I am so angry right now

Obnoxious skipping error with Cubase on Vista. Is this my latency? What is it? Please, someone help, before I kill somebody.

I just recorded this, and I like the take a lot, except there are obnoxious skips, for example at 0:52 and 1:08. Does anyone know what exactly might make this happen? It's incredibly infuriating, particularly when it ruins good music. Ugh.

posted by koeselitz (12 comments total)

It could be latency, so try upping your buffer size to something ridiculous and see if that cures it.

It could also easily be a system process firing up and hogging the CPU. Windows is notorious for this kind of thing. If you have a CPU meter of some kind, watch for spikes and see if you can track down the process. For example, Windows Update used to do this kind of thing to me.

Are you getting any warnings?
posted by unSane at 4:27 PM on May 7, 2011

Hrm. I'm not getting any weird warnings, but the Windows Update thing could totally be it - it was trying to update in the background even though I wasn't online. I'll figure out how to up the buffer, run all the updates, and try again tomorrow. Thanks, unSane.
posted by koeselitz at 5:55 PM on May 7, 2011

Also try a defrag. F'ing windows.
posted by dobie at 9:55 PM on May 7, 2011 [1 favorite]

try upping your buffer

Man, say that to the wrong person and you're likely to get yer ass kicked!

Up yer buffer muthafukker!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 10:16 PM on May 7, 2011 [2 favorites]

Man, I sure wish I could write device drivers for mixing boards on Linux. If I could, I'd be recording in Ardour.
posted by koeselitz at 11:44 PM on May 7, 2011

Be careful what you wish for.

I've been playing around with Harrison Mixbus which is bulit on top of Ardour 2 and although it has some great features (the one-button-per-function mixer is terrific, with every channel getting its own channel strip with EQ and compression) I'm finding Ardour itself really buggy, especially when it comes to automation. Never mind the fact that you can't really use virtual instruments in any useful way.

Secondly, Ardour puts all the DSP on a single thread, which means it all falls onto one core. As a result I can do about 1/8 the amount of signal processing as I can in Logic before it craps out -- which it does fairly obnoxiously. Ardour 3 is supposed to introduce multithreading but it's still in alpha.
posted by unSane at 7:45 AM on May 8, 2011

Well, but I've used Ardour for years and I never had any of the bugs and problems I've had with Cubase on Vista. But I should say - Harrison Mixbus is on OS X, so that's your problem right there. Ardour on OS X is still a complete mess as far as I can tell. I run Ardour on its 'native' system, Fedora on top of a realtime kernel - despite the assurances one gets to the contrary, this seems to be the only place it functions perfectly. I've never had a crash or bug. Then again, I don't think I've ever used Ardour as intensively as it sounds like you have; I compiled the new version that has support for VST instruments, but I've never used that support. He'll, I've never used virtual instruments on any DAW, and kind of don't know how that would work. I'm just used to trackers like Psycle and Jeskola Buzz. One of these days I'm going to have to break down and buy Ableton Live and figure it all out, I guess.
posted by koeselitz at 8:15 AM on May 8, 2011

Got cut up by a hairy trucker
An enormous slobby salad-ducker
Window down I hailed the sucker
Up yer buffer muthafukker!

Next verse - anybody?? We might just have got the beginnings of a song - koeselitz can sing it as therapy and let all that stress out!
posted by MajorDundee at 9:02 AM on May 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Next verse - anybody??

and so he pulled out a forty four
blew some holes through my car door
i put the pedal to the floor
ain't callin' no one muthafukker no more!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:13 AM on May 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that's probably it, K.

The only virtual instrument I use these days is Native Instruments Kontakt, or Logic's EXS24 if I want to do something quick and dirty. Basically for drums and keyboards. There are some amazing pianos out there -- the Alicia Keys one is a brilliant pop piano and the other ones in Komplete are also very very good -- I love the upright. Then there's the Vintage Organ collection which is stunningly good -- it has the only Vox Continental sample that sounds anything like the real thing. For drums the Abbey Road 60s and 70s kits are amazing.
posted by unSane at 9:14 AM on May 8, 2011

That's an utterly splendid last verse Flapjax - we just need one in between and we got us a number. And, as luck would have it, I hapen to have one right here in my bag:

So the whole lyric reads thus:

Got cut up by a hairy trucker
An enormous slobby salad-ducker
Window down I hailed the sucker
Up yer buffer muthafukker!

And as we pulled up at the junction
the redneck blew a mighty 'ruption
I found my bowels had ceased to function
"You just done run plain out of luck son"

and so he pulled out a forty four
blew some holes through my car door
i put the pedal to the floor
ain't callin' no one muthafukker no more!

Eat yer heart out Bob Dylan!!
posted by MajorDundee at 10:43 AM on May 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Eat yer heart out Bob Dylan!!
"No thanks son, that meat's a too fillin' "
sang the old man as I drove away.
Might turn that phrase into a song some day...
posted by grog at 5:38 PM on May 8, 2011 [1 favorite]