Transport timer flashes red...

[Sky Blue Lou]

...and everything is distorted and chopped up.

I've got a clue but I'm having difficulty finding a cure. The more tracks I mute the longer it will play back clean.


lou

[LabbyRoad]

Check your CPU usage. I've had this happen on very big projects with lot's of VSTi's and effects.

[Sky Blue Lou]

CPU use shows zero.(?) No plug-ins, no nuthin'. 12 tracks at 44.1 on an Athlon 1.4 with 764 RAM running Win98. The project was copied in off a brand new XP box with all the bells and whistles.

I have run more than 12 tracks w/FX on this box in Cubase. What do I have set wrong?


lou

[Jae.Thomas]

probably something in your audio driver settings.

are you using ASIO drivers?

What is the latency set at?

[Sky Blue Lou]

ASIO - yes. MAudio Omni-studio. Basically the Delta 66. I'll check latency.

Am I right to assume that the transport timer bar flashing red means digital overload? Could you get that from too hot a track - ie.- clipped when recording?


lou

[axeman]

Hi again,

Noticed this happening on my PC as well. Has anyone ever confirmed exactly what condition results in the time area of the transport bar flashing red? (It looks like there is some text there, but it goes by so quickly that I can't make it out.) In any case, I think it would be helpful to get a definitive explanation of exactly what that red flashing indicates.

Thanks a lot and take care,


Alan

[stratman]

Me too. I occasionally get red flashing in the timing area to the right of the transport. I don't have any problems but I'd like to know what it means. I haven't found anything about it on the forum or in the manual.

Pete

[Besmirched Tea]

I just ran into this also. When the red flashes, I notice that that the audio drops out for some, but not all of the tracks.

this MIGHT be caused by instrument track files sitting far apart on the HDD?
just a guess.

[brownte]

Originally Posted by Sky Blue Lou

ASIO - yes. MAudio Omni-studio. Basically the Delta 66. I'll check latency.

Am I right to assume that the transport timer bar flashing red means digital overload? Could you get that from too hot a track - ie.- clipped when recording?


lou

As I understand it, the flashing on the transport bar has nothing to do with sound levels clipping. It is related to audio streaming from your machine. The red light flashes when it can't keep up with the audio it needs to process and so you get dropouts and other nasty sounds.

This happens to me because my PC isn't quite up to the tasks I ask of it. When I get too many FX, VSTi and/or audio tracks going at once, I get all sorts of nastiness.

[shemp]

I see the red flash too sometimes when I am opening or closing the track Fx window. I just thought it was a CPU usage burst. I don't hear any audio dropout though....

[lunker]

For me, the transport bar flashing red was definitely a symptom of the hard drive not being able to keep up with read/write demand. Getting a faster drive solved my problem.

As I was diagnosing it, I went through lots of tests (a project with many tracks of VSTi and no recorded audio tracks; a project with many recorded audio tracks and no VSTi; a project with lots of FX; etc.). I was definitely able to correlate the red flash with the number of audio tracks being read from the drive.

That doesn't mean that hard drive issues are the only reason that the transport bar flashed red -- there may be other reasons. If you are able to pin it down to some other factor (CPU, etc.), please post so that we know what you found out.

[stratman]

Justin answered this one. See post #7 on the thread at the link below.

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.p...=transport+red


Pete

[manning1]

if your running a ton of traks n lots of plug ins..
look at how much cache your recording hard drive has.
if it has low cache eg 2mb , this is a possible reason.
ive found audio likes drives with big caches.
now this isnt cast in stone.
ie low cache "might" be the prob or an old drive.
with stuff all over the place.
only way to know is to borrow a 32mb cache drive n see if prob disappears.
to save me lotsa typing read up on google as to importance of cache in drives. then extrapolate to how daw software works playing back traks useing look ahead software engineering techniques.

[Zee Wavesurfer]

http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=1862

[AdRiX]

Was the ASIO buffer size too short. I increased it and now there are no flashers anymore (during the flashes there were no cracks or noise).

Audio I/F: Focusrite Saffire PRO14