chiasmus Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 Hi all, Been having troubles with Disk Too slow errors. I followed a bunch of the advice I have seen from previous users up here (tech. docs etc.) and adjusted I/O buffers, turned on journaling on the recording disk, started using just the FW400 interface (rather than both that and FW800, which seemed to help with CoreAudio errors) etc.. Things have gotten better, but I am still experiencing Disk too Slow errors, which in the recording results in a horrible white noise and the end of tracking, which really sucks if you are into doing live takes as we are. I have tested on both a G4 1.5 Ghz Powerbook and a recent Macbook pro (not sure of the specs.) but I am getting the same errors on both. We are using 2 MOTU 896's as an aggregate device (one clocked to the other) at 24/88.2 and are tracking 10 tracks simultaneously. The CPU meter looks really nice, only registering at about 1/5th of the CPU or Disk Performance. One question I still have, is: does it matter where the disk sits in the FW chain? Since we are using a Lacie 250, which only has one FW400 port, it is currently conected to the MOTU's which are in turn chained to the laptop. Curious to know if putting the drive at the beginning of the chain may help. This is a confounding problem. Please let me know if there are any obvious fixes. My next step is to drop down to 44.1 on the sample rate. This just simply has to be rock solid. Many thanks, Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threlly Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 I think "firewire chain" was the important statement there. A hard drive can max-out firewire in bursts no problem, and you already have two firewire interfaces on it. Firewire is only rated at 400Mbps, USB2.0 is roughly 480Mbps. Firewire can sustain data at higher rates though, but random access is probably not great. Take the audio interfaces off, and run the project through the internal card with just the drive plugged in. Then you'll know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiasmus Posted June 27, 2007 Author Share Posted June 27, 2007 I am using a laptop here, so I need to use the firewire port. I never get Disk Too Slow errors during playback, just during tracking (and intermittently at that). I have heard it said that protools users often have better results when they use bus card adaptor to ad another FW bus to their Powerbook or MacBook Pro. If it is a bus saturation issue then why wouldn't I get a more concise error message like "Bus too Slow" rather than "Disk too Slow" Thanks for the ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nebula Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 If it is a bus saturation issue then why wouldn't I get a more concise error message like "Bus too Slow" rather than "Disk too Slow" Logic can't see your FireWire bus. It streams audio data to and from disk as it sends and receives it via Core Audio. If the data source (your drive) doesn't respond fast enough, it looks like the disk is too slow. Look at it on the bright side: at least it doesn't just crash! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiasmus Posted June 27, 2007 Author Share Posted June 27, 2007 true that.. but I wonder why I cannot use the FW800 port to hook up the drive directly to its own bus without CoreAudio errors... ? Must I purchase an Express Buss adaptor just to avoid these lame errors? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threlly Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 I dont think any OS traps Firewire that way, too many variables to account for. You can actually get FW800 drives. I use the FW400 port to drive the Firebox and the FW800 port to drive a Western Digital raid box. Also, if you have two free USB ports, buy two 500GB USB2 drives, slap em in the RAID section of Disk Utility, and RAID0 them !!! You'll get USB3 performance then (hypothetically 800Mbps plus). I have two bus powered Freecom 120GB mini drives in this config, and they benchmark faster than my FW800 WD 1TB drive !?!?!? Its an option.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdoubleyou Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 Need a little more info, RAM installed, free system disk space. OSX will always use part of your system disk for virtual memory, if you don't have enough RAM, or free system disk space, you will get errors. There is only one firewire bus on that machine, when you add a FW400 device the FW800 port will throttle down to the slower speed. When you daisy chain it creates a probagation delay ( the time needed for the data to pass through the electronics to the output.) for each device connected. A firewire hub would insure that data hits all devices at the same time. Also if you are using a lot of EXS instruments that are streaming from your system disk, OSX may be forced to delay the EXS disk access to manage the OS. You are probably suffering from a combination of issues. 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiasmus Posted June 27, 2007 Author Share Posted June 27, 2007 1 gig of RAM on the PowerBook G4 and 2GB on the MacBook Pro. (Do both units only have one FW bus?) The boot drive on the PB has around 5Gb free, but the MacBook has plenty of space. I will try to fee up as much as possible. Do you think dropping to 44.1 will help? RE: USB and Striping.. that just sounds like potentially more headaches to me. What about an Express Bus adaptor for SATA? Has anyone tried that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gdoubleyou Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 system performance starts to suffer when free disk space gets below 10GB. 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threlly Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 There is only one firewire bus on that machine, when you add a FW400 device the FW800 port will throttle down to the slower speed. When you daisy chain it creates a probagation delay ( the time needed for the data to pass through the electronics to the output.) for each device connected. Two on the Macbook Pro, a FW400 and a seperate FW800, running on different chipsets. They are asynchronous as far as I am aware, so maxing either will not affect the other unless CPU, RAM or an internal drive bottlenecks. SO...try the two FW400 audio interfaces daisy chained, and get a FW800 drive (SATA is not mature enough just yet), that should do the trick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threlly Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 PS, my brand new Hi-Res Macbook Pro arrives this week, so I should be able to confirm my rantings !!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiasmus Posted June 27, 2007 Author Share Posted June 27, 2007 There is only one firewire bus on that machine, when you add a FW400 device the FW800 port will throttle down to the slower speed. When you daisy chain it creates a probagation delay ( the time needed for the data to pass through the electronics to the output.) for each device connected. Two on the Macbook Pro, a FW400 and a seperate FW800, running on different chipsets. They are asynchronous as far as I am aware, so maxing either will not affect the other unless CPU, RAM or an internal drive bottlenecks. SO...try the two FW400 audio interfaces daisy chained, and get a FW800 drive (SATA is not mature enough just yet), that should do the trick. We were doing this before, but getting CoreAudio errors. Switching to using only FW 400 seemed to eliminate this error, though many other i/o adjustments were made too. I will give it another go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threlly Posted June 27, 2007 Share Posted June 27, 2007 Hmmm, thats interesting. Coreaudio eh !, what happens if you change the process buffer size, not the audio buffer ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Meezy Posted June 28, 2007 Share Posted June 28, 2007 hello, I got the same error last night on my g4 ibook and I was only running 5 audio tracks with no fx. everything was being read from a firewire400 drive. I tried reseting which didn't work but then I "saved project as", opend my new project and everything was fine! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiasmus Posted June 28, 2007 Author Share Posted June 28, 2007 According to DigiDesign, adding this Expresscard will eliminate these pesky problems http://www.siig.com/product.asp?catid=130&pid=1081 I am fed up and would like to be able to track 16 tracks at 24 bit after all.. so I will let you know how this goes. From the Digi Forums: FIREWIRE 800 Computers that have both a FireWire 400 and a FireWire 800 port may be sharing the same FireWire bus internally. When using both, the 400 and the 800 port at the same time, you may experience problems like audio drop outs or loss of connection to the M-Audio FireWire interface. There's a variety of possible reasons for this including but not limited to bandwidth limitations, clocking issues (400/800) and bus master problems with the devices connected to both ports. M-Audio recommends using the M-Audio FireWire audio interface on the computers original FireWire port while adding a separate FireWire interface card to the system (PCI or PCMCIA). Connect any third party FireWire 800 devices to the added FireWire interface card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chiasmus Posted July 2, 2007 Author Share Posted July 2, 2007 One thing that we just tried that seems to really fix this situation is using a BNC cable to sync the clock of one unit to another, rather than using Firewire for clock. This very well could have been our problem all along. Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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