Dropout Log and Where does the audio go

Hi,

A dropout occurs when the writing speed of the drive is slower than the recorded data coming in. The Take remains as is in the drive, only some miliseconds/seconds within the take should be lost when a dropout occurs.

Each take is a folder(TakeXXXX) and there could be multiple multichannel wave files inside the Take folder depending on how long your take is. Each wave file has information of all your recorded tracks. For example Take0001(0001).wav would have the first 10 minutes of all your 24 tracks and Take0001(0002).wav would have information from minutes 10-20, and so on.
uTool helps you stitch these wave files and split them into mono wave files.

Coming back to your problem, it seems that something definitely went wrong. It is hard to understand why there is no Take0001 in your case, if that is what you saw during recording.

I would at first request you to check the following, for not having any problems in the future

1. You are using the latest firmware for the uTrack24.
2. Make sure that the drive is formatted using uTrack24 before you start using it.
3. Make sure you are using a drive and not a stick for recording
4. Place a soft cloth below the drive(to avoid dropouts) if there is too much vibration at the gig.

When you say that you have multiple takes, do you have multiple TakeXXXX folders? Pressing the record button, while a recording is going on creates a new take without losing any recording data. Did you do that by any chance?

Hi Audiomxr,

Thanks for the screenshots. The file Take0249(0001).wav is really missing then. Can you tell me the firmware version of the uTrack24? We have never seen this problem in uTrack24, there could be something that went wrong when writing to the drive but not detected by the uTrack24. I cannot say for sure. Cymatic does not provide any tools to recover this kind of missing file. Maybe you should have a look at third party tools to see if the file still exists and if you can recover it.

In general, we started seeing some minor problems (including dropouts) when there were more than 150 takes in a single folder. I would recommend you to make a backup of your recordings somewhere else and format the drive again. Try to have not more than 100-150 takes in the /Multitrack folder. We will have a closer look at what really happens when we have 200+ takes in the recording folder and try to find a fix for that.

Regarding the extra take you see, when the pre-recording function is ON, the uTrack24 continuously records audio into its internal buffers. The folder _TempTakeXXXX and the first file inside it are also created and ready to be written. As soon as the record button is pressed, no time is wasted in doing file/folder creation operations. The only operation done is renaming the folder (from _tempTakeXXXX to TakeXXXX) and immediately after that writing to the wave file begins.