal drive with a 7200 rpm ,
and use an external hi performance drive as i said in an enclosure
to record to.
that internal you upgraded to , whats the rpm ??

it would be nice to know what audio trak counts are when you experience problems.
typically lots of internal drives cant keep up if useing
high sample rates n bit depths with high trak counts.

What went on is simple enough, you did the defrag. '

However, multiple tracks of audio may not like being in contiguous data.

They like to be *interleaved* such that the head does not have to go as far a distance to find a buffer full of track 1, then a buffer full of track 2, then track 3, etc. before playing back that buffer. And then go through it all over again to fill the second buffer. etc.

Just let the program do the consolidation and leave it that way.

--Mac

Mac,
Are you saying to not defrag once I've consolidated the files?
Manning1,
No sure if you read the whole post but this is strictly a video stutter. Audio is fine.
Ran the test and there are some red spikes. Disabled 1 item at a time with no change. Didn't disable the video card though.
I refuse to believe it's totally the fault of the lappy. If I load the same 10 tracks into Sonar or Adobe Audition the play 110% perfect. I can open the task MGR. I can open other screens and there's never an audio or video stutter. The meters react perfectly in time with the music and so on.

Mac,
You jogged my memory from wayyyyyyyyyyyy back.

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/Audio/interlv/Freeware.htm
And you can do a whole folder of songs and it fixed everything.

THE HANDY DANDY ANALOGX INTERLEAVE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

File interleaving does the exact opposite of a what a disk defragmentor does
(which puts files in sequential order)... So why on Earth would you want to in
essence 'fragment' a harddrive? Simple, when dealing with digital audio, it
needs to read a little chunk at a time from each file, so in this special case
(ie; multi-track digital audio), harddrive's fragmentation (the good kind) can
actually increase performance! And with that in mind, introducing AnalogX
Interleave!

AnalogX Interleave is a great utility for anyone who does hardcore multitrack
audio... It allows you to take files which you may have backed up or defragged
at some point, and basically 're-frag', or interleave them back into their
optimal state! It allows you to select any number of files, and interleave them
in one large chunk - you can even vary the interleave factor for each file
independently. Adding files couldn't be simpler, just select the files you want
to interleave (in the proper order, from the Windows explorer), and drag them
onto the Interleave dialog, doublecheck to make sure they are set up properly,
select the destination directory (must be different from the source), hit the
Interleave button, and away you go!

You really only have two options, one is to vary the size of the header of the
file, and the other is to vary the size of the contents.... Most file types (or
programs) write out files in nearly the same fashion every time; so if you're
using a Paris .PAF file, the header will always be 2048 bytes in size. WAV
files are a little bit trickier, but for the most part they almost always are
44 bytes; for any other formats, you'll need to contact the manufacturer of the
program you're using, and find out how they store it (don't contact me, I don't
know). Next, is the content size - this is just basically how many bytes are
being used by the sample; so if you're using a 16bit file, chances are that the
content size is 2 bytes; if it's a 24 or 32 bit file, chances are the content
size is 4 bytes. Once again, this varies from format to format, so check with
your manufacturer to find out how they do it. Here's a couple of the more
common sets:

File Type Desc Header Size Content Size
Paris .PAF 16bit audio 2048 2
Paris .PAF 24bit audio 2048 4
Wave .WAV 8bit audio 44 1
Wave .WAV 16bit audio 44 2
Wave .WAV 24bit audio 44 4
Wave .WAV 32bit audio 44 4

I would like to thank Brian Tankersley for motivating me to finally write this
super useful utility, a must for just about anyone doing digital audio or video.

That good old analogx code may fix this by undoing what you did to the files when defragging.

Could be faster than using PT's Consolidate on each song.

Might not be as great of a job as PT would do, might be better, dunno about that.

I tend to save Analogx interleave for use on only problem project files, I don't recommend blanket use of it all the time on everything ya got. Let the host program do what it likes to do with the files, but the interleave code can solve problems like the one you apparently have now.

