Recording through Import Vinyl stops prematurely

Ronald-Chin wrote on 2/13/2024, 9:31 PM 
 

I am trying to record a record album using the Import/Vinyl option in Sound Forge Audio Cleaning Lab 4. The recording keeps stopping at approximately the 7 minute mark, In the middle of the 2nd track. (The album is about 18 minutes a side with 4 tracks.)

I checked the recording settings: Auto recording stop, Audio CD track recognition, and Automatically save as individual files are all UNCHECKED. Recording format = Wave, 24-bit, Stereo, 48000 Hz. I tried setting the Duration to an hour (01:00:00) and checkmarked Active, same result with or without this setting. I have a lots of disk space (400 GB on my main drive and 700 GB on my recording (storage) drive.) 

I tried launching the recording through the main screen as well as through the settings screen. Same result.

I checked for any updates to the software and it says none are available. Running Windows 10 (up to date) with 8GB of ram.

Any ideas as to why this is happening?

Comments

SP. wrote on 2/14/2024, 6:18 AM

@Ronald-Chin Does the recording stop each time at the same position (middle of the second song, independent from the start of the recording) or each time after about 7 minutes?

Maybe you have USB energy saving enabled and Windows shuts down the USB audio interface? Try disabling USB selective suspend:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-prevent-windows-10-turning-usb-devices

Ronald-Chin wrote on 2/14/2024, 1:45 PM

@SP. Thanks much for taking the time to respond. It stops at approximately 6 min and 30 seconds regardless of the record I'm recording; and it is happening in the middle of a song (not a silent stretch between tracks).

Thanks for the suggestion on USB energy saving. The curious thing is that I tried recording using another software program (CoolEdit 2000) without making any changes and had no problems (recorded the full length) and the audio interface (Focusrite Scarlett 2i2) stays active throughout. I wanted to do the recording in SFACL just for the convenience of working within one program. That said, I followed your suggestion to check the USB settings and energy saving WAS enabled so I disable it and tried recording through SFACL and it failed in the same way. (The audio interface was still on and active at the time it failed.)

What I'm observing is that when I start the recording, the SFACL display shows signal levels and the waveform being recorded. Somewhere approximately around the 5:30 mark, the display freezes, but apparently it is still continuing to record until the 6:30 mark. Eventually a dialog appears saying "Recording ended" and asking if the recording is OK. (There seems to be a delay after 6:30 has passed before the dialog appears but if I go ahead and save the recording, the length of the recording is 6:30.)

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

 

SP. wrote on 2/14/2024, 1:55 PM

@Ronald-Chin You can simply remove the code-formatting in your comment by placing the text cursor before the first letter of a paragraph and pressing the backspace key. Otherwise it's hard to read.

You say that the program user interface freezes after 5 minutes. How much RAM and CPU load does your computer have at that moment? You can observe this is the Windows Taskmanager. 8 GB of RAM can be low for Windows 10. What is your CPU?

 

Ronald-Chin wrote on 2/14/2024, 2:26 PM

@SP. Sorry about the formatting - I'm new to this forum. I was trying to do paragraphs - thought I did the same thing as my original posting but it somehow came out different.

I added a little more RAM last night to get it up to 12 GB (only memory I had on hand - will upgrade to 16 or more at earliest opportunity.) Same exact result at 12 GB as 8 GB.

The processor is Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G3258 @ 3.20GHz. An older machine but I would think powerful enough to handle audio chores.

Task Manager is showing 66% CPU and 33% Memory about 2 minutes into the recording, then ramped up to high 90s for CPU around the 3 minute mark and staying that way until the Recording ended dialog came up, at which point CPU dropped back down to around 30%. Memory remained at 33% throughout.

SP. wrote on 2/14/2024, 7:52 PM

@Ronald-Chin Ok, not sure if the Pentium processor is fast enough for modern audio software and hardware.

There is also a 32 Bit version of Sound Forge Audio Cleaning Lab 4 available during install. Did you install both the 32 Bit and 64 Bit version? In case you are running the 64 Bit version, maybe try the 32 Bit version. Alternatively, you could try reduce the WAV bitrate to 16 Bits or the sample rate to 44100 Hz. Does this make a difference?

Ronald-Chin wrote on 2/15/2024, 2:39 AM

@SP. Thanks again for your reply! I only have the 64 bit version installed at the moment. You may be correct that my processor might not be powerful enough for SFACL but I have been using this rig for several years for various basic recording/processing duties on other software without any issues.

I did some experimentation per your suggestion and this is what I found:

Reducing both bit depth and sample rate to 16 bit, 44.1k, Task Manager showed a more reasonable 31% CPU and 32% Memory, and the recording ran through the entire side of the record (18 min) without stopping.

Recording at 24 bit, 44.1k, it showed the same behavior as it did earlier, with CPU rising up to around 97%, memory still at 32%, and the recording stopped at about the 7:30 mark

Recording at 16 bit, 48k, it showed 32% CPU and 34% Memory and was able to complete the recording.

It seems clear that the issue is recording at 24 bit. I am not asking it to do any sort of processing, just recording, which I would think puts the workload primarily on my Focusrite audio interface, not SFACL.

For comparison, it made a recording at 24 bit, 48k using the latest 64 bit version of Audacity and Task Manager showed it cruising at 17% CPU and 27% memory.

Doing the same with my old standby CoolEdit 2000 (an old 32 bit program) it showed 5% CPU and 27% memory.

Although a CPU upgrade would be possible, I'm thinking at this point of just handling my recording duties with one of these other software packages and focus on using this software as a tool for noise cleanup which was my original reason for purchasing it. My desire is to record at 24 bit, 48k. I may visit the option of installing the 32 bit version instead later as time allows.

My thanks to you for your thoughtful suggestions and spending the time to assist me. Very much appreciated!