G4, 1 GB RAM, ATTO - Check your DAE Playback Buffer Size!!!

[maxx]

Hey gang, thought I'd pass this on...

If you're using a G4 with a lot of RAM (1 GB or more) and an ATTO SCSI card, be sure to check that your DAE "Set Playback Buffer Size" setting is set to "2" rather than "0".

To check, bring DAE to the foreground, and go File > Set Playback Buffer Size. Your options are 0, 1, 2, 4 and 8. Make sure it's set to "2".

It seems this combination of hardware with a lot of RAM can result in the DAE Playback Buffer Size automatically resetting itself to "0". At that point the fastest drive in the world won't give you more than 20 - 25 tracks of audio and that only with light edit density. I was going NUTS trying to figure out why on my old 9500 I could get 64 tracks with high edit density off a single Cheetah - while I was barely able to get 25 tracks off the same drive on my newer, supposedly more powerful G4 rig. This was the answer.

After weeks of angry posts, flaming ATTO and pulling my hair out, I am finally seeing stable, robust performance from my G4 rig and getting pleasantly high track counts from my Cheetah and Ultrastar ZX's. (I was so pissed before that my G4's IDE drives were SMOKING my SCSI drives... not anymore.)

I was about to sack the whole SCSI thing and move on to FireWire (which still looks pretty good) when a good friend advised me of this bug and how to check for it. Now I'm loving my rig again!

Anyway, hope this saves some of you some grief.

Best,

maxx

[DigiTechSupt]

Thanks for the post maxx.

FYI- A DAE Playback Buffer size of 0 is only used by Disk I/O and PT Project cards. A buffer value of 2 is the default setting for all other hardware.

Brent