Is this still at Windows ME? If so, nothing I can say other than get rid of ME and go to Win2k is going to help. Not much help for you, but 2k is the only windows OS I trust for recording as it is the OS that gives me the most control over what is running at any given time.
Once you're going to 2k, some things to try:
1) Minimal win2k install - During the custom windows install you'll be doing it's important to disable the installs of pretty much everything: no network settings, no script debugging, IIS, games, etc. All that crap will work fine on your ME install and should be used there. Even IIS and the PWS which was not designed to be run on ME will work if you jump though a couple hoops. This will help keep the registry size smaller which means less work for the important programs that you're actually going to use.
2) Minimal Other non-os programs - This OS is for recording and recording related activities, and as such should only contain programs used for that purpose. Again, this just helps keep the registry small which gives huge performance gains. Here is the complete list of software I have installed on my recording OS:
a) Adobe Acrobat - userful for looking at the Apogee user manual in PDF form. That's all I do with it, though so this one is effectively optional.
b) Apogee MiniMe drivers - latest and greatest as of April '03
c) ASAPI Update
d) ATI Display Utilities and Drivers
e) CDWave
f) FLAC
g) Windows HotKey Utility
h) Windows PowerPanel utility
i) Sony Specific drivers: HotKey, Notebook Setup, PowerPanel, Programmable IO, Shared Libraries, Utilities DLL
j) WaveLab 4.0g
k) Winamp
l) Windows Media Player
m) WinZip - probably not necessary.
n) Yamaha Audio Driver
Very minimal. No piece of software is present that doesn't have a clear purpose. Note that I don't have any anti-virus software. this is a particularly costly piece of software to run as it will potentially scan every file action and could severly screw up a recording by chewing up CPU and creating additional unnecessary disk activity. This is on the ME partition.
3) Minimal Services running - Running unnecessary Windows Services is only chewing up cpu time and memory that should be dedicated to recording. You're going to want to disable the majority of the services that come enabled. Here is a list of the services I am running:
a) Ati HotKey poller
b) COM+ Event System
c) Event Log
d) Logical Disk Manager
e) Plug and Play
f) RPC
g) Remote Registry Service
h) RunAs service
i) Security Accounts Manager
j) Server
k) System Event Notification
l) Windows Management Instrumentation
m) Windows Management Instrumentation Driver Extensions
This is effectively just 13 out of the 53 available services running. The remaining 40 services are disabled or manual.
Once you're here, I would test recording without any additional tweaking. I found that at this stage I could record 16/44.1 and 16/48 flawlessly and would get about 2 pops per hour of 24/48 material (both via USB). It was at this time that I bumped up the WaveLab buffer settings to 32 (the buffer count) and left the buffer size at the default. 24/48 recording has been flawless since as long as the harddisk is defragged which brings me to my last point: defrag often. If your disk is always clean this won't be an issue, but if you plan on keeping lot's of audio files for listening purposes I would recommend defragging before each show. I pretty much have a clean disk all the time as I transfer master WAVs to a different machine for archiving and CD mastering, but YMMV.
A couple additional notes that may prove to be helpful for you:
1) The C1VN power management settings don't always stay set to the way I configure them after a shutdown and restart. As a result I ensure that the monitor, system and harddisk are set to turn off 'Never' before each recording venture. Pain in the ass? yep... good to do ensure a sweet tape? hell yeah. It's strange as I am using the Sony power management drivers but I've also noticed this behavior on the ME install, so I chalk this up as a hardware issue.
2) Double check the MiniMe ASIO driver settings prior to each recording venture. Similar to the power issue, the WaveLab ASIO MME driver settings arent't always retained after each shutdown. I have found the driver to be on 16 bit several times when I last used it at 24 bit. It's very inconsistent, but something I've learned to live with and check (and reset as necessary) each time out in the field.
3) Plug In the MIniMe USB cable after Win2k boots up. I have gotten the dreaded black screen of death several times when plugging in the USB cable while Win2k is just starting. Just something I've learned to live with. This is running Service Pack 2, which had several nottable USB enhancements made for similar problems so I just deal with it.
Anymore questions, fire them away. Hope this helps.
Rusty
Topic: wavelab buffer? (Read 1638 times)