External Hard Drive AND Sound card Dilema -----

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9thcloud
Posts: 15
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 12:26 am

External Hard Drive AND Sound card Dilema -----

Post by 9thcloud » Sun Mar 12, 2006 2:41 pm

Hi,

The point is i got :
My Laptop
Edirol FA101 SoundCard
External USB 2 7200RPM Hard Drive
BCF200 controller (USB connection)

I sometimes play whole songs with separated tracks (drum, bass, piano, voice etc...) via ableton Live's arrangement view.

And there are some Hard Drive Underflows (from the external drive in wich my wav tracks are), most of the times it's when i touch a fader from my BCR2000 (which is also connected via USB2 like my external drive).

Would u see an issue to this?

Things I may do :
- use MIDI cables instead of USB cables for my MIDI controllers
- buy a firewire external hard drive which may got a better data flow than usb 2 (but if i do that, the FireWire flow will be spared between my soundcard(fw) and my external hard drive(fw)!!!!!! Am i wrong?

What would u advise?

Hope i explained well enough the issue.

Peace

anon5051
Posts: 10
Joined: Sun Mar 12, 2006 8:50 am

Post by anon5051 » Tue Mar 14, 2006 3:22 am

Hi there, funny enough I have the exact same setup as you......Laptop, FA-101 ,BCF2000 and External HDD 120 GIG 7200 RPM 8Meg Cache

However i have BOTH the fa-101 AND the external HDD both going through Firewire (firewire is much more stable in my opinion) (firewire from laptop ---> HDD --->FA-101 and everything works perfectly...I have been able to record 8 tracks and playback 6 more at the same time with no glitches and using only 256k in the hardware buffer...about 14m latency

i believe your problem lies with the fact you are using your bcf2000/bcr2000 on the same usb port as your HDD....the bcf2000 is a freaking Hog on USB resources.......I have a small laptop USB optical mouse and cant have it on the same builtin USB adaptor or the BCF2000 eventually @#%# up and BSOD crashes my whole system so now i just leave the BCF2000 by its self on USB and use a PS2--->USB adapter for the mouse.

hope that helps

Cheers!


BTW this might help you out too
SpeedswitchXP - CPU frequency control for notebooks running Windows XP

9thcloud
Posts: 15
Joined: Sun Dec 04, 2005 12:26 am

Post by 9thcloud » Tue Mar 14, 2006 9:12 am

Thanks a lot for your answer anon!

I knew it ! I knew it !
What i'll do is :

- have a test with a friend's esternal firewire drive
- take a look at this usb problems with bcr2000 and try to use a pcmcia USB port maybe (or maybe just not having anymore HD plugged on USB will clear all the mess)
- maybe use midi cables instead of usb for the BCR2000

Thanks again.
Funny we got the same set up :D i mean that must be a good one indeed 8) . In fact i got a few more stuffs : Korg Microkontrol with a footswitch and turntable + mixer when live on stage (and a microphone).

Peace.

about speedswitxchXP : do you use it? does it actually changes something when you run on the AC power (i never play on the batteries, always on AC poxer)

Thanks again

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