Problems with Recording and playback

echotrix · Post by **echotrix** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 1:15 pm

I'm running DP 4.6 on my OS drive, but saving to a Lacie 300 GB External hard drive (7200). I am daisychaining an m-audio project mix to the Lacie. I use a G4 Powerbook, 1GB of Ram. Yesterday was the first day I got everything hooked up the way I thought was right. I saved a couple of projects to the Lacie and played them back. No problem. This morning I got up to record and upon enabling the click track the problems started. As soon as I pressed record there was a delay with pops from my monitors, then the click. I started playing my instrument. Within seconds the audio started popping and cut out for about 2 seconds, then returned, then repeated this process. I went back and played the tracks from yesterday and now they too are cutting out periodically with pops and clicks. Am I doing something wrong with the Lacie? The manual doesn't give much information about external hard drives and how to hook everything up. Has anyone experienced anything similar?

sholland · Post by **sholland** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 2:06 pm

I haven't had the trouble you describe, but it may be because I got a PCI Firewire card for my G4 PowerBook. The deal is, even though there are two Firewire ports on your PB, they both use the same bus. So, that M-Audio is hooked up to your PB via FireWire, right? And then you're accessing the LaCie with the same FireWire bus. Maybe that's the problem.

I got the StarTech 2 port IEEE-1394 FIreWire CardBus Laptop Card.
A MOTU 896HD goes into the PBs built-in FireWire. I have other stuff on that chain: 826 mkII just daisychained into the 896HD. There's an Octopre connected by lightpipe.
My external HD goes into the CardBus. Everything plays together nicely.
The CardBus was less than $50 Canadian. One of the best investments I've ever made in terms of bang for the buck.

chrispick · Post by **chrispick** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 2:20 pm

sholland wrote:The deal is, even though there are two Firewire ports on your PB, they both use the same bus. So, that M-Audio is hooked up to your PB via FireWire, right? And then you're accessing the LaCie with the same FireWire bus. Maybe that's the problem.

This would be my guess as well.

echotrix · Post by **echotrix** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 2:25 pm

I would consider this, but I'm running the M-Audio to the Lacie via FireWire, then the Lacie is running into my PB with a Firewire 800 cable. The M-Audio is only 400. Should they both be the same rate?

echotrix · Post by **echotrix** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 2:28 pm

Disregard that question. Its impossible to run 400 into my Lacie and daisy chain a 400 as there is only one port. But there are two 800's.

billf · Post by **billf** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 5:25 pm

echotrix wrote:I would consider this, but I'm running the M-Audio to the Lacie via FireWire, then the Lacie is running into my PB with a Firewire 800 cable. The M-Audio is only 400. Should they both be the same rate?

You might want to consider getting a Firewire PCMCIA expansion card. Let the Lacie run on one Firewire bus and your audio interface on the second bus. The PCMCIA cards cost about $25 or so.

echotrix · Post by **echotrix** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 3:31 pm

I'll get one, but I'm just afraid it won't work. When I press record, DP records, but then stops, the counter stumbles, my hard drive stops and starts, which leads me to think its stopping to communicate back and forth between my console and my PB. Why would the expansion card do anything different? My hard drive would still have to communicate. Is it just because of the busses? Forgive my tone, I'm a newbie to all of this, and I've had to learn alot in a little amount of time. Thanks for all the help thus far.

kelldammit · Post by **kelldammit** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 3:51 pm

think of it this way, with two devices daisy-chained, they're both fighting over the same 400mbs of bandwidth. so a lot of hard disk action (i.e. trying to read/write audio files) plus the audio card's sync and audio in/out...will probably cause problems like you're describing. the audio interface is using bandwidth the hard disk needs to pump data through, and possibly vice-versa. this is why tc doesn't recommend hanging anything off the second port of their powercore firewire units, or even off of the same bus (i.e. firewire card). also, with more than one device plugged in, the bus will default to the speed of the SLOWEST device attached (either 400 or 800mps). so if you plug an 800mps hard drive into your 800mps firewire port, then hang a 400mps interface off the back of the drive...congratulations, you still have 2 devices fighting over 400mps of throughput.

the solution is to get an external firewire card, which basically adds another firewire bus that is completely independent of your machine's current firewire port. that way, with one device plugged into the card, and one into the mac, each device gets a full 400mb (or 800) to use, and all is happy in recordingland