Number of tracks

Question

Howdy,
i notice that on songs I record,some can handle 4-say 6 tracks,mostly real guitar and one bass and one midi drum track,some times thee is no problem and other songs with pretty much the same number of tracks the curser gets orange/red and GB might crash and act wierd even when tracks are locked or muted.Any rule of thumb i'm missing?
thanks!
Tim

Answer 1

whatdehuff wrote:
Howdy,
i notice that on songs I record,some can handle 4-say 6 tracks,mostly real guitar and one bass and one midi drum track,some times thee is no problem and other songs with pretty much the same number of tracks the curser gets orange/red and GB might crash and act wierd even when tracks are locked or muted.Any rule of thumb i'm missing?
thanks!
Tim
Well, since I answered your other question, I might as well take a stab at this one as well!
There's a couple things you might try.
First, try trashing both GB preference files, then repair permissions, and restart. This often fixes odd problems.
Also, since audio applications can be disturbed when the computer starts doing other things in the background, they can sometimes cause problems.
One tip is to turn off airport (if it's on) when using GB.
Another is to use an application called renicer that lets you prioritize CPU cycles. Basically, you tell it that when you're using GB, pay a lot of attention to GB and less attention to background processes. http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13336
Finally, if your computer's choking on real audio tracks, it could be the hard drive. It's often recommended to 1) record on a 7200 RPM drive rather than a 5400 RPM drive, and 2) record on a drive other than your system/application drive. If your internal drive is 5400 RPM, you could try recording to an external 7200 RPM drive which - whether the drive is the culprit or not - would let you record on more tracks anyway.