recordings 32 tracks on a powerbook live-it works

[gearboy]

Jeff,
I'm a DP4.61 user as well. I have an 828, an MBox and now a Mackie 1640 w/firewire card. I have a live gig tonight that I want to record 14 tracks through the Mackie. I just purchased a brand new "empty" 160GB Lacie extreme triple interface external HD.
If you could share your settings, I would appreciate it.
By the way, my "audio monitor" window shows very little movement during playback but my "clip" light on the right side of the bar is on even though I'm barely registering on bar graph itself.
After Mackie's suggestion, I tried to "repair disc permissions" and got an error. Could this be causing my problem?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Michael

Michael,

Sorry man, I haven't been back on Unicornation since that last post. I hope that everything went well last night.

Here are my settings:

Buffer Size - 256 thru 1024 (depending on tracking vs mixing)
Host Buffer Multiplier - 2
Work Priority - Medium

Studio Size - "Caf-o-rama"
Disk read write size - 400 K bytes
Buffer size per voice - 400,000 samples
APILC - OFF!
Pre-fil buffers - .40 seconds

I record at 24bit/44.1kHz. I haven't tested serious multi-track sessions lately, but I no longer bet the audio buffer error pop-up. I was able to record 16 tracks 2 tracks at a time and playback 16 tracks. I simply haven't had time to track more than this lately. Possibly tomorrow night.

I will post my results. Most likely I'll bring a mono source into DP, hit an aux, and spread that signal between 16 tracks. Maybe multiple signals. We'll see.

Regarding that LaCie Drive, I have one sitting next to me that a friend bought for backup for the three record project that I'm working on right now with him. Seems to work ok so far.

Jeff

[Burnie M]

I was able to record 40 16bit/48khz channels using 3x 828 mk1's and an apogee ad16 on a 867mhz powerbook with 768mb ram, OS9 and Audio desk.

[barnee]

I will receive my behringer ADA8000 soon, so I could tell you if I can track 24 tracks @ 48Khz/24bits.

[barnee]

it works.

[rockitcity]

I also have had success recording many tracks (22) with my PB. It has the 5200 rpm drive. However, I would never dream of asking the internal drive to do it all by itself. I record to Glyph fw drive mounted in my rack (Gator shock mount rack). Since I got a fw cardbus (totally cheap) so that my interface and external drive aren't fighting for bandwidth, things have gone peachy.

Just to clarify, notebook drives are 4200, 5400, and 7200 rpm. My Powerbook G4 1.5 Ghz came with a pokey-slow 4200. I immediately (warranty be damned) replaced it with a 7200 rpm Hitachi 60 GByte, and later replaced it again with a 100 GByte one. The difference in overall performance is astounding, and anyone who is considering multi-channel recording with the internal drive should consider upgrading to a 7200 rpm drive. BTW, I have 3 60 GByte 7200 firewire notebook drives in external cases, and they provide a lot of portable storage. I drive them off the AC adapter that came with my Adaptec firewire PC card. You can't run the external drives off the PCI cardbus from PB battery, so AC power is a must with the external drives.

That said, I haven't had the need to record very many channels at once, but in desktop-like usage at home, the system is very responsive.