Interestingly, I've never had to use it on the smaller projects like you are doing, but have found it to be useful for those projects using the big multichannel input soundcards sometimes. 16 tracks being recorded at once, or 8 tracks being recorded at once while 10 play back, stuff like that.

--Mac

See we keep reading Defrag, defrag when in essance this is actually a problem. I had forgotten about this until I read the above Read Me file that comes with the program.
With faster drives it's probably not an issue.
I'm just letting it grind its way through the whole folder of 150 songs. It's easier then redoing one at a time. from then on I'll just let the program consolidate feature do its thing.

Quote:

See we keep reading Defrag, defrag when in essance this is actually a problem.

The savvy op knows that defragging the drive is a good thing, though. There are many other files and such that *should* be put into contiguous order on that drive.

It is just the .wav or probably hidden and categorized as .raw files associated with a multitrack audio project that benefit from the Interleaving. If you know where those are stored, you can indeed and should indeed still defrag your drives regularly, but then go ahead and apply the Analogx Interleave to the folders where those files only are stored.

A defrag program that can be told which files and folders to defrag and which to NOT defrag can be a good thing for the DAW user. "Defraggler" comes to mind and is what I use. That is why I let Analogx Interleave fall by the wayside with my Win98 DAW machine way back when.

Avoid the "digital" mindthought about these things: "1 or zero, yes or no, good or bad."

The reality often lies with knowing what to do and when to do it instead.

--Mac

silvertones
what was the full dpc report ??
how many "us" reported etc etc. ??
if your getting red spikes that tells you something is amiss
and needs to be addressed/nailed down.
are the red spikes at the same intervals ??
regularly spaced ?? or random ??
if you can post a pic somewhere of the dpc screen mate.
it might simply be that the video tasks are consuming certain resource levels.
thus the sticky result.

Very true. Yes I agree I should have know to not defrag these files. I have Defragler for that reason. I'm not a newbie but for the sake of the newbies or less experienced this point needs to be made clear. Mac I actually think that once your over 55 like me you start at the beginning knowledge wise. To many file deletes & fragmented files between the ears.

Sorry bout the defrag advice Silvertones, it has never been an issue here, and has helped with some things.

Live and learn. Like I said earlier, that is why I am still here - to learn

Well Interlieve didn't help after all. I'm starting to go nuts here.
Manning,
I figured out the tool.
By disabling the wireless network card & the acpi battery controll everything dropped way down in the green with thehighest value of 59us. I let it run about 5 min like that. Stayed right down.
Still stutters like crazy though. I think it's fixed and it comes back. I'm gonna go through the consolidate again and leave the disabled things as they are.
I shall return.

Quote:

...Mac I actually think that once your over 55 like me you start at the beginning knowledge wise....

Tell me about it!

Same here.

--Mac

Hi John - there's a lot of hi-tech going on here and I have no idea about some of it.

But I have experienced this in PT when I have asked the program to run too many intensive plugins. I have only 700 PIII with 384 ram at the moment. You say you 12 RTs going - maybe try it without the plugins and see - didn't see it mentioned earlier.

Cheers

Ian,
No plugins!
Doing a little experiment with Interleave. I reread the Read Me file and I might have had the wrong settings. It has to do with header and content size. I set to the recommended for .wav files however it was mentioned that this info may need to be acquired from the program vendor. PG in this case. I'm juking 6 songs round and round to see what happens with the continuous load unload.
I am somewhat disappointed Jeff hasn't popped in here for a comment. With well over 100 posts.

Quote:

I'm starting to go nuts here.

I've only skimmed the thread, so maybe this was mentioned, but FWIW: Control Panel=>System=>Advanced Tab=>Performance=>Settings. Then check out the Visual Effects and Advanced tabs. There are parameters here that I think can modify video refresh rates. I see your other DAW apps have no issue, but RB could be programmed less efficiently, such that the performance tipping point can be leveraged by these settings.

A thought. -Ron

BTW, interesting app posted by Manning. Complementary ones are here. Looks like Microsoft liked the Sysinternals apps so much, they bought them out.

