What do I need to upgrade/change to 'fix' or at least remedy this problem?

[JBroll]

Depends on what you're after... if all you need is a pair of ins and outs, the Audiophile 2496 is really well priced; if you need some more but still want to be using PCI the Delta 1010LT is a good buy; if you can go for an FP10 that'll hold you over for a good while.

Jeff

 

[SpewChunks]

Uhh..
Avg/s = 9.9MB
Not good..

Yep, i think this is definitly your problem. Let me explain:

If you are playing a stereo track @ 44.1/16bit then you will average about 0.2 MBytes/s read throughput. Multiply that by 15 and you and you get roughly 3MBytes/s. Ok you think, i should be able to mix 15 tracks no worries with 9.9MBytes/s avg.

But the problem is, when you hit play in your DAW. Your hard drive is sitting there chilling out, having a smoke, coffee, whatever, when all of a sudden chopper boom! It's in audio central hanging out with windows overhead. Or in other words there's a lot of extra info to deal with at first and it will queue up and cause an initial spike of approx 10-15MBytes/s for 15 tracks when you first hit play. So of course it, can't deal with that when there's only 9.9 to play with and causes delay.

So you'll probably notice that it works fine after this initial spike, as the throughput smooths out and goes back down to around 3MBytes/s... but then,
that's without considering extra overhead from plugins/background apps/windows services and such that will cause more spikes and random dropouts for you.

As for an external sound card on USB 1. This is ok, as long as it only has a couple of inputs on it. You just don't want to hook your storage to it.

Thats the end of my theories.

 

[Morgan C]

@Jeff

The FP10 might be a good choice, I can probably get some things fairly 'cheap' (for Australia) from the US shipped over cos of how strong our dollar is. I'd like to record my drums someday, instead of just programming them, and an 8track mixer would be perfect for that (2 overheads, 3 toms, 1 snare, 1 kick and I've still got one to spare for various cymbals or a room mic).

Those other two look to be internal soundcards, which as I said wouldn't be possible (or at least practical) for my laptop, and of course don't offer decent recording ability. I'll have a further look at them later on, though.

 

[JBroll]

Oh, balls, sorry about that - forgot the laptop bit. The FP10 should work great.

Jeff

 

[Morgan C]

Alright sweet. Looks to be a better version of the UX2 without all the Gearbox addons. It acts as a soundcard AND records with all its mic-ins etc. etc. right?

I'll look for a bit more, but this seems to be recommended a lot, so I'll probably go for it.

 

[Wolfeman]

It acts as a soundcard AND records with all its mic-ins etc. etc. right?

Yeppers. It acts just like a soundcard, only with more ins/outs.

 

[Morgan C]

Hate to ask this but my knowledge about this stuff is terrible..what kinda cable does this FP10? My UX2 that I've been using uses XLR-XLR cables and these look WAY different but I can't find out what they are. Can I get XLR-(whatever FP10 accepts) adaptors so I don't have to go out and buy new cables? Will this deteriorate the sound quality significantly?

edit:
Agh, just checked prices. They're around $800 ("on sale"!) in Australia, bleh. Probably get one off eBay (new.. I want the guarantee) or some online shop that ships to Australia, will work out to about $500 incl shipping. Why is Australia so expensive?! For drums I can understand the shipping cost but come on this is a tiny box and its double the price!

 

[Wolfeman]

It just has the neutrix multi jacks on it. You can use XLR or TRS or whatever....