Audio tracks out of sink

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Matthew

Post by Matthew » Tue Mar 16, 2004 3:02 pm

I am re-mastering analog 16 track 1/2 inch tape to cakewalk via an ardvark hardware device. The first few songs worked fine. The last couple of songs jump their timing sink during playback. Never at the same place in the song and not all the time, but enough to be unacceptable. I am running a 2.6 GHz system with 120 gigs memory and 1 gig ram with an xp operating system. I have turned off all unused operations and have even monkeyed with the I/O buffer size and adjusted the mixing latency but to no avail. I am grouping 16 tracks from the tape deck to eight going in to the ardvark and inturn to pro audio 9. The only difference from the 2 songs that worked fine to the 2 that have not is I had hardware installed so I can run two monitors off the same computer but even if I turn the secondary Monitor off It still persists. Any Ideas out there???? Thanks for reading and hopefully responding in advance Matthew


HDB
Posts: 46
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2004 12:19 am

Post by HDB » Tue Mar 16, 2004 11:46 pm

Matthew,
I'm not sure exactly what you are doing, or what you mean by "going out of sync". What I gather, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that you have an analog 16-track, submixed to eight tracks, and those eight tracks are being recorded all at once into the computer. Are you trying to use SMPTE sync, or something? You really don't need to UNLESS you record several tracks into the computer, then need the tape to follow the computer for more recording, if the tape deck is capable. In that case, you may want to use the tape as master on the first dump, then the computer would be master so the tape would follow along on the re-record to tape. Then the tape would still be slaved to the computer (as master) for the next dump from tape to computer. Digital audio doesn't like to be bossed around much once it's in the computer. It likes to be king.
But, I don't THINK that's what you are doing. If you have no need to sync audio or MIDI that's already in the computer (or a connected device) to play along WITH a tape, and all you are doing is dumping 8 tracks in, you don't really need sync. Just arm all 8 tracks in the computer for recording, hit record, and play the tape. What the computer will record is exactly what it hears....it doesn't care about sync between devices at this point. Think of it as submixing a live band to eight tracks, and hitting "record". You can't sync up the musicians, (especially the drummer :lol: )
If this is NOT what you are experiencing, well, I just took a shot.
Let us know more if this is not the case.

Good luck,
HDB :shock:

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