I MAY have found the answer. Maybe someone can experiment and see if it's reproduable. It has to do with the way I've created all of the songs.
First I loaded the completed .MGU file into RB. Then using track remove I removed all of the first 8 tracks, BB Tracks, except the piano. I then added RT in one at a time. I convert the piano to a wav file and then remove the piano midi part. I've now removed all of the 8 BB tracks with the track remove command.
If I open one of these songs it (Video) stutters. If I use the command after loading the song " Make first 8 tracks BB tracks" the stuttering stops. I've used a blank style.

If I then convert al BB, Blue Tracks, To regular tracks and then remove them it seems to be fine. It SEEMS to be messing up the song file to use the remove track when it's still blue. Tommorrow.

silvertones
re dpc...ok your in the green zone now..
thats good.
now we are getting somewhere.
some people have been able to get below 10us.
but your report now is pretty decent.

as to your video problem...
please could you post a pic somewhere of
win task manager when you get the sticky vid problem.
the dialog that shows resource useage. cpu/memory etc.
ie...keep task mgr running while rb is running.
it would be usefull to see what individual task resource useage is when
you get the sticky vid problem.

also whose video chipset is in your toshiba ??
also it would be usefull if you posted a pic of your rb
audio preference settings.
prefs>>audio tab.

also something to try.
it solved a prob for me once.
(might or might not work.)
notice in rb audio prefs...
TRACK BUFFER SIZE.
try various settings mate.
tell me if the 32768 setting makes any difference.

Changing track buffers didn't help. I think it's just a case that something about this lappy and this program are not compatible.

---See screenshot a couple posts below---

No sideways scroller bar appearing here so I can't read this anymore. What's more, if I decrease the magnitude from 100% to 75%, it still won't show what is to the right. For example,

Quote:

Changing track buffers didn't help. I think it's just a case that something about this lappy and this progr

That's as far right as it goes

yeh i cant see the full table n ram useage etc either.
please post the pic on a free download site.

That is alot easier to see. Thanks

What does the 'Detailed Information' window at the bottom show if you click on the line on the right hand side that ends "PG Music Inc"?

silvertones
now could we see a pic of your RB audio preferences please.

All default

silvertones
heres what i suspect is going on here.
and its only a suspicion and i might be wrong.
and i dont know the internal workings of RB obviously.
or your toshiba. its difficult without being there.
and my comments are based on your task mgr pic.
that your system is lightly loaded.

you mention this "sticky video" aspect.
depending how a daw is coded while playing back if i remember some daws
get their time positional info from the sound device.
(via a windows api that the programmer can use. )
or the only other way is the daw calculating the time position itself.
its been known that some sound devices sometimes dont send the correct
time position back to the daw.
whether this is your situation i just dont know,
its just a possibility i'm throwing out.
based on the fact your idle process is high hinting that your system
isnt under heavy load.

based on the above my question is...
1. what is the sound device that is being used ...creative ??
(this is one reason i asked for a pic of your preferences.
44.1/16 ?? ..mme or asio ?? )
2. if its usb do you have any other usb devices shareing the usb bus ??
reason for this question is the possibility that some other usb device is affecting the performance of the sound device.

heres how i would progress on this if i were in
your position.
process of elimination.

i would firstly test out another sound device.
if you find the situation is resolved, then the problem is probably
the current sound device your useing.

Not being flip as I appreciate the help. You said you only skimmed the thread as it's long.I will refresh.
I totally uninstalled:
1. USB sound Card
2. USB HD
3. PCMCIA sound card
4. network adapters
5. shut down all unnecessary programs
6. there is no security software
It plays the same regardless. Everything is now back on. I think it's in the SEQ file based on the way I'm creating these songs. I have about 150 RB songs that are all audio tracks now. If someone would try making a song the way I have maybe it will replicate. Here are the steps.Follow exactly. Don't get fussy about the music being coherent.

