V5 choking on 5 tracks - help requested

PeterWright wrote on 5/31/2004, 1:53 AM
I've had a horrendous session trying to record some multitrack audio in Vegas 5

I had playback going very slow, freeze ups, weird crackling, and, several blue screen of death Windows close downs – something I’ve NEVER had before with Vegas. To make it worse the so called “restored” project that Vegas offered was in fact the previously last version I had saved, and the last track I had recorded before the crash was not only missing from the project, it did not exist on the hard drive even though I’d finished recording and renamed it.

Now I intend tracking this down, but there are many many variables to check out, and I thought someone may be able to save me an hour or two’s work by suggesting an optimum way of approaching this “detective work”

Obviously something in my system could not cope with what I was trying to do, and I would have expected this to have caused stuttering or hesitation, but not complete crashes.

I was only ever recording one track at a time. Playback was max 10 tracks, and even when I muted some to reduce playback to 5 tracks I still got the horrendous lockups and crashes. It plays up both whilst recording and playing back. When I rendered to a new track and soloed that everything was fine of course, but that’s no surprise.

Using XP Pro

Hardware –

Sony Vaio P4 1.6 laptop 512Mb ram.

MAudio Quattro USB Sound card - latest drivers.

Behringer MX 802A mixer

External USB2 7200 rpm 120 Gb hard drive. 5 Gb still free ...
Plenty of space for recording, but I'll try and find another drive to copy everything to in case it's HD related.

Here are the other things I shall try changing, not necessarily in order of precedence. If I discover a “cure” I shall report immediately but I’d appreciate any ideas or advice.

Vegas 5 – is it as stable as V4?
I may try copying each track into V4 – STOP PRESS - this isn’t possible, so I’ll have to render each track to a new wav, but first I'll have to get rid of envelopes, FX and event gain changes ….

FX – Track level effects only – Compression, EQ, Reverb on most tracks.
I've tried bypassing all track FX, but it still misbehaves.

Project settings were 48000 / 16 bit stereo.
Not exactly pushing the envelope, but I could try reducing everything to 44.1 kHz

Other apps - nothing else running that I've opened, but there may be some unnecessary auto running stuff - what's the best way to identify what should be running and what shouldn't?

Sorry for the convoluted post, but I've never had problems like this during 2 1/2 years of Vegas. I do video more than audio, but I have composed 22 track stuff before without problems.

Is there something ese I may be overlooking?

Thanks for any suggestions

Peter


Comments

Geoff_Wood wrote on 6/1/2004, 1:03 AM
I would be surprised if there wasn't an update quite soon, that may solve your problem. In the meantime, have you tried non-ASIO drivers ?

geoff.
PeterWright wrote on 6/1/2004, 5:34 AM
No Geoff - but I'll try anything!!

Do you know if it's possible to run the USB Quattro without ASIO?

I'll try in the morning .... I have previously done multi track with my Vaio laptop's buit-in sound card without ASIO (mini jack mic in!), but I want to improve quality, and I need an external sound card for line in ....

For the time being, to prevent crackles and crashes I am restricting playback to 4 tracks by muting others, but I don't believe this is how Vegas should behave on my system.
Handsome wrote on 6/3/2004, 9:22 AM
Is the input monitoring on? When I first switched to Vegas 4, I couldn't figure out why my computer wouldn't keep up. I had to switch off the input monitoring on every track before it settled down.

PeterWright wrote on 6/3/2004, 7:26 PM
Thanks for the suggestion, but that's not it - with all input monitoring switched off I cannot playback 10 tracks without, after a minute or so, crackling, slowing down followed by speeding up ...

I thought it might be track effects overtaxing playback, but even with all FX bypassed it does the same.

I'm hoping its something to do with ASIO drivers and V5 - otherwise I'm stumped for now.
PipelineAudio wrote on 6/3/2004, 8:17 PM
I wouldnt use ASIO in vegas, never works right for me thru three cards now, soundscape echo and RME
adowrx wrote on 6/3/2004, 8:37 PM
Buffer mismatch, maybe ????
PeterWright wrote on 6/3/2004, 8:38 PM
Thanks Pipeline

I'll try setting it up without ASIO and see if this solves the crashes - not sure how to do this - are the MAudio Quattro drivers ASIO specific, or is this a variable set somewhere else?

Also - isn't ASIO recommended for reducing latency to practical levels?
PeterWright wrote on 6/3/2004, 8:40 PM
adowrx - I'll investigate anything that may help - could you be more specific about buffer mismatch and how to correct it.

Thanks.
PipelineAudio wrote on 6/3/2004, 9:56 PM
ASIO is good, but for me personally hasnt been to stable in vegas. Under options, preferences, audio device try picking "windows classic wave driver" and see what happens
Geoff_Wood wrote on 6/3/2004, 10:07 PM
ASIO and MOTU fine for me in V4.

geoff
PeterWright wrote on 6/3/2004, 11:47 PM
Pipeline - two run-throughs with Windows Classic driver and no problems!!

Thanks for that - I hated not being able to rely on Vegas.

Thanks also to Geoff - you suggested this straight off - I wasn't sure how to implement ....

(I'm back in V5) - presumably there is a incompatibility situation with ASIO which may be addressed by future updates.
PeterWright wrote on 6/4/2004, 1:00 AM
Hmmm - I may have spake a bit too soon.

Two playbacks of 10 tracks using Window Classic produced some stuttering, but it was possible to pause and restart - no crashes or BSOD, so the W/Classic drivers are an improvement without being a total cure.

I'd like to pursue the buffer question - I see in Prefs / Audio / Advanced that Buffer size (samples) is defaulted to "MME", and there is a drop down choice of changing this in a range 64 to 16384.

Does anyone know the implications of fiddling with this? Does it have to match with hardware / some other setting?

Thanks for the help.
Geoff_Wood wrote on 6/4/2004, 5:15 AM
Totally guessing here (!) but you may find that ASIO problems will be fixed very soon.

geoff
PeterWright wrote on 6/4/2004, 7:29 AM
I hope you're right Geoff.