Calling Bastiaan & Stone Knife

[4444]

Hi Guys,
On a previous string (PTF on Dell Inspiron 5000e) I mentioned PTF chronic freeze, and concensus was the internal ESS Maestro sound card was the booger. I set up a new hardware profile and disabled absolutely everything not being used to do audio, including the ESS, and also did all the optimizations recommended by Digidesign and Tascam (I'm now using a US-224 for digital and analog i/o). PTF still freezes. The 224 bundled software (Cubasis) worked fine. I really wanted to use PTF as a learning base for a later purchase of PT LE, but if simple little PTF won't even run on my rig, I'm dubious about an upgrade as well. The Steinberg and Soundforge demos I've tried run fine, so against my original plan for PT it looks like I'm being directed toward a non-PT purchase unless your experience (and Skill!)might shed light on this conundrum. Yes...conundrum. This stuff Should work. But as granny used to say, "Should ain't Is." Any ideas? Thanks for your time and consideration. (Dell Inspiron 5000e, 800Mhz, Pentium III, 20 gig 4200 rpm internal HDD, 30 gig external 7200 rpm firewire HDD (Fantom Drive-for audio files) Tascam US-224 USB audio interface-controller.)

[Bastiaan]

i saw you use a realy slowwwww system-disk (4200 rpm). I think it will boost overall performance if you change that in a nice new fast one (7200rpm or faster). Enable DMA on all the drives in your system. Make sure cd-rom drives are not on the same ide-cable as your harddisk.

I have seen people stating that they weren't able to run ptfree on their system, but when they got a AMIII/digi001 they were able to run it.

Did you disable your on-board soundcard only in windows, or also in the bios-setup? You should disable it in the bios.......

[Stone Knife]

Just for fun, see if you can get ahold of a SoundBlaster PCI 128 $30 card; configure that in Settings> Control panel> Sounds and Multimedia> Audio (and Devices) as the primary soundcard.

This freezing thing happens worse with the better soundcards. The more you spend on the card, the more likely it is that it won't work on PTF. It doesn't make sense, I know.

Running PTF off a USB port is something that wasn't even possible when this Free code was written, I don't think... so that's a real leap into the unknown, there.

PTF is not LE. They should have completely different names.

The larger relative to the 224, the 428- I know works as a controller with Pro Tools, but "Free" is not really Pro Tools. I couldn't get it to work in six weeks trying. Never did, really. My 001 works great. Go figure!

I do agree that your system drive aught to be 7200+ and that will give you a big boost into the future use of the machine. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[4444]

Bastiaan,
According to Dell, they don't make an internal HDD for the Inspiron 5000e (a laptop) faster than 4200 RPM.
DMA is enabled on internal HDD and DVD-rom (external 7200 rpm Fantom Firewire HDD not DMA supported).
How do I check to see if DVD-rom and internal HDD are not on the same ide cable?
I disabled the internal ESS soundcard in windows. How do I disable in the bios? I pressed the power and escape buttons simultaneously and got a bios page, but no soundcard topics were in view.
Can't really afford to buy a digi 001 just to see if PTF will work, unless of course Digidesign might want to fund me for some R&D (Not!)
I'll take a few more licks at using PTF, but I've got a feeling I'm beating a dead horse. I tested a demo version of Cakewalk Sonar on my rig, and it Kicked Butt! What a great piece of work. Easy to use, and with a great manual and great depth of utility, and no freezes or crashes. I Really wanted to go with a Digidesign product, but Sonar is very appealing, and good bang for the buck compared to PT.
Anyhoo, thanks again for all your generosity and consideration.

[4444]

Stoneknife,
Kinda hard to jam a Soundblaster 128 into my laptop, but the ESS Maestro 2E says it's Soundblaster (WDM)compatable, and it certainly Sounds cheap enough!
You might be right about the USB interface. I've had no problems with any other programs I've run using the 224.
You're right, PTF ain't LE. However, I mixed a friend's CD on LE recently at a small studio, plenty HDDs, speed, and a 001, and even it froze a half dozen times a day. Maybe I'm emitting anti-PT rays from exposure to Los Alamos all those years I lived in New Mexico. Really wanted to go to school on PTF to improve my LE chops though.
Once again, thanks for your thoughtful responses.

[Bastiaan]

4444,

Have you checked out the m-box? It is not yet available for pc, but it IS coming...
Mbox will let you run ptle with 24 tracks on a laptop woth USB. As Stoneknife said, ptfree and ptle are different products. I must say with my pc (PIII 600Mhz, digi001) i dont have any problems. I was able to record 45 minutes and mix it without problems. Also a quick recording-session with a lot of punch-ins and overdubs totaling to something like 16 channels happened with only one crash...and nothing was lost...

[4444]

Thanks,Bastiaan. Any idea When Mbox will be out?

[Bastiaan]

Nope.....but check the digidesign announcements here on the duc...

[4444]

Bastiaan,
I checked out the Mbox and it looks like it might fit my needs for the time being, although it's more than I had planned to spend at this juncture. One question; I noticed the spdif i/o is 24 bit. I'll be wanting to load 16 bit 44.1k audio from my Tascam dap-1 dat deck for editing. Does the Mbox convert going in and out or will there be a format conflict in trying to do this?
Thanks!

[Stone Knife]

The S/PDIF optical on my 001 accepts 16 bit/44KHz CD streaming from my CD player's Toslink output with no problem; and I'm recording at 24 bits/44KHZ- Somehow the machine is making that possible...
I haven't tried inputting any co-ax S/PDIF into the 001; (If I had something to plug in there I'd try it for you-)

That is indeed wierd about the LE freezups... mine's only locked up once, when I was learning the program. I was blundering around clicking on everything and the program just went, "Huh?"
Since that time, not a hang from PT.

I sure can't wait to get XP on here. WinMe has been a nightmare for this machine.