Lining up tracks, and playback issues

andrew-pgh wrote on 2/17/2021, 12:40 PM

Good day,

Yesterday I bought a scarlett 4i4 so I could properly record from my keyboard/synth/drum machine and guitar. I had been using headphone out to direct line in in the past. Guitar was recorded on a video camera, then the audio extracted from video and imported to acid 7.

Not the best approach but it seemed to work.

I recorded 2 tracks yesterday, drum track from keyboard. And guitar track. 44 kHz or so, 4 minutes length.

After I lined up the 2 tracks so they started at the same time, I quickly found the two tracks played back out of sync with each other. As if they were being played back at different speeds. The guitar track seemed to be speeding up or slowing down at times.

I pulled my hair for 2 hours (I am very new to DAW and sound interfaces but I am a very quick learner) . I gave up.

This morning I had an idea, I took the audio files that were saved to my hard drive and put them on the solid state C:/drive.

I opened them in acid and made a new project, set the folders to the SSD C: drive. and lined them up.

They played back properly. Wonderful.

This result makes it SEEM to be it is a data transfer issue. That perhaps the hard drive I was using for file storage was too slow to transfer data and playback was suffering timing issues. But then I ask myself... why wouldn't acid 7 be keeping the files IN MEMORY to speed things up?

Is there a setting to force this?

IS my issue really a hard drive data issue, or is it something else?

How do I find out?

 

Comments

andrew-pgh wrote on 2/17/2021, 12:43 PM

BTW... system = Asus prime X570-P Ryzen 7 3700 CPU 16 gig memory. Scarlett 4i4. Windows 10.

PATIENT-X wrote on 2/17/2021, 1:03 PM

Hello, Welcome

So you record drum from keyboard, guitar audio extracted from video, chance is that they will play out of sync.

I use beatmapper in Acid to have tracks play at same beat, tempo etc.

My samples are stored on HDD.

 

Last changed by PATIENT-X on 2/17/2021, 1:08 PM, changed a total of 5 times.

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emmrecs wrote on 2/17/2021, 1:42 PM

@andrew-pgh

why wouldn't acid 7 be keeping the files IN MEMORY to speed things up?

Because that's not how "memory" (RAM) works, at least for audio files, in my experience. Audio has to be streamed from its disc storage as and when required.

What type of drive is the one that failed to keep the tracks in sync? The fact that moving them to an SSD resolved the problem suggests that the first drive actually has quite a slow data throughput. Unfortunately, if it cannot stream two tracks in sync there is no way you could even think of using it with any greater number of tracks.

Jeff
Forum Moderator

Win 10 Pro 64 bit, Intel i7 Quad Core 6700K @ 4GHz, 32 GB RAM, NVidia GTX 1660TI and Intel HD530 Graphics, MOTU 8-Pre f/w audio interface, VPX, MEP, Music Maker, PhotoStory Deluxe, Photo Manager Deluxe, Xara 3D Maker 7, Samplitude Pro X7 Suite, Reaper, Adobe Audition 3, CS6 and CC, 2 x Canon HG10 cameras, 1 x Canon EOS 600D, Akaso EK7000 Pro Action Cam

andrew-pgh wrote on 2/17/2021, 10:41 PM

Yeah, it is a HD issue. I re-recorded on SSHD and no problems with play back.

It was amazing how unsynced the TWO tracks were when using the HD for playback/editing, it was impossible for me to line up and sync the two tracks manually. (they were recorded individually).

Happy camper.

Problem solved.!!!!

FYI... I posted result on youtube. It still needs some work to clean up and polish, but WAY WAY WAY better than using regular HD as file folder!!!!!!!

 

Video link

 

 

 

emmrecs wrote on 2/18/2021, 3:54 AM

@andrew-pgh

I'm delighted the problem is resolved, BUT, the posting of videos like yours is not permitted in the main forum, hence I have removed it, sorry! (Community rules #4)

However, please repost it to the Media Area of the forum where it can then be enjoyed by other users.

Jeff
Forum Moderator

Win 10 Pro 64 bit, Intel i7 Quad Core 6700K @ 4GHz, 32 GB RAM, NVidia GTX 1660TI and Intel HD530 Graphics, MOTU 8-Pre f/w audio interface, VPX, MEP, Music Maker, PhotoStory Deluxe, Photo Manager Deluxe, Xara 3D Maker 7, Samplitude Pro X7 Suite, Reaper, Adobe Audition 3, CS6 and CC, 2 x Canon HG10 cameras, 1 x Canon EOS 600D, Akaso EK7000 Pro Action Cam

andrew-pgh wrote on 2/19/2021, 1:47 AM

Sorry for the delay. It took me a while to find this thread again. This forum layout is different from others I have used.

That's ok about the video link. Sorry.

The hard drive is a western digital it says WDC WD20EZAZ-00GGJB0 in the system/ disk description. Host to/from drive speed is claimed to be 180 MB/s sustained and 6GB/s from buffer to host. I would think that would be enough. Testing the drive through the windows test drive feature reported no issues.

It is a new drive, I got with the system about 6 months ago.

And no. My problem is NOT due to extracting audio from a video I made.

I HAD BEEN using that technique very successfully in the past, until I got the 4i4 which is what I am using going forward.

I only noticed the problem AFTER using the 4i4 as input device. I am at a loss as to why changing drives has solved the problem.