Question:Recording to internal drive on powerbook, skipping?

[AmateurComputerologist]

I have a 1.5ghz powerbook and I've been taking a stab at using to record some live rock shows.

As a test I got a stereo feed from the board into the line in of the laptop, recoding to the internal drive. Everything looked fine as it went down, but upon playback I found a bunch of skips in the file (like a scratched record). I tried recording through a handfull of different apps with different settings, all with no luck.

It seemed that the louder the band was, the more the audio would skip. Could the high sound pressure levels be causing the internal drive to hickup? I tried recording a firewire drive and it seemed fine, but the band wasn't very loud. Has anyone else tried this? Is it a known issue? I tried calling apple, but they were useless.

[kcrusher]

Which interface are you using? What type of firewire drive?

Are all your energy savers turned off and, in the 'options' tab, do you have processor performance set to 'highest'?

[AmateurComputerologist]

As I said, the skipping only occured while trying to record to the internal drive. When I used the firewire drive (120 gb Lacie d2) the audio was skip-free, but the band wasn't very loud either.

These tests were all done using the PowerBook's line in jack, recording to a single stereo track. I tried it at both 48 and 44.1, 16bit.

The energy saver settings were some of the first things i tried. I have it set to never sleep, never turn off the display, and I made sure the spin down discs box was unchecked. The performance is set to highest. These tests were done with the power adapter, and I made sure that it was the power adapter energy settings that I was adjusting.

An interesting thing happened this weekend. I was digitizing some DV video via Firewire to my internal drive. This is something I do on a regular basis, and have never had a problem. But I've never done it at a bar during sound check. While the band was playing, the digitize was aborted due to dropped frames. I tried again after sound check and it got to the end without a problem.

I know that this is an audio forum, but I think that the two problems are related.

Has no one else seen this behaviour?

[kcrusher]

Absolutely - the internal drive is too slow for recording.

[AmateurComputerologist]

At home, I record audio to the internal drive all the time without any problems. I wouldn't recomend it for multitracking, but recording stereo track is well within the data transfer rate of the internal drive. The skipping only becomes a problem when I try to record in a live situation with high sound pressure levels.

[Tim Casey]

I record in stereo via an 828 to a G3 iBook no problem, so it's not the drive.

UNLESS the volume is so loud that it's causing the drive to vibrate..... are you too close to speakers? Or is this club simply too loud for your own health?

[EarlSlick]

The powerbooks only have a 4200 rpm harddrive. It is too slow for recording in live situations. I have a powerbook as well, and had the same problem. Just stick to the external and you should be fine.

Bart

[theistheman]

I've recorded for over an hour to the internal drive on a powerbook, many many times, and not once have I had the problem that you describe. Though I would recommend using an external drive, the internal drive seems to work just dandy for me.

Are you sure it's a "hard-drive skipping" problem? Are you sure it isn't because you're overloading the gain on your line input?

I've never recorded with the built-in line-in jack. Have you tried it with an external interface, and does it do the same thing?