Pro Tools HD System can't get audio fast enough?

[Relevent Muzik]

Hey all I am working on setting up a live recording studio for my church. We just purchased (3) 192's and (1) 96. We are trying to record 48 tracks simultaneously (drums, guitars, keyboards, vocals). I can get it for the first 3 minutes and then that error pops up.

We are recording to our (3) 250GB's Glyph external drives. Using a firewire 800. Does anyone have any idea what the problem is? I gotta get this working.

Mac OS X 10.4.11
Dual 2.5 GHz PowerPC G5
5 GB DDR SDRAM

Pro Tools HD
3 - 192's
1 - 96

3 - 250 GB Glyph Drives
3 - 1 TB Western Digital External Drives

[johnnyv]

You might try zooming way out on the session...so the cursor is just barely creeping along. We found our system worked much better when the graphics aren't bogging things down. When we did that, we never had a problem...but when we zoomed in, we were having problems like yours.

[jeremyroberts]

need LOTS more info

what version of protools?
what sample rate?
if the drives are daisy chained, how did you set up disk allocation?
How many voices per drive?
what is your buffer set to?
how many voices/DSP in engine?
did you set the max record time preference?
how are you clocking your interfaces?

once you sort these things out, it may be clearer...

and I will guess that it is unlikely related to any video card issue, unless the video card is defective.

[Relevent Muzik]

what version of protools?

We are using 7.3

what sample rate?

44.1k

if the drives are daisy chained, how did you set up disk allocation?

I have the channels split into the 3 drives.

How many voices per drive?

17 on the first
15 on the second
16 on the thrid

what is your buffer set to?

H/W Buffer Size is 1024 Samples
RTAS Processors - 2 Processors
CPU Usage Limit - 90%

how many voices/DSP in engine?

96 Voices

did you set the max record time preference?

No, not sure how to do that.

how are you clocking your interfaces?

Explain?

Originally Posted by johnnyv

You might try zooming way out on the session...so the cursor is just barely creeping along. We found our system worked much better when the graphics aren't bogging things down. When we did that, we never had a problem...but when we zoomed in, we were having problems like yours.

We just started to record the sermon and we zoomed all the out and was able to record a full 45+ minutes. Without interuption, BUT that meant only really one channel was recording something, the rest were dead air. I think that actually solved our issues. But wont be able to tell until tomorrow.


No we are getting a pop up that says "Assertion in "volumes/development/vb_cliff/AlturaPorts/NewFileLibs/FileFormat/MacBuild/../../BDM/BDM_Workspace.ccp" line 1400"

^^^IDK where to even begin to solve this issue.

[jeremyroberts]

Originally Posted by Relevent Muzik

96 Voices

Try 96 voices (6 DSPs). On slower/older macs, this helps the PCI bus. And that may be related to your issue.

Look in the preferences for "open ended record allocation" and set it to the longest time you would ever record (not open ended).

RTAS Processors - 2 Processors
CPU Usage Limit - 90%

Try 1 processor / 99%

how are you clocking your interfaces? -- as in, have you set up the loop sync exactly as specified? On multi-interface rigs, bad sync can beat you up.

Try these things -- it may just be a balancing act of resources.

[jeremyroberts]

PS -- do you have any accel cards? Is your rig HD or HD2, HD3, any cards accel?

[Relevent Muzik]

Originally Posted by jeremyroberts

Try 96 voices (6 DSPs). On slower/older macs, this helps the PCI bus. And that may be related to your issue.

Try 1 processor / 99%

how are you clocking your interfaces? -- as in, have you set up the loop sync exactly as specified? On multi-interface rigs, bad sync can beat you up.

Try these things -- it may just be a balancing act of resources.

It won't offer 96 voices 6DSPs
Only 1DSPs 2DSPs and 3 DSPs @ 96 voices.
Why 1 processor over 2?

Our clocking interface is 96i/o internal clock, 3 192's are looped.

Our rig is HD2. Is that the accel card?

[BradLyons]

On the system at my church I have experienced this with both Glyph FW drives and even internal SATA drives. This has happened more with larger sessions, but still ones that should have been beyond fine. I firmly believe it has something to do with being a PPC processor (it's on a G5) as it has been very random. But when it does occur, it's a freaking nightmare headache!

[Relevent Muzik]

A nightmare headache ehh? lol

Umm i honestly believe it was just the zoom in and out feature. We will find out tonight. I will keep you all updated.

[zodo]

It's probably irrelevant, but as I recall, it is recommended that if you have a mix of 192s and 96ios that one of the 192s act as the clock source.