Keep getting a HW Buffer Underrun

[themadarchitect]

I'm working on a very large mix. i had to start making stems to free up some processing power. Right now i have a stem with only drums, 2 delays and a reverb. Between the chorus and verse, i keep getting an error saying the usual "conflicting with other tasks"

The issue here is there is nOTHING else running. One stereo track for drums, 4 other mono tracks, and 4 aux tracks.

I had 64 tracks running with processing and it was not happening. All of a sudden, with virutally nothing running, my buffer set at 1, 1024, 2 cores assigned..conflict..

I'm running XP, 2 gigs of ram, 500 gig harddrive on an HP dv6000, with PT 8.0.1 LE, Mbox 1. Never had an issue before. Did not update anything. And only essential processes are being ran.

Has anyone else had this problem, and how did you work around it?

[sw rec]

What are you using for an audio-dedicated hard drive?

[themadarchitect]

Originally Posted by sw rec

What are you using for an audio-dedicated hard drive?

120 gig, 5400 rpm hitachi, connected via usb

[sw rec]

Two problems. 1 is 5400 rpm, needs to be 7200. 2 is USB, it isn't supported or recommended, and doing it via HUB probably makes it much worse.
Haven't posted this yet today....

IMPORTANT! You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic, so please do not use them with Pro Tools. If you're recording or playing back from a USB drive and are getting errors in Pro Tools, please switch to using a compatible external firewire drive or internal SATA/ATA/IDE drive and disconnect the USB drive.

Pro Tools supports recording and playback to a secondary drive that meets the following requirements:

7200 rpm or faster
9ms seek time or faster

Firewire drives must have the Oxford 911 (FW400 port), Oxford 912 (FW400 & FW800 ports) or Oxford 924 (FW800 ports) Bridge chip. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic.

[themadarchitect]

Originally Posted by sw rec

Two problems. 1 is 5400 rpm, needs to be 7200. 2 is USB, it isn't supported or recommended, and doing it via HUB probably makes it much worse.
Haven't posted this yet today....

IMPORTANT! You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic, so please do not use them with Pro Tools. If you're recording or playing back from a USB drive and are getting errors in Pro Tools, please switch to using a compatible external firewire drive or internal SATA/ATA/IDE drive and disconnect the USB drive.

Pro Tools supports recording and playback to a secondary drive that meets the following requirements:

7200 rpm or faster
9ms seek time or faster

Firewire drives must have the Oxford 911 (FW400 port), Oxford 912 (FW400 & FW800 ports) or Oxford 924 (FW800 ports) Bridge chip. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic.

Fair enough, and I do understand the many problems of pro tools and compatibility. This would make sense if I was having a problem with the entire session, but I am not. As stated, I was running 64 tracks with heavy processing and no problems. Only the drum stereo track presents the problem. I even made a new session with ONLY the drum track and some light processing, Disk allocated it to the local drive (which is 7200 rpms) and still the same problem.

So it isn't the drive, nor the USB connection that is the issue. Something is wrong with the way the specific track is being handled by the program, or the computer

[sw rec]

So it isn't the drive, nor the USB connection that is the issue. Something is wrong with the way the specific track is being handled by the program, or the computer

No, honestly, it IS the drive AND the way you have it connected. What you're experiencing here is all too typical. It works for awhile in un-supported configurations, then just magically stops working. I've seen it on here 7,000 times. Is that local drive your SYSTEM drive? Can't use that reliably as an audio drive either. Trust me.

[themadarchitect]

Originally Posted by sw rec

So it isn't the drive, nor the USB connection that is the issue. Something is wrong with the way the specific track is being handled by the program, or the computer

No, honestly, it IS the drive AND the way you have it connected. What you're experiencing here is all too typical. It works for awhile in un-supported configurations, then just magically stops working. I've seen it on here 7,000 times. Is that local drive your SYSTEM drive? Can't use that reliably as an audio drive either. Trust me.

So you're telling me with ONLY one track running, both my USB drive and my
system drive cannot handle one file, but it can handle 63 others? Somehow that escapes me.

[JonnyGinese]

I got this on my Old system that DID have separate drives.. and it turned out that my audio drive was SUPER fragmented... so I copied my data off to an external backup.. Formatted the Audio Drive.. and then copied it back on.. no more fragmentation.. and no more Issues.

This also happened with my System drive when i was trying to run BFD Lite from it. De-fragmented and it ran much better.. but ultimately when i moved all the BFD Lite drum samples to a 3rd Drive it healed all the issues.

Also.. FYI a lot of those DV6000's are under warranty for the Express card bus blowing. which includes the wireless card and card slot... and who knows what else.

[sw rec]

I'm totally with you on it not making sense, but it's all too common. I had a VERY LIGHT session with three tracks crap out on my Mbox system yesterday (old M-box, and it's stretching it getting it to work with 8.0.1) but transferred it to the 002 rig (with IDENTICAL host computer) and it ran just fine.
Other thing I've noticed is when the session glitches it tends to "imbed" the glitch so that no matter WHAT you do, it causes problems just like you're having, and they typically necessitate starting over.

[JonnyGinese]

Originally Posted by sw rec

Other thing I've noticed is when the session glitches it tends to "imbed" the glitch so that no matter WHAT you do, it causes problems just like you're having, and they typically necessitate starting over.

I noticed this when i had a session with WAY to much editing in it... even after i consolidated the tracks it just wouldn't work properly... so i imported the old session data with only active regions into the new session and everything was smooth after that.