Some changes in Layout

Today I have just tried to re-arrange columns and colors of my blogs layout and still working on it. It will look more elegant and will be more friendly to surf what you are looking for. This post is to check whether bordered post look nice or not.

TIPS: Audio Drop outs due to low latency

Day before yesterday I was at one of my friends place to solve his problem of drop outs. He was experiencing drop outs with increase in number of Audio tracks. The hardware he was using was TASCAM FW 1804 and the buffer was set to 256 samples for a latency of 9.9 milliseconds approximately. The number of tracks in the particular project he was having problem had went up to 126 Tracks.

We increased the buffer to 1024 samples ( increasing the latency) and the problem was solved. Even if you have audio events only on few tracks - the increase in number of tracks blocks resources for itself when you are using asio drivers. So if you want to work with more audio tracks, you will have to increase latency in order to avoid drop outs. Otherwise try to keep the number of tracks somewhere between 30 to 40 for smooth operation, if you are using vst instrument and looking for lower latency to program midi. Nowadays almost all software's come with a " FREEZE " feature which allows you to freeze you midi track and unload your vst instrument freeing extra resources. When you freeze a vst instrument - the midi track gets converted into audio file and is routed through the vst track.

I will explain freeze function some other day. Now if you ever  experience drop outs while working on a project don't panic.

Latest reasonable Computer Configuration for Audio recording

Yesterday I configured a Computer system for one of my friend. It was performing very well. The details are given below :

• Motherboard - Intel 965WH
  
• CPU - Intel Core 2Duo 6300 ( 1.86 Hz with 2 Mb cache)
  
• RAM - DDR2 667 MHz 1 Gb
  
• Hard Disk - Seagate SATA 250 Gb (8 Mb buffer)
  
• DVD Writer - Liteon Alrite 20 x
  
• Floppy - Sony
  
• Keyboard & Mouse - Logitech Keyboard with optical Mouse
  
• SMPS - Gold
  
• Cabinet - iBall
  
• Monitor - Samtron 740N 17" LCD Display
  
• Sound Card - Edirol UA25 USB audio interface
  

DVD drive was bundled with Nero essentials 7.0 which has most writing features and the Edirol firewire audio interface had Cakewalk SONAR LE recording software bumdled. The motherboard has 6 SATA and one IDE port. Motherboard has 6 USB ports in the rear and two connectors for the front panel. There is one fireWire and one Ethernet LAN port also in the rear. I disabled the LAN port, Built in Audio interface and parallel port just to keep the system resources free. This motherboard has RAID and AHCI support for SATA apart from IDE mode. The system is performing well. You may also configure this system if you are looking for a reasonably priced pc for your audio recording setup.