Only a couple of tracks have dropouts – record direct to hard drive via USB

Home Page › Forums › Cymatic Audio Forum › uTrack-X32 › Only a couple of tracks have dropouts – record direct to hard drive via USB

Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • 5th May 2017 at 22:37 #28296
    Will Mims
    Participant

    I had not updated the firmware on my card and was getting a couple of tracks (two guitar ones, one direct, one using a mic on
    the cab. Signals come in clean and pristine to Mains and subs of the PA system. However, these two tracks had intermittent dropouts on them while the other 7 tracks were pristine. I was using a brand new Seagate 4TB external USB hard drive with it’s own power supply. I bought this drive after my small 2.5″ portable Seagate 2TB drive fell prone to the vibration cutouts. After I
    purchased the 4TB drive, I made this latest recording with a 2″ thick piece of studio foam under the drive to insure
    no vibration induced cutouts.

    Now that I’ve updated the firmware on the card, I’m curious to see if the bad tracks problem goes away.

    Anyone else have just a couple out of multiple tracks have dropouts? They were frequent and throughout the recording.

    Thanks!
    GLiDE!

    6th May 2017 at 13:49 #28298
    Alexander
    Participant

    Hallo together.
    I have the same problems with many dropouts since I did the firmware update. Last gig I recorded 3 sets a’ 60min. At last the counter shows 23 dropouts. After I copyed the tracks into Cubase 8.5, I heard the dropouts clear. The recording wasn’t to be use. AND some tracks were shorter shown than other tracks. For example. All tracks of a set had a length of 1838.3 3.120…..others only 1782.2.3.80. You know what I mean? I’m using a 2,5″ Western Digital HDD. 500GB. Before the firmware update everything works well.

    6th May 2017 at 19:08 #28303
    Laszlo
    Keymaster

    Hi,

    First thing which really needed to avoid that dropouts: The drive MUST be formatted with uTrack-X32. We are using special allocation unit size during formatting the drive which provide better performance.
    The second in our tests we also realized the WD drives are really sensitive for the resonance. In some scenarios the drive puts the heads to the parking position in this case the data transfer stops which cause dropouts. I don’t say the WD are not good drives but the fact they are really sensitive. We had much better results with Toshiba drives.
    If you don’t planning to replace the WD drives strongly recommended to put some soft material below the drive.

    But that is quiet strange both of you guys experiencing that thing with the new firmware. We had no change the recording engine (compared to the previous release) mainly the playlist and uRemote implementation changed.

    7th May 2017 at 12:09 #28318
    Alexander
    Participant

    Hi Laszlo,
    the HDD was formatted with utrack-x32 before recording! And I made all updates. Firmware, uremote and utool. Maybe the problems came from the Western Digital. Now I have to test other HDD’s. This is unfortunately time consuming and expensive.

    Does anyone experience with SSD have?

    Best regards

    Alex

    8th May 2017 at 06:34 #28320
    Will Mims
    Participant

    1. Mine was with the previous firmware.
    2. The newer desktop size portable 4TB Seagate drive sitting on 2″ studio foam
    only had audio dropouts on 2 or 3 tracks. Most of the tracks were fine and complete for
    3.5 hours. Just the small count of tracks with dropout. The new 4TB drive has an external power supply versus relying on USB power with a smaller drive.

    I won’t have another gig until May 20th to test it out again. The original cutout problem was with a 2TB 2.5″ ultra portable Seagate drive with no cushion underneath the drive. It had cutout simultaneiously in the same spots on all tracks.

    8th May 2017 at 15:17 #28326
    Alexander
    Participant

    Hi glide-bpm

    my opinion to your second answer…..

    ” …..2. The newer desktop size portable 4TB Seagate drive sitting on 2″ studio foam
    only had audio dropouts on 2 or 3 tracks. Most of the tracks were fine and complete for
    3.5 hours……”

    …..we have a claim that all tracks will be fine! :-).
    We purchased professional gear. Shure, the HDD is important building block.

    Best regards, Alex

    8th May 2017 at 17:01 #28327
    Gabriel A Pass
    Participant

    I am using a 7200 rpm drive (a HGST tOURO s) and havn’t had any drop-outs.

    https://www.touropro.com/en/product/touro-s/

    17th May 2017 at 10:01 #28395
    Alexander
    Participant

    Hallo,

    yesterday I got my new SSD (Intenso 128GB). I formatted the SSD and started the recording….without any Signals. In the first 30 seconds 4 Dropouts where shown. After 8 minutes I had 8 Dropouts. Next additional 4 Dropouts after 55min. After 1:05 hours I stopped the recording. Then I started another recording-track for a few minutes. The same happens. 4 Dropout within 30 sec. I stopped and started another 3 tracks. Always the the same. 30 seconds recording 4 Dropouts.
    I didn´t had so much time for longer recording tests, but I´m shure, it would be the same.
    Now my authorized question to Cymatic. How many HDD´s or SSD´s I have to buy, until I´ll get a flawless rcording? T :blush:
    I´m not angry but I think, it´s not allright an I don´t have any idea. In the manual are no HDD´s/SSD´s locked out. Everything seems possible.

    Best regards Alex

    17th May 2017 at 11:35 #28396
    Chetan
    Participant

    Hi Alex,

    Cymatic Audio does not recommend the use of Thumb drives or solid-state drives (SSD) for Direct-to-USB recording of multi-track songs.

    Thumb drives (also known as flash drives) offer very high peak read/write speeds, but are subject to occasional pauses in data writing. This makes them unsuitable for a multi-track recording device that needs to constantly write a data stream to the attached drive . Although with thumb drives, the recording may look fine for some time, there is no guarantee that dropouts may not occur later.

    Please use a traditional “spinning platter” USB2.0 or USB3.0 hard drive for all your recordings.

    We have tested the devices with hard drives available in the market from Toshiba, Seagate, WD, Lacie and many other brands. The Western Digital drives we have tested are 1TB and more.

    Drive manufactures make unannounced changes to their drives’ chipsets due to cost, and this makes endorsing any specific model very difficult.

    HDD can suffer performance due to vibration. If this is the case, Make sure that you place a soft cloth underneath the drive.

    I am sorry for the problems you have been facing and it is unfortunate that none of the drives has worked for you yet. I would suggest 2 things.

    1. Do not use thumb drives/SSD for recording
    2. Buy a high performance hard drive (7200rpm, high I/O speed etc).

    17th May 2017 at 17:21 #28398
    Alexander
    Participant

    Hi,

    Thank you for your answer. Remember, I had also tested a Western Digital 2,5″ HDD (7200U/min) and had within 1:10h recording time also 23Dropouts. And we didn´t had problems with vibrationen or anything else. I think all newer HDD have enough I/O-performance. 32 mono tracks, 48kHz/24bit, have 4,5MB/sec amounts of data. It couldn´t be a challenge for a new HDD. Before I did the firmware-update, everthing was ok.

    Is it possible turn back to the older firmware?

    Sad but true, it seems, it will be pure happiness to find a funktioning HDD. That´s not ok.

    Best regards Alex

    19th May 2017 at 10:42 #28402
    Laszlo
    Keymaster

    Hi,

    You can download the previous version form our website download section under the uTrack-X32 firmware.
    If you roll back the firmware you will loose the new features and fixes what we introduced with the current firmware release, and the uRemote may loose some functions.

    Yes this is true the HDD is a major part of the chain but according to our users feedback the situation not that bad. Most of the users has no problem with any HDD. I don’t say you need to buy another but if you have a Toshiba drive in your hand it would be nice to try….

  • Author
    Posts
Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.