Topic: 24/96 issue.....

[Nicaragua]

hey everybody, i've been doing some testing with this and got a question(maybe a few)

i used Spark XL 2.8 to record an 1.5 hr track(just music out of my speakers)on my ibook.  recorded it as a .w64 to avoid the 2GB limit.  i then cut the track up into chunks, all around 500MB. basically my question is can this file be converted to aiff so that I can flac it??  right now if i go to file>Save audiophile as...change the format to aiff, it causes Spark to crash everytime.

im assuming xACT cant handle .w64 files cuz i get an error message everytime(if you want to see it i can post it) i try to encode one.

i have been able to burn the .w64 to a cdrw disc, transfer it to my pc, open it in soundforge and resave it as .wav, but it is a pain to do it this way.  anyone know of a workaround

[scb]

what verson of os x are you on?  10.3.3 introduced an issue that made spark crash when trying to save some files.  you need the 2.8.2 upgrade for spark to fix this.  maybe this is what's causing you trouble

have you ever used spark's batch convertor?  it's great...

[John Kelly]

What you really need to do is just turn off the "Add Extension" check box in the save dialog to stop Spark from crashing.

Although updating may not be a bad idea either.

[Nicaragua]

ahhhh...batch converter seems to be the solution!  nice.

damn why didn't i think of that....this program has so many bells and whistles i guess i got frustrated too quickly

+T anyway scott!

[Nicaragua]

thank you as well John!

[Nicaragua]

well my first attempt at 24/96 was last night at Tortoise.  pretty much a failure from my stance.

the recording kept getting stopped by a popup that only read "Unknown file error"  this happened about 30 minutes into the recording.   I just clicked OK and then hit record again, and it began recording from where it stopped.  I don't think i noticed the popup right away so i think i missed 3-5minutes or so.  Then the same thing happened about 20min later. then it happened about 3-4 times every couple of minutes.  

i've never run into this problem before in any of my tests.  one thing I did notice was on the first crash i had already created 27 regions.  could too many regions cause the recording to stop on error?  any of you guys run into this?

if this is the problem it seems that I can avoid regions from being created by clicking on the pull down arrow next to "Auto" in the recording window then turning the thresold all the way to -60dB.  

[scb]

>>'ve never run into this problem before in any of my tests.  one thing I did notice was on the first crash i had already created 27 regions.  could too many regions cause the recording to stop on error?  any of you guys run into this?

if this is the problem it seems that I can avoid regions from being created by clicking on "Auto" in the recording window then turning the thresold all the way to -60dB. <<

just turn off the auto create and see if that helps?

[John Kelly]

Are the regions ever made correctly (meaning on track splits) to begin with?  I've always seen it as pretty useless unless you're transferring media...

[Nicaragua]

well no they are not, and yes it is a useless feature.  It was a total accident having it on in the first place.  

I guess I am just trying to figure out if it was the number of regions created that was causing the recording to stop and give me that error message, or if there is something else I am doing wrong.   I take it neither of you had run into this problem before.

i was using .w64 to do this, any reason why I should use Sound Designer II format instead?

i'm gonna run some more test tonight and see whats up

[nic]

SDII has the 2GB limit that WAV and AIFF has, but SDII-ext doesn't

[scb]

the SDii that spark does will do up to 6 hours of 24/96

[Nicaragua]

well i went and did another test recording tonight.  none of the same problems this time around so I'm guessing it was the auto-region feature that was to blame.  probably do some more this week just to double check.

Although I have been experiencing a lot of "pops" and "clicks" in the recording.  I was thinking this may have to do with the 410 driver perhaps.  any reason for me not to update to the latest build?(I am currently on 1068)

[John Kelly]

I've never had success with any driver passed 1054.  But if you wanna try, have at it.

[Nicaragua]

yeah i tried that newer driver and all hell broke loose on the ibook :censored:

went back to 1054 and updated spark to 2.8.2...things seem to be going smooth now.  hopefully it'll work this weekend when it counts!