Skipping ... did I solve my own problem?

vanblah wrote on 1/29/2002, 8:00 PM
So anyway, I posted a few months ago about my Vegas projects skipping and no one was able to help. I even called tech support. The problem did not go away. It only happened on two projects anyway (These were Audio projects BTW, I am using Vegas Video but not using the Video features at this time). They skipped even after the upgrade to VV3. We shelved these two projects for the time being. So anyway, tonight I was dusting these projects off, getting ready to re-record them, when I noticed (even with the skipping) that the levels were really high overall, I mean REALLY high. I had never noticed before (I was a novice Vegas user when I initially recorded these files). So I started backing the levels off and LO AND BEHOLD!!!!! the skipping went away.

Can anyone else confirm this phenomenon??

My setup for this machine:
PIII 1Ghz on an ASUS CUSL2-C (Intel 815e chipset)
128 MB PC133 DRAM
2 15K Seagate U160 SCSI (Striped with W2K) for Audio
2 7200 UATA drives for OS and general storage
Aardvark Aark24 (8in8out "soundcard")

Comments

Cheesehole wrote on 1/29/2002, 10:36 PM
maybe it was clipping and not skipping
vanblah wrote on 1/29/2002, 10:49 PM
It was doing both ... clipping in the meters of Vegas and also skipping as if the prcessor couldn't keep up with the buffer ...
pup wrote on 1/30/2002, 8:18 AM
Tell me...how long was yer project? And did the skipping start right away, or later on in the project?

- pup
vanblah wrote on 1/30/2002, 10:18 AM
The project was 17 tracks of (mono) audio, about 3.5 to 4 minutes long. Moderate FX on each track. Nothing unusual. It started skipping within a few seconds after hitting play. I have other audio projects that reach 24 tracks and about the same use of FX with no skipping.

Believe me, I tried everything; setting different buffer levels. Defragging. Moving the files to a new location. Nothing worked.
Rednroll wrote on 1/30/2002, 1:17 PM
I've experienced this is the past. It actually might be a function of Vegas or your sound card. When you go over 0dB in the digital world, the digital processing runs out of numbers to assign to the sample. So the end result is a severe distortion, not a pleasant distortion like in the analog days, more like a big click or pop, which could actually damage your speakers. So a lot of software will usually have a "mute" function or maybe some kind of limiting function if your levels go over 0dB to prevent the "pop" noise from occuring. So maybe Vegas or your sound cards software has a "mute" function and this is why the audio sounds like it is skipping, because the output is constantly being muted when your levels go over 0dB.