Delay before play and record

[Obsidian Dragon]

I've been using my home-made Intel P4 PC with Protools LE 6.9 cs3 and have had no problems. I recently needed to use a Dell Dimension 8400 Desktop with at P4 processor and 1 GB RAM with Protools Le 6.9 cs3.

This is what I've noticed. When I click on play with record enabled or not, there is a one to three second delay before it starts. This would normally not be an issue but over the course of the session it becomes a bother. Even the talent started to wonder why it was taking me so long to get the tracks rolling before a punch or take. Even when we played back the take to listen, the delay was obvious.

Has anyone seen this before? Is there a solution that I have not found for this? The setup is pretty basic (PC - Adaptec FW card - Digi002 - Powered Monitors). I's just using 4-6 tracks for this project and no plug-ins as I'm just tracking so it really is not pushing the limits or the computer. Is there something from Dell that needs to be disabled? I didn't do any tweaks with my other system either an it play instantly. Thanks in advance.

[spkguitar]

What's the open ended record allocation set to? If it is set for "all available space" it can take awhile to assign the temp files while recording. Try setting it to limit at a certain timeframe (say 10 minutes).

[Obsidian Dragon]

Thanks. I'll look into that. I just don't recall needing to do that with my other PC. If anyone else has seen this, let me know what you did.

Thanks

[lemix]

Have you tried recording to a different hard drive ?
OR..the obvious.."preroll and count off" I would check those first..
good luck,

[Shan]

....If anyone else has seen this, let me know what you did.

Thanks

Very common.

Shane

[Obsidian Dragon]

Hmmm. I tried setting the open ended recording to 10 minutes (and 5 minutes) but it still takes about 2 - 3 seconds before it starts to playback and record. I've also tried different preroll settinging including zero preroll. I am running the protools application on the same drive as my OS, but I keep the audio files on a spearate drive. Any suggestions?

[DigiTechSupt]

Is the '2 bars' button possibly highlighted in the transport window?

[Ducky]

I've had this problem since the days of 6.0. Something seems to build up in the registry and eventually it becomes noticable. The only way I've ever been able to fix this is by loading a new boot for Windows XP, reloading PTLE, and it's good to go again. I figured by v6.9, it was fixed, but haven't loaded 6.9 yet.

[Obsidian Dragon]

Thanks for the replys so far. The "2-Bars" is not highlighted. Does more takes (punch in and outs) cause it to take longer to start playback and recording? On one session we have about 90 takes. However I noticed that the delays still exist even with a new session. Is there a way to clean up the tracks to only keep the most current takes (some systems call this "rendering") and delete the unnecessary audio regions? I just want to do some house keeping to try to improve this 2-3 second delay afer clicking play to get the audio going.

[The Duncan]

Disable any antivirus software.