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Vintage threads from the first ten years

Re: The evolution of my home studio

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3/9/1999 2:34 PM
Joe Fuzz	Re: The evolution of my home studio It also helps if you dedicate the PC JUST for music recording/production. What? Outrageous! What good is it if I can't have Powerpoint, Word, Quicken, and a Star Trek AVI running in the background at the same time I'm recording?!!

3/9/1999 3:08 PM
Benjamin Fargen	Good one Joe!!!!!!

3/10/1999 9:42 AM

You obviously can't do this, but apart from joking, there are many not so obvious situations, like virus protecting software, Fast Find or drivers for parallel port ZIP drives and scanners that can slow down or freeze your PC.

Fast Find (installed with MS Office) won't open a window, it won't even appear in the tray, but it is guaranteed to freeze your system when it decides to update an index. It will start and do its job without showing a simple warning or report.

Even if you are sure nothing is running at background, simply having software installed can make things more unstable, for example by messing with the register. If you install Windows 95 and check the register just after the installation, you'll find that it already has errors and inconsitencies, before any additional software is installed.

GFR

3/10/1999 11:26 AM

Excellent point about Fast Find. I was in fact poking fun at users who have the MSOffice toolbar floating in the background. "But there's nothing running..."

Another one you forgot to mention is DirectCD. This is a program used for CD-writers. It locked up my system something fierce.

simply having software installed can make things more unstable, for example by messing with the register.

This happened to me! I updated the drivers for my AWE64 and *somehow* got duplicate - even triplicate - registry entries for the same drivers. RegClean didn't catch it. I had to hand-edit the registry, a total pain.

3/29/1999 11:35 PM
Carlo	Do you know how or why DirectCD locked up your computer? Thanks, Carlo

3/30/1999 7:03 AM

Carlo: It happened over a year ago so I'm a little fuzzy on the details. I was having trouble with a new HP CD writer locking up the computer so I called HP tech support. The first thing the guy said was uninstall DirectCD! That spoke volumes to me.

Basically, it's a memory-resident program which can spell trouble for us musicians. DirectCD may not be as invasive as Fast Find, but I got the feeling from talking with HP tech support that DirectCD was constantly "monitoring the situation" if you get my drift.

As I recall, there was a problem with the Virtual Cache settings on my computer and that may actually have been the real culprit for the lockups...so DirectCD might be fine on other systems. DirectCD may have just gotten the blame for the Virtual Cache settings being bad. Still, I'm pretty wary of anything sitting in memory while I'm trying to record. The only thing I like to see in the system tray while I'm recording is the sequencer and the audio mixer.

This is off the subject but another shocker for me was that my sequencer (DOP Pro) won't perform correctly if the monitor's set for anything above 256 colors! It'll do MIDI fine but the digital audio will mess up if you try more than about 5 tracks.

I seem to remember downloading a text file a couple of years ago on optimizing your system for working with digital audio. If you're trying to set up your system for recording, I can try and dig it up for you. Let me know. It's one of those things you do once and forget about (as I have!).

3/31/1999 2:13 AM

Thanks for the info Joe. I also have the HP CD writer along with DirectCD. I'm not sure if DirectCD is the cause, but I have had booting problems. I just got a copy of Steinberg WaveLab; I'll try using that to burn CD's and get rid of DirectCD.
BTW, I am trying to set up my system for recording. I want to use it with my tape machines, ADAT and DAT. All advice is appreciated. I have almost no experience with computer based recording. If you come across that text file, I'd love to read it.
Thanks,
Carlo

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