1. Import an MGU file into RB that is all MIDI except for Real Drums.
2. Using track---> remove track remove all tracks except the RD and the midi piano part.
3. Tracks--->make all BB tracks regular tracks.
4. Right click on the midi piano part and "auto convert Individual midi track to audio tracck.
5. Remove the midi piano as per #2
6. add 7 more Real tracks by highlighting each track one at a time, right click, select and generate RT.
7. Copy 6 measures of all tracks and paste to the end of the song.
8. do a fade out on these last six measures.

That's it in a nut shell.

John here's a post i found, not that it is the solution but a possible solution.
“My Toshiba laptop suddenly shuts down by itself without any warning. Sometimes it works fine for hours, sometimes it shuts down in 10-15 minutes.” This complaint we hear from our customers over and over again. About 15-20% of all Toshiba laptops we get for repair, suffer from an overheating problem. Yep, OVERHEATING!

This is one of the most common problems with Toshiba laptops we deal with.

Indications of laptop overheating problem:

1. The keyboard and the bottom of your laptop are very hot when the laptop is working.
2. The CPU fans are working all the time at maximum rotation speed and operate much louder than before.
3. The laptop suddenly shuts down by itself without warning. When it just started, the laptop was shutting down after 1-2 hours and how it shuts down after 5-10 minutes of operation.
4. The laptop works fine when it runs idle, but shuts down as soon as you start using any memory demanding applications (DVD player, image editing software, video editing software, etc.).

Solution:

If the CPU heatsink is not clogged with dust and lint completely, you can use canned air and just blow it inside the laptop through the openings on the bottom and on the sides. It’s nice as a precaution measure, but it might not work if your laptop already has a problem and the heatsink is completely clogged.

1. Open the laptop case, so you can access the CPU fan and the heatsink. In some cases you can access the heatsink through the latch on the bottom of the laptop. Sometimes (for example Toshiba Satellite A70/A75) you have to open the laptop case all the way down.
2. Carefully disconnect the fan cables on the system board and remove the fan. If the fan makes unusual sound when it spins (grinding sound), I would recommend to replace the fan.
3. Clean the fan and the heatsink with compressed air.
4. I would also recommend removing old thermal grease from the CPU and applying new grease for better heat conductivity.

I'm surprised the "A long and Winding Road" was not written about computer probs. Wyndham

Did all of that already.
I put Power Tracks on my other computer. Dell Inspiron 8100 PIII 1.4 ,512 ram and copied a couple of the SEQ songs over and the same stuttering of the scroll line happens.

silvertones
as i said best bet is to try process of elimination ..
try another sound device n see if the problem goes away.

Hello,

Quote:

No sideways scroller bar appearing here

Yes, for some reason a scrollbar doesn't appear when it should with the latest version of Internet Explorer - do not know why. Problem doesn't happen with Firefox. I removed the link to the image that was 1440 pixels wide, since there is a smaller version of the same one posted below, so now IE users should be able to read this properly.

Quote:

video stuttering

I haven't been able to duplicate the problem. I followed the steps listed to import a song, Remove BB tracks and so on, but I don't have the same stuttering problem. Since it only happens after you "remove blue tracks" it seems like there should be a way for us to duplicate it, but no luck so far unfortunately.

A couple of ideas that you have probably tried, but I'm not sure if I saw them in the thread. I would do them in the order listed:

-Did you tried installing RealBand into a NEW folder, such as C:\RealBand__TEST (rather than just reinstalling into the same folder).

-Did you try using MME instead of ASIO drivers?

-Did you try plugging your computer in, instead of using battery power (it's a laptop right?)

-Did you try a selective startup on that computer? Start | Run, type msconfig, choose 'selective startup' uncheck 'startup items', and reboot.

Then run RealBand and see if you still have the stuttering.

No change with new folder
I always use MME have also tried ASIO no change
Computer is always plugged in
No change with selective start up I had tried that. I just use a different program

Thanks for the 'stick-to-it-iveness' , Silvertones..

