Playback stalls getting to be a drag

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soundaround
Posts: 23
Joined: Wed Jun 11, 2003 06:26

Playback stalls getting to be a drag

Postby soundaround » Mon Jun 14, 2004 22:49

Within the past three or so weeks we have started to have random playback stalls on all our drives that house and playback PMX projects. About once every other playback of a project. Since we typically use outboard gear for some processing we have to play back (re-record) in the tracks and entire projects with FX after we have done our editing. Thus when a stall occurs it interrupts sound and requires starting over at least a portion of the re-record. Very time consuming! :(

Since we are working on several different drives (IDE and fast SCSI) and the problem occurs in them all it is hard to imagine that it is because of disk fragmentation------however if disk fragmentation is the cause can anyone tell me if they have had issues with defragging a disk that has many large pmf files on it? Does everything stay together??
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Pyromanic
Posts: 478
Joined: Wed May 22, 2002 18:31
Location: Germany, Lindlar
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Postby Pyromanic » Tue Jun 15, 2004 00:19

I only have this effect when using IDE drives, our SCSI Raid had never a single stall problem. Mabe its another reason. Try playing around with the size of the playback buffers in the profiling window. You might get longer start times (from start hit to plaback start) but it should run safer with a larger buffer.
best regards

Pyromanic
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Mike Hatch
Posts: 98
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2002 09:41
Location: London
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Postby Mike Hatch » Tue Jun 15, 2004 19:52

I had stalls from my IDE drives until I realised that they have to be configured properly in the computer's BIOS. Sometimes there seems to be problems if the system doesn't know exactly what type of drive it is - if the computer is expecting a CD-R on that IDE channel you will not get data at the right speed. Also worth checking that the master / slave issues are correct if you have other things on the IDE bus. I find that the "cable select" position is not always the best option, but it was trial and error for me to get them working well. Once I got all the windows settings right I have had very good success with the IDE drives - and they are cheap enough for most clients to archive the material on them.....!
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Roland Clarke
Posts: 279
Joined: Fri May 31, 2002 23:57
Location: St Leonards on Sea, England

Postby Roland Clarke » Wed Jun 16, 2004 10:41

I had a certain number of issues with some of the Pyramix releases regarding stalls last year. This year I have taken on a computer expert and addition to maintaing our own machines we are building and maintaining computer systems for others. Our man was not only able to get our system running well, he has now changed us over to using SATA drives to remove the demands placed on the IDE buss. As Mike pointed out cable addressing and Master/Slave settings are critical. You would be suprised at how many customer machines he repairs, built by so called compter professionals where the basic settings are wrong. SCSI/SCSI raid configurations of course are one simple solution, however they are still relatively expensive for the drives and unecessary for anything more than large track counts at high sample rates.

Regards


Roland :D
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billdooley
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Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2004 03:10
Location: Los angeles USA
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Postby billdooley » Wed Jun 16, 2004 22:51

I'm a new user and had this problem early on. I was advised that I had possibly had more that one soundfile mounted with the same name which could be causing it. This was indeed the case at the time and since then it hasn't happened.

Bill
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maurice
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2002 16:10

Postby maurice » Thu Jun 17, 2004 16:06

Hello all,

Is this all happening with one file per track enbled in the information and settings/record tab, or ar you working in pmf files (not one file per track enabled) meaning that you are recording/reading one big interleaved file from your drives?
In big multitrack sessions and especially high sampling rate, it is strongly advised to use that.

Cheers

Maurice
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