Is there an objective recording stability test?

[bilco]

I know and have used the Davec test, but I am wanting to test my PT LE/Digi002 Rack/ibook/LaCie Quad drive stability before an upcoming recording session.

I will be recording live, ~ 15 tracks simultaneously and I plan to just let it run for the length of the whole session instead of creating separate sessions for each song. The sets will last about 1 & 1/2 hours each. I can start a new session during the break between sets.

I can go in and arm 15 tracks and press record and see how it behaves, but it seems to me that 15 tracks recording silence is not going to put the same load on it that 15 tracks of different wave forms being recorded simultaneously will be.

I have done this before using the system drive and recording about 10 tracks at the same time. It worked better than it should have with the system drive, but started throwing errors and stopping during the last 2 sets.

Thanks,
bilco

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by bilco

I know and have used the Davec test, but I am wanting to test my PT LE/Digi002 Rack/ibook/LaCie Quad drive stability before an upcoming recording session.

I will be recording live, ~ 15 tracks simultaneously and I plan to just let it run for the length of the whole session instead of creating separate sessions for each song. The sets will last about 1 & 1/2 hours each. I can start a new session during the break between sets.

I can go in and arm 15 tracks and press record and see how it behaves, but it seems to me that 15 tracks recording silence is not going to put the same load on it that 15 tracks of different wave forms being recorded simultaneously will be.

I have done this before using the system drive and recording about 10 tracks at the same time. It worked better than it should have with the system drive, but started throwing errors and stopping during the last 2 sets.

Thanks,
bilco

This is one area were I think you might want to have a large freshly formated drive with an abundance of free space. Some one else (Slim Shady perhaps?) mentioned that they like to take the time to write zeros to the whole drive to see if there are any bad blocks or clusters. I think disk utility will let you do this but I'm not at my Mac right now. If you don't want to record silence than run some type of a sound into a input and select that input for every track. Also FWIW if you planning to record 15 mono tracks then testing with 15 stereo tracks should provide with a very generous margin of error.

[dougied]

What about this, but actually recording the test tone for 1-2 hours??

The Dverb 2.0 Test

Start the computer. Create a brand new 24bit/48k Session on your audio drive for the Dverb test. Open up the system usage window in PT. Then, go to Setup > Playback Engine... > and make sure the RTAS engine: Ignore Errors During Playback/Record(may cause clicks and pops) is NOT checked. Set up your time line ruler for Min:Secs. You want to be in grid mode and set up your grid for Min:Secs and 1 second. Create one mono audio track. Take the selector tool, put it on the 5 minute mark in your audio track and drag this to the start of your session. You will now have 5 minutes selected in this track. Go to AudioSuite > Other > Signal Generator and click on the "process" but. You should now see a 5 minute test tone. Create another audio track and insert 5 Dverbs in all the inserts. Record arm the Dverb track. Click on the track name so it is high lighted white, and hit shift+alt+D then hit enter. Record arm the new track and continue this pattern. You want to be able to record WITHOUT THE TEST TONE BREAKING UP!! Keep adding Dverbs and recording. If the test tone starts to breakup, then delete some Dverbs until you can hear a SOLID TEST TONE for 5 MINUTES. This is VERY VERY important. The test tone has to be 100% solid!!!

It's possible......

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by dougied

What about this, but actually recording the test tone for 1-2 hours??

The Dverb 2.0 Test

Start the computer. Create a brand new 24bit/48k Session on your audio drive for the Dverb test. Open up the system usage window in PT. Then, go to Setup > Playback Engine... > and make sure the RTAS engine: Ignore Errors During Playback/Record(may cause clicks and pops) is NOT checked. Set up your time line ruler for Min:Secs. You want to be in grid mode and set up your grid for Min:Secs and 1 second. Create one mono audio track. Take the selector tool, put it on the 5 minute mark in your audio track and drag this to the start of your session. You will now have 5 minutes selected in this track. Go to AudioSuite > Other > Signal Generator and click on the "process" but. You should now see a 5 minute test tone. Create another audio track and insert 5 Dverbs in all the inserts. Record arm the Dverb track. Click on the track name so it is high lighted white, and hit shift+alt+D then hit enter. Record arm the new track and continue this pattern. You want to be able to record WITHOUT THE TEST TONE BREAKING UP!! Keep adding Dverbs and recording. If the test tone starts to breakup, then delete some Dverbs until you can hear a SOLID TEST TONE for 5 MINUTES. This is VERY VERY important. The test tone has to be 100% solid!!!

It's possible......

You could do that but the Dverb test is more about finding your actual DSP limit were as simply recording a band live is going to stress the drive out and not take much if any DSP.