Parts of emails I sent to Andrew:

I took some CD's and loaded up 48 tracks and it played perfectly.
I saved as SEQ and restarted the program and it wouldn't even begin to play. Had to use task Mgr to shut down.
Reopened deleted 8 tracks ,saved & restarted it wouldn't play but was able to stop the program.
Deleted 10 more tracks were at 30 now, saved & restarted. the audio was fine the video was jumping a measure at a time.
Deleted 10 more now at 20 saved & restarted audio & video OK.
No more improvement down to 1 track.
Conclusion: I should be able to play 20 tracks. 9 tracks of Real Instruments makes the Video stutter.

I just did a song in RB by entering the chords on the chord sheet. I then added 9 RT, 1 RD, and then added 2 midi files. I then converted the midi tracks to audio and erased the midi. 12 tracks total play fine. All of my songs were created by importing the BIAB MGU files into RB! This is the typical process I used:

1. Import an MGU file into RB that is all MIDI except for Real Drums.
2. Using track---> remove track remove all tracks except the RD and the midi piano part.
3. Tracks--->make all BB tracks regular tracks.
4. Right click on the midi piano part and "auto convert Individual midi track to audio tracck.
5. Remove the midi piano as per #2
6. add 7 more Real tracks by highlighting each track one at a time, right click, select and generate RT.
7. Copy 6 measures of all tracks and paste to the end of the song.
8. do a fade out on these last six measures.

That's it in a nut shell.

silvertones
well this is a stumper isnt it mate ??
if youve tried different sound devices (have you ??)
and the same video prob occurs in each ..
then i gotta suspect , n mebe i'm wrong,
your lappie intrernal drive.
i find your first couple of para's in your last post very telling.
obviously rb can handle the 48 traks...
but once saved there are probs unless you delete traks.
thus i have to suspect the drive itself.

particularly your comment bout 20 traks working.
but higher trak counts being a problem.
so lets look at your drive.
please post a pic from win device manager of your drive settings.
dma.

as i said before , lappies are a pain.
some work well n some dont.
your not recording at some high sample rate like 96khz are you ??
ive seen it happen where lappie internal drives cant handle high bit depths
n sampling rates. so everything clams up.
i assume not cos your useing audigy ??

This may be more revealing. An email to Andrew.

Hey Andrew,

OK
You couldn't reproduce it the other day. Today I thought I'd load one of the mgu files that I originally used and see what I could do. I left all of the Blue Tracks alone and just muted them. I kept adding RTs one at a time. I saved the song and restarted the program each time I added a track. I would then load a different song and play a few bars. I then would load my test song, confirm proper play, add another track, save, restart and so on. I was able to load all 48 tracks!!! and it played perfectly. Only the first 5 tracks were muted MIDI.
I then deleted the BLUE tracks saved as test2 and restarted the computer. All remaining 43 audio tracks played perfectly.
At this point I figured I couldn't reproduce it either. All 150 songs were done with v3 before the last BETA.
I shut down the computer to go to lunch. When I got back I thought I'd test some more. I opened my test song hit play and everything locked up.I had to remove all but 5 tracks to get acceptable playback.
Why would restarting the computer affect the file playback. turning the program off and on didn't. Doesn't make sense to me.

Quote:

Why would restarting the computer affect the file playback. turning the program off and on didn't. Doesn't make sense to me.

Something must be attempting to load at startup and sometimes it completes whatever its task is and other times it doesn't. Might keep on polling and polling for it, though. Could be internet releted, like something trying to phone home and written poorly, but could also be a non-internet related proggie and a simple timing problem at bootup that allows it to complete sometimes and not at others. Might be a virus scanner that looks for updates when booting, something like that. I do know that Avast! can cause audio stuttering and stuff on my laptop if I boot up and the WiFi is not online, the darn thing looks for updates at bootup. Also, even if it does find the web, if there is an update for it to download and install, that, too, creates interrupts until it is done with the routine.

--Mac

Music only computer. No virus stuff, no internet. No matter what after completing a song if I reboot the file is forever messed up. Any other idea why rebooting would mess up the files.
?

Quote:

Music only computer. No virus stuff, no internet.
?

There still may be a rogue program or cookie that is trying to phone home in there. Some of them are really bad after they find no internet connection, they just keep on polling and polling and polling.

