Freezing Goldwave

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intoaudio
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:25 pm

Freezing Goldwave

Post by intoaudio »

Hi all,
Just wanted to share a little problem I had the other day. I was in the middle of recording a sermon (I use Goldwave to record our church services all the time) when I decided to look up something on my usb external hard drive. I plugged it in, and lo and behold! the gold wave ceased to wave! The visuals just totally froze. The time elapsed indicator continued to rise, but visuals completely went out to lunch. I tried pausing, stopping, but the program didn't respond to any amount of clicking. I ended up opening Task Manager and killing Goldwave. AND I made a mental note to myself. No More Plugging In Or Out While Recording! Is that normal, or did I do something wrong? I'm on Vista Premium, by the way.
DewDude420
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Post by DewDude420 »

It's typically a good idea if you're recording to not really do anything else with the computer. I can't specifically say why it's happened...but I've seen it before.
DougDbug
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Post by DougDbug »

That's not "normal"... GoldWave is generally very reliable.* (Although, I haven't actually tried plugging-in a drive while recording.) But, I agree wih DewDude... I don't recommend doing anything else while recording. You're trying to "capture" and save a continuous stream of digiital audio data, and if multitasking interferes with the data-flow long enough for the buffers to "run dry", you'll get glitches. (It's not usually that big of a deal... Modern computers are fast and there are buffers that allow for temporary storage and free-up the data bus and hard drive for multitasking. But, I like to avoid the risk.)

Your problem might have something to do with drivers (maybe the drivers for the external USB drive). Most crashes and freezes are driver related, because drivers can completely "take over" the CPU, whereas the operating system won't allow "user mode" programs to do that.
DougDbug wrote:I hate to see computers used to record anything "mission critical" where there's no opportunity for a 2nd take. (The same goes for "mission critical" playback such as using a computer as part of a live performance.)

Computers are unreliable (probably the most unreliable piece of electronic gear you own), and there's a lot of potential for settings getting messed-up (by the user, or by another application), or something else going wrong. (If you have a dedicated "audio computer", there is less chance of something getting fouled-up.)

Whenever possible, I like to see some sort of back-up (recording in parallel). It could be a 2nd computer, a CD recorder, a DVD recorder, a cassette deck, a VCR, a stand-alone digital recorder, etc.

* I did get an "abnormal termination" a few days ago, but problems like that have only happened to me a few times, and I've been using GoldWave for about 10 years.
intoaudio
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:25 pm

Post by intoaudio »

Yeah, usually I don't do anything else, but I guess for some reason I wasn't thinking when I reached for the USB drive. Thanks for your input fellas, I'll be keepin my eye on these forums, I just discovered them the other day. good stuff!
DewDude420
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Post by DewDude420 »

I'll be honest...and share a story that slightly contradicts my previous statement.

My last desktop system was an AMD Athlon XP 2000 with 1.5 GB ram, 500gig HDD and while I owned that system I had an Audigy 2 and SB X-Fi. I can't count the number of times I'd sit and surf the web or continue to chat on IRC while recording vinyl. Goldwave never hiccupped though...however; I tested and tweaked that system specifically for recording and playback. In other words, I knew it could handle the amount of activity I was doing and still continue to record that stream of audio. The same would go for playback...when I was playing around with my tape decks I would continue to surf and do things while recording to tape. They weren't critical recordings...so I didn't care, however, the system was able to handle it with no problem and never skipped a beat.

However, one thing I've never done is plug anything in to USB. USB itself is a slightly CPU intensive thing and generally Windows stops just about everything else to detect and set up for this new device...whatever it is you plugged in.

I haven't bothered to attempt to test the situation using a USB recording device...as I've assumed it wouldn't work well.
intoaudio
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jul 16, 2009 5:25 pm

Post by intoaudio »

That makes sense. Next time I'm gonna make myself wait until after the service. Man, I lost the whole sermon because of my stupidity!! :x Oh well, next time...
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