Freezing Mac - Help!

[Marcus]

Whilst using SDII recently my Mac has started freezing for no apparent reason - it seems to happen most often when jumping to another point in the file and trying to play back (sometimes I get the 'thrumming hand' and once I was told there was a system error 10). I've tried trashing the Digisetup file - no joy - but can't think of anything else to try. Any bright ideas anyone.

Many thanks
Marcus

[DigiTechSupt]

Hello Marcus,

Sound Designer freezing could be a couple of things so I'll give several to try...

1) SCSI termination, SCSI ID conflict. Make sure that the SCSI chain is properly terminated and not double terminated. Verify that there are no two SCSI devices that sharing the same SCSI ID. Swap SCSI cables.

The best bet to rule out these problems would be to remove ALL external SCSI devices except a single audio drive and see if the problem persists.

2) Extension and/or Control Panel conflict. Using Extensions manager (or similar) create an extension set that contains only the DigiSystem Init and restart the computer.

3) Type 10 suggests there may be an issue with your Operating System, RAM and/or computer. I would suggest doing a fresh install of a Mac OS on another drive and booting from it. Then launch Sound Designer and see if you have the problem.

Does this problem happen in all sound files or only one or some? If it happens in only one it could be a corrupt sound file.

I hope this helps,

thanks,

Jon Connolly

[Marcus]

Jon

The problems occur in different sound files in SDII but never in MLCD which runs, plays-back and burns the same files with no problems.
Many thanks for your suggestions

Marcus

[Marcus]

Jon
I tried your suggestions and even tried re-installing SDII - still no joy. So I suppose it must be a computer or RAM problem (PM 8600/250 w. OS 8.1). But what gets me is that MLCD works fine as do PT and Cubase which both use far more RAM than SDII. Incidentally, Norton crashguard comes up with 'Unmapped Memory Exception' if that means anything to you.
Thanks
Marcus

[ProdInfo]

Are you using SD II 2.8.2 or 2.8.3?
-BGP-

[Marcus]

BGP

I'm using SDII 2.8.3

Marcus

[Marcus]

BTW, when the Mac freezes, some of the set-up information reverts back to default (such as colours info). Is this info stored in the 'Digisetup' file? BTW, where should this file be? It's now in the preferences folder but I'm sure it used to be in the System folder! Does this make a difference?

Thanks
Marcus

[Marcus]

I read in this month's Sound on Sound (UK) that OS 8.1 is not currently supported by any Digi software (PT 3.4 review)! Is this true? Is it worth reinstalling OS 8?

Marcus

[DigiTechSupt]

Is the pre-allocate button checked in the record window?

How big is the hard drive you are recording to/playing back from?

can you remove all external SCSI devices and record/playback from the internal drive?

You may want to increase the amount of RAM allocated to Sound designer by doing a "Get Info" on the Sound Designer icon and increasing the preferred amount by several thousand (1000 = 1MB).

Are you seeing this problem in all Sound Designer files?

Do all of these files have playlists also?

Thanks,
Jon Connolly

[Marcus]

Jon

Thanks for your suggestions. I think I've narrowed it down - the problem only seems to happen with split stereo files. It doesn't seem to matter whether I record internally or externally (4.3 GB HD), whether or not pre-allocate is checked, whether or not the files have playlists or how much RAM is assigned to SDII (I've tried anywhere up to 40 MB) but interleaved stereo files play back OK.
What puzzles me is the fact that this problem suddenly cropped up out of the blue - things were fine for a few months with exactly the same setup.

Thanks

Marcus