Teching Woes

[ill-esha]

Why is it that when you have a software-based recording studio you spent 70% of your time teching the little glitches and hiccups and crashes with your computer and hardware, and only 30% of your time making music?

FUCK.

Any Mac-heads who pipe up saying, "It's because you use PC!" hereby waive all rights not to get kicked in the head.

[Royal_Phunk]

my system stays up pretty solid, only time it crashes is if a plugin fucks up royally buffering (my general dislike of usb soundcards for this reason) other than that its all up-time. I can write and mix in Pro Tools for hours with no problem. This is because i dont sync to outboard gear @ home for now. Straight computer midi programming and speakers. What kinda glitches you referring to ?

[(val)Liam]

tell me about it.....

"I swear! one day I'm going to kick thees piece of sheeet out thee window!!!" - Samir (from Office Space)

[-evil-duerr-]

i hear this.
my setup is pretty sturdy in that it rarely crashes. I use Orion Platinum w/ Reason rewired into it.

but alot of time is wasted doin the necessary chores required to save cpu power so that the song can progress as it should. That time wasted usually kinda frustrates me to some degree and often times derails my creative train of thoughts.

im lookin forward to the future of digital music production. I need more power

[(val)Liam]

thats so true

I've felt for a while that I've had a writer's block on my tracks... but honestly, put me in front of a piano or guitar and I'll whip out riffs and leads like no tomorrow... I'll make melodies galore, but as soon as I touch that dreaded record button, all goes to shit so fast... with all the editing, arranging, sound designing, samplebank searching, producing, and mastering to do, it just drains the life out of me and the track... I have like 3-4 tracks on the go that I weave in and out of... it sucks...

and all my favorite tracks that I've written have all been done under a week... not because the melodies, rhythms, or even arranging had "flow", but because I would luck out on finding the perfect sound or effect in that moment... but as soon as I'm working on something and try to find that new sound or effect and get lost in it, it all falls apart...

[inside]

I finaly hooked myself up with a dual boot for my xp p4. Should have done this a long time ago. A simple update to say java or whatever can really fuck with the audio progs. Anyone who can't afford two pcs should hook themselves up with a dual boot.

[mystery]

Originally Posted by inside

I finaly hooked myself up with a dual boot for my xp p4. Should have done this a long time ago. A simple update to say java or whatever can really fuck with the audio progs. Anyone who can't afford two pcs should hook themselves up with a dual boot.

how do you do a double boot?

i know i could do it by installing a separate XP install on a different disk and changing the boot order in the BIOS, but isn't there a way to do it so that a menu option pops up every time?

[decypher]

^ You need to partition your harddrive to have 1 masterboot that runs your main OS and another that runs a seperate OS. When you install windows it shows your master boot and how much memory you have left. Make sure you don't mess with your main partition lol.

[Bevvy Swift]

"PC load letter?" what the fuck is that??? fuckin thing's lucky im not armed.

i hear ya.

[inside]

http://www.homerecordingconnection.c...w_story&id=151

Be careful when doing a dual boot. You can really fuck yourself if you do it wrong. I installed a boot to drive d:. Drive C: was completley formatted still. When I upgraded xp form the boot in d: it asked to restart the pc. I did and it went through the bios shit the wouldn't load anything. You always have to has an os installed in c:. Otherwise the bios won't load anything but a YOU FUCKED message and options to twaek the bios. Lucky I had a partion magic boot disk and I was able to fix the problem. Use and get partion magic. I have another geeky story with my vid card but care not to type it... yeeeehaaaa geeking out.

*drunk*

(fuck i t sound like i'm speaking kling on in this post)

[decypher]

Originally Posted by inside

http://www.homerecordingconnection.c...w_story&id=151

(fuck i t sound like i'm speaking kling on in this post)

or intro to info tech lol.

[inside]

Originally Posted by ill-esha

Any Mac-heads who pipe up saying, "It's because you use PC!" hereby waive all rights not to get kicked in the head.

Mac can get just as fucked up as pc when It comes to audio. I rember chillin with stutter step when he lived in Van and He just got logic 7 when it first came out and none of his old plugins would work with it. They would show up and he wasn't able to use them. I remeber he upgraded osx and fuck up all his logic shit one tim as well. Mac can be just as bad as pc. Best to get what you like up and running rock solid and make no upgrades to anyhthing after that.

[NinjaBoy]

Mac's have a hell of a problem with certian plug in's not being compatable...


Personally, I have the problem that when I suddenly get creative, I have to fight with my set up for so long that I lose any ideas I had. I think instead of a big equipment purchase I'm going to drop a couple bills on wiring, and making the studio easier to use.


If I am just trying to get the ideas down I use garageband now, so I don't have to fight the more advanced programs.

[mux]

My studio PC is completely stable.

How I handle it is using a Linux tool called "partimage" (http://www.partimage.org). I install my machine with Windows XP SP1a, install and tweak all my MOTU and MIDIMAN drivers, install Ableton and my plugins, then follow the instructions on http://www.musicxp.net for tweaking the OS.

Partimage is a tool that lets you take an image of a partition, store it on CD or DVD, and reinstall it later, kind of like Norton Ghost. I take an image of my newly setup and solid PC, and then go about my studio days. In a couple of months when the machine becomes unstable, I can use the images to reinstall the PC in just under 15 minutes, back to a known stable state.

I have both hard drives in the machine in a RAID1 (ie mirrored), then partitioned into two drives, C for OS and applications, and D for data. I use Partimage to overwrite C, leaving my data safe and sound on D. I would recommend that anyone doing studio work use a RAIDset, it's really not much more expensive (double the price for hard drives, but hey, a 250-gig drive is what, $120 these days?).

I've been doing this for about a year now, and I haven't yelled at my PC once since I started. :) When I disable swap, I can get the partition image down to about 900 megabytes, easily fitting on a pair of CDs.

Originally Posted by mux

My studio PC is completely stable.

How I handle it is using a Linux tool called "partimage" (http://www.partimage.org). I install my machine with Windows XP SP1a, install and tweak all my MOTU and MIDIMAN drivers, install Ableton and my plugins, then follow the instructions on http://www.musicxp.net for tweaking the OS.

Partimage is a tool that lets you take an image of a partition, store it on CD or DVD, and reinstall it later, kind of like Norton Ghost. I take an image of my newly setup and solid PC, and then go about my studio days. In a couple of months when the machine becomes unstable, I can use the images to reinstall the PC in just under 15 minutes, back to a known stable state.

I have both hard drives in the machine in a RAID1 (ie mirrored), then partitioned into two drives, C for OS and applications, and D for data. I use Partimage to overwrite C, leaving my data safe and sound on D. I would recommend that anyone doing studio work use a RAIDset, it's really not much more expensive (double the price for hard drives, but hey, a 250-gig drive is what, $120 these days?).

I've been doing this for about a year now, and I haven't yelled at my PC once since I started. :) When I disable swap, I can get the partition image down to about 900 megabytes, easily fitting on a pair of CDs.

Great tips mux. Thanks!