Acid Pro 7 - recordings not saving, playback cursor not moving

pk1 wrote on 12/18/2022, 11:37 AM

This is probably a long shot since it's such an old version but I've been unable to find answers on old websites and posts. I still use Acid Pro 7 and it's been running totally smooth and fine for a while now. But suddenly one day, I started having these issues:

1. the play cursor (the vertical line that shows you where you are in the track when you preview it) no longer moves while previewing and neither do any of the VU meters. The song still plays though and you can make real-time adjustments still... but it makes it difficult to pinpoint where certain things are or monitor the volume.

2. A few weeks later, AP7 also stopped recording properly -- it will let you go through the whole process of recording, even drawing waveforms in real time while you record, but at the end when you hit stop, the clip you just recorded is blank and there's no file in the file system for it. I have plenty of free harddrive space so it's not that. SOMETIMES on a whim it will still work normally, most commonly if I open a brand new project, but I haven't found a pattern to when this happens. I've had to resort to some really funky workarounds like recording in an old version of ACID Xpress and then loading the file into AP7.

Does anyone happen to know a cause or fix for this problem? I know 7 has long been unsupported but it's the version I have and like and I have no reason/money/desire to upgrade. The program was working flawlessly until this sudden bug hit me out of nowhere.

EDIT: For reference to anyone seeing this in the future I'm using Windows 10 (hasn't been updated in a few years) on an old Dell Inspiron N5110, with a Focusrite 2i4 as my audio interface.

Comments

SP. wrote on 12/18/2022, 2:02 PM

@pk1 Sudden bug or Windows update that broke compatibility?

You could try to hold CTRL and SHIFT and double click on the program icon to open ACID. Then a small window should appear asking you to reset the program settings.

pk1 wrote on 12/19/2022, 6:46 PM

@SP. Thanks for the quick response and the advice!!

I don't think the cause was a Windows update because the computer I use ACID on is semi-permanently disconnected from the internet.

Ctrl+Shift didn't actually bring up the prompt, but I went through and hit Default All for all the Preferences submenus and that ended up revealing the problem! My audio device was set to my Focusrite. When I changed it to either Microsoft Sound Mapper (default) or Direct Sound Surround Mapper, it allowed me to record and use the playback cursor again. This lead to some significant latency though - I had to set the recording latency offset to around -300ms to get it in an acceptable ballpark that I think I still need to finetune to get right... but it's better than not being able to record at all!

So I guess that means the problem is with my Focusrite driver though I'm not quite sure what happened to it. Don't have time at the moment to look into it, but will mess with that sometime soon. If I do I'll post an update.

Thanks again!

SP. wrote on 12/19/2022, 6:50 PM

@pk1

I don't think the cause was a Windows update because the computer I use ACID on is semi-permanently disconnected from the internet

Sounds like it is connected sometimes. Windows will start downloading updates as soon as you go into the internet. It will also download and install new drivers. This is very annoying. Some weeks ago my computer screens just shut off because Windows installed a new version of the graphics driver and nothing work until a restart.

pk1 wrote on 12/19/2022, 8:04 PM

@SP. So I actually have a really bizarre wacky setup. I use a laptop with the top (display) half disconnected entirely. And then I have the bottom half of the laptop connected to an external monitor. The Wifi antennae is housed in the disconnected half. I guess I meant semi-permanent in the sense that I could reconnect the antennae at any point. But yeah, it actually has 0 way to connect to the internet that I'm aware of haha so who knows what happened

emmrecs wrote on 4/23/2024, 1:16 PM

@Apeiran8ios

Your membership of the forum has been approved, based on the content of your first post, but it has been hidden since it was made to an old thread and is not really relevant to the OP, whose computer running ACID is hardly ever connected to the internet.

Jeff
Forum Moderator