Skipping problems in 5.5

Question

We have been using Audition 5.5 for over a year without issue until the last couple of months.  We use Audition to record two-hour programs, and without having made any changes to the computer (and our IT department has checked it for basic diagnostic issues, updated the BIOS, checked for viruses, etc.) it has been consistently been producing files that will skip terribly during playback.
At first it was dropping a lot of samples and causing the file to actually be shorter than the recording time (by about 2 - 3 minutes out of two hours).  After we checked the machine for viruses or other conflicts, I went through the troubleshooting document online and adjusted the latency setting (we only have MME available for the driver), as well as reset the temp folder as suggested.  It seemed to help to increase the latency to 300ms (making it shorter made the problem much worse).
After making those changes, we now have files that are the correct length, no detected dropped samples, but the skipping problem is still there -- so rather than missing samples it sounds like it is alternately speeding up and skipping over parts, although the timer on the player doesn't skip around in time at all.
Here's our system info:
Windows 7 Enterprise
Service Pack 1
Intel Pentium D CPU 3.40GHz
2.00 GB RAM
32 bit Operating System
43.5GB free storage space
Any help appreciated!  Is it possible that the RAM or the sound card are bad?
Thanks-
Erica

Answer 1

radioradioradioradioradio wrote:
After we checked the machine for viruses or other conflicts, I went through the troubleshooting document online and adjusted the latency setting (we only have MME available for the driver), as well as reset the temp folder as suggested.  It seemed to help to increase the latency to 300ms (making it shorter made the problem much worse).
After making those changes, we now have files that are the correct length, no detected dropped samples, but the skipping problem is still there -- so rather than missing samples it sounds like it is alternately speeding up and skipping over parts, although the timer on the player doesn't skip around in time at all.
Any help appreciated!  Is it possible that the RAM or the sound card are bad?
Thanks-
Erica
Your clue here is that changing the latency settings makes a considerable difference. On a system with a well-behaving disc drive, the latency setting really isn't too crucial until you get down to relatively small figures. This is pretty much down to the Hard Disk, I fear, especially if the system was also having trouble writing to it correctly (mistimed recording). This is pretty much prioritised when it's happening, and if the disc can't even cope with that, something's seriously getting in the way of it.
If you want to do an experiment to prove this, then get a SSD in an external carrier, connect it via a USB2 port and try recording to that, and see what happens then...
In an ideal situation, you'd have at least three separate drives in a DAW - one for the OS, one for all the temp files, and another one for work file storage. Working like this smooths the operation of everything quite considerably.
But as ryclark says, if you are trying to do this with a network drive, then all bets are off. And even though 2GB of RAM isn't exactly a lot, I don't think that either the RAM or your sound device is implicated in this. Audition's use of RAM isn't exactly heavy, after all.