Quote:

No matter what after completing a song if I reboot the file is forever messed up. Any other idea why rebooting would mess up the files.

Before the reboot, the file is still playing from the default Temp location, likely C:\Temp.

After reboot and reloading the song, it plays again from the same place. Now I suspect possibility that somehow the .seq and associated wav files are not loading into that temp directory well. But can't figure out what setting you might investigate exactly.

Have you changed your disk cache size from the "let windows manage" setting?

--Mac

Mac,
To make sure I changed my temp folder to something I'd easily find. During playback there are no files going in there.
The only thing I see under the disc properties is a check for "enable write caching on the disc" and it's checked.
Is there someplace else to look?

Quote:

The only thing I see under the disc properties is a check for "enable write caching on the disc" and it's checked.

Did you try it with that UNchecked?

Dunno, but worth the shot...

--Mac

I'm done at this point. No one can reproduce it and Jeff has not offered any help.

Quote:

Mac,
To make sure I changed my temp folder to something I'd easily find. During playback there are no files going in there.

I'm not sure about this but if you changed the "Temp"named folder to something else, Windows or BIAB might regenerate the temp folder on it's own and the "Temp" might still be the "Temp" . Since you said it happened on another laptop that would cut out a lot of issues on your laptop.
There is a program call Belarc Advisor that tells you a great deal about your system. it free and you might find some thing in it's scan of your system that gives you a heads up on either a hidden TRS program that you didn't know about or a windows patch that might help. It free
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
Wyndham

Well I believe it's fixed. When I said I was done I was publicly admitting defeat so I could go on to the next step that all good computer techs take when they can't fix something. Reinstall Windows. I almost went back to Win2K as that disc is from MS and is a retail OS. The one from Toshiba is a recovery disc and it installs all of the typical crap. AOL etc. In removing this stuff before I probably messed something up. I was very careful this time. Just used add/remove programs, ran CCleaner once & ran Registry Mechanic once. I have XP SP3 and don't use this thing on the Internet so I'm not even going to do the updates. Everything is running. No shut down process, no disabled hardware. two computers networked. Running Three sound cards. So far RB runs very smoothly.
I'm afraid I'm one of the people that live by this motto:
"If it ain't broke fix it until it is"

John, there is a nifty little program called PC-Decrapifier. What you can do is perform a reinstall from the recovery image, then run PC-Decrapifier to remove all the, well, crap that gets installed. They keep a database of what each of the vendors crap up their systems with and then provide a one-stop shop for removing them. Of course, you get to select what to remove and what to keep. Everytime I restore my Vista system from the recovery disks, using PC-Decrapifier is the first thing I do.

You can run it later; however, they recommend running it right after restoring the system.

Just a thought.

That is great, John. Love the name and love the concept.

I also agree with someone's comment above Silvertones, great job sticking with this, very educational for me.

Bob

Thanks folks. John I went and got that tool.

Just one more comment about this. The actual problem was fixed by the reinstall of the OS BUT it was a twofold problem. As I mentioned before I had 150 BIAB tunes. I mass produced these songs into RB tunes. I did this all before the last BETA. I'm now going back over these songs and I've come across two songs that are not stable. They take longer to load. All I've done on these is erase the tracks that are causing it. So far on both it's been the strumming Acoustic. Then regenerate, consolidate and resave.

Sorry. Can't help here - the page runs too far to the right and there is no browser bar...

NOTHING HAS FIXED THIS PERMANENTLY. I DO HAVE A CONSISTENT TEMPORARY FIX. SEE OTHER THREAD.

John, sorry mate but I SERIOUSLY think you need to think about investing in a new system

Bull
If a PIV 3.0 with 2 G ram and Nvidia card can't run 8 tracks of audio something amiss with the program.

John, you seem to be having never ending IT problems.

I agree with your 'bull' but I really don't think it IS the software...

Just trying to help

Sam,
5 tracks in RB
52 Tracks in Adobe Audition
Read "I Love Real Band"

I have, John. Its a shame