ProTools 8 playback lags behind

[banjo71]

I upgraded to ProTools 8 on my Windows xp OS and installed the latest cs3 update. The very first time you record on a new track the playback is in sync with the rest of the tracks, but after this, whether you start from the beginning or you punch in, the program records the signal a little late. It's not in sync. I'm thinking about 50ms off or so. So in a pinch I dragged the whole region over to the left a hair to sync the music up..

Is anyone else having this problem, or am I missing something fairly simple? I've been using a USB storage device, maybe that's the problem?? Should I invest in a firewire 400/800 storage device? Could this be causing the latency problems?

Doug

using m audio fast track ultra

[stonehenge]

i don't think storage will mess with sync, though i've heard usb drives aren't great as far as performance.
do you have any plug-ins on any of your tracks? which ones/where?
what is your playback buffer set to?

[banjo71]

I didn't think it would be the storage device either. I don't have anymore plugins than I've always used in PT 7.3. 7.3 never did this. I've got Compression, EQ on most tracks, and on the master track I use PSP Analog Master Plugin. What I'm doing is loading some prerecorded wav files of guitar and vocal, and creating a new track for another instrument. On this fresh track, you can record and it's in sync. But if you decide that's not a good take, you rewind and try again, and the second, third, etc.... takes are not in sync. Same thing if you punch in. They lag just a hair.

Doug

[banjo71]

Also, I've played around with the playback buffer and it doesn't change anything. I've tried a variety of combinations.

[banjo71]

Problem solved.. I tried recording strictly instruments and vocals and it works fine. It's when you take a wav file from a workstation (Tascam, for instance) and try to sync up with new instruments after importing those workstation files.

** we've got a band that has two members with identical workstations, and I've got Pro Tools 8... They want to record their stuff at their house with their workstation and have me put on my parts at home with Pro Tools. It really is supposed to work, but maybe it was a wav data file instead of a wave audio file????? I don't know enough about file types to know how to resolve it.

Doug

[thedeanvel]

Hey everyone, this is the closest thing I could find to my problem. I've been having problems with certain regions in pro tools 8.0.3 either not playing back at all, or being delayed or misplaced, even though visually everything looks fine. I thought it was my hard drive, which is hooked up usb at the moment. I tried switching it to firewire (which i wanted to do anyway) and it didn't fix the problem. I tried putting some sessions on my internal drive and they would still do the same thing. The weirdest thing is that it's different every time. Sometimes everything works fine, sometimes the bass guitar isn't playing back, sometimes the drums are way delayed and off.. So if it's not my hard drive, the usb connection, or pro tools (which i re-installed), what on earth could it be?? A bug in the session files themselves? Any advice from anyone is appreciated, sorry for the long post, it's just hard to explain.

[TOM@METRO]

Originally Posted by thedeanvel

Hey everyone, this is the closest thing I could find to my problem. I've been having problems with certain regions in pro tools 8.0.3 either not playing back at all, or being delayed or misplaced, even though visually everything looks fine. I thought it was my hard drive, which is hooked up usb at the moment. I tried switching it to firewire (which i wanted to do anyway) and it didn't fix the problem. I tried putting some sessions on my internal drive and they would still do the same thing. The weirdest thing is that it's different every time. Sometimes everything works fine, sometimes the bass guitar isn't playing back, sometimes the drums are way delayed and off.. So if it's not my hard drive, the usb connection, or pro tools (which i re-installed), what on earth could it be?? A bug in the session files themselves? Any advice from anyone is appreciated, sorry for the long post, it's just hard to explain.

8.0.3? You mean 8.0 cs3 right?
Try cloning your system drive, then moving to 8.0.1, I have found this to be more stable. I don't know if your issue will necessarily be addressed, but a number of issues are.

[thedeanvel]

No it's 8.0.3, i'm on snow leopard so it's the pre release or whatever. If there's an older version i could go back to i'll do it. But yeah, any other ideas on what this might be?