Audacity stops recording at 36 seconds

[dibnah]

Hi,
I have been using audacity for about a year with no issues. Then I had to re-install windows when my motherboard died. Since then using V1.2.6 I can initially record only 36 seconds of anything from my soundcard (Sounblaster X-Fi xtremegamer) midi synth. Each time I try again it gets to less and less time after approx 4 attempts I am now down to 32 seconds record time. My hardrive has 80GB of free space where the temp file will be located. The operating system is XP 32 bit with 2Gb system ram. Playthrough is not ticked (I saw this on another thread) and I cannot see any setting that would limit the record size like this. The program I am playing the midi file from is Cakewalk Sonar 7 Producer. Any help would be greatfully recieved. Interestingly I just installed the beta version and with this on the same song I can record upto 3mins 41 secs using this. But this is still shy of the full 4 minutes 30 that the song is.
Thanks

[steve]

Thanks for being so diligent in your description - you have saved the asking of a dozen questions there
While we work through this, stick with Audacity 1.3.12 so that we don't get confused about versions.

Could you check the following:

• Audacity version (look in "Help > About Audacity" - it should be 1.3.12, if not you will need to update to 1.3.12 which you can get from here: http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_windows )
• "Edit menu > Preferences > Devices" - what do you have set as the recording and playback devices? What other options are available?
• Are you able to record from other sources when Sonar is not open?

I suspect the problem may that the ASIO drivers used by Sonar are trying to have exclusive access to the sound card, thus interfering with Audacity accessing the sound card through the Windows drivers. A workaround would be to record the midi track as an audio track in Sonar.

[dibnah]

Thank you for your help. So in answer to your questions in their order:-

1) I am indeed using 1.3.12-beta(unicode).
2) Devices - Interface Host: - MME (currently selected)
Windows Direct sound
Playback - Device: - SB X-FI Audio [CF00] (currently selected)
Realtek HD audio output
Microsoft Soundmapper - Output
Recording - Device:- SB X-FI Audio [CF00] (currently selected)
Realtek HD audio input
Microsoft Soundmapper - input
3) I have just set up a recording using Winamp playing back an MP3 into audacity recording from the WAVE drop down on the front end with project rate at 48000Hz, Stereo 32-bit float. I managed to record the whole 6 mins 20 secs. You could be onto something with the ASIO. When Audacity stopped recording I was getting dropped notes in SONAR as though I had hit my timbral limit even though I know this song has plenty more free yet. SONAR is using WDM for its driver, I tried ASIO just now instead and the recording in Audacity stopped at 2 mins 40, so for a second attempt I have gone back to WDM drivers which rendered a 1 min 20 recording before Audacity stopped with midi synth selected on audacity. I have now changed the drop down to "what you hear" (not ideal as I wanted a flat recording as this is for a demo for a studio job as a musician) this time I managed 3 mins 55 secs so I am still shy of getting the full song recorded. So onto the final test, this time sonar is not running, instead I have loaded up winamp and using it to play the midi file, audacity recording from the midi-synth again, this time I managed 1 minute 49 secs. Now for comparision I have still got winamp playing back the midi file using the same soundfont within my soundcard, but this time audacity is set to record from "What you hear" this time I achieved 2 mins 16 secs.

I know it isnt lack of power in the PC as it has an intel core2 Quad cpu running at 2.40Ghz. I have to say this has me beat. The only thing that it may be is I am on service pack 2 but why on earth that would cause this I dont know.

Thanks again for any more suggestions you may have

[steve]

Have you tried recording it in Sonar?

[dibnah]

Hi,
Yes I have now tried recording in Sonar. I get a new issue when using that in that the midi playback plays perfect, but when I play back the recording it sounds like a record skipping from time to time i.e. 1 beat may be lost but the recording goes to the end. Moving on from there I have tried creatives own wavestudio and in desperation Nero. Nero will record everything like Sonar with odd missing of beats (as did the creative own wavestudio). So I have now tried saving the midi file and playing it back with a very basic midi player (creative mediaplayer) when I record from this I get the same thing during recording everything perfect, but when I play back the recording a dropped beat here and there. This I think is the clue. So what I have done now is to send all output to my onboard soundcard from control panel leaving the soundblaster to simply create midi sounds and then try to record. This time Audacity worked right to the end. I ended up with a really nice wav file within audacity. Then came the crunch save time. exporting to mp3 created a horribly distorted file (soundedlike marbles dropped on card), so I tried to save as WAV so I could edit in nero, but this too was distorted. Talk about frustration. But at least now I seem to be on the right track, the soundcard is the issue, though why saving a lovely sounding audio file from audacity produces a horrible sounding mess I dont yet know.

[steve]

Sorry about the delay replying - (not "sorry" really, I've had a lovely vacation )
The initial problem sounds as if your system/sound card is right on the edge of being able to cope with the necessary data throughput.

In "the old days", computers were too slow and too little RAM to be able to synthesize complex MIDI tracks, so the MIDI sound samples were stored directly in hardware memory on the sound card itself. That system was highly efficient in terms of "performance", but was expensive to produce MIDI sound cards with good sounds. As computers have become faster with more RAM, the task of producing MIDI sounds has (in most cases) shifted into software. This is much cheaper to implement, but is much less efficient and as the quality of the sound samples and the complexity of the MIDI tracks increase, the demands on the computer increase rapidly. I believe what has been happening in Sonar is that data is being dropped as computer resources reach their maximum, but in Audacity, it is stalling the audio engine causing recording to stop. Your latest "tweak" has brought the demands down sufficiently for the system to cope, and you have now got a clean recording.

The new problem ("horribly distorted file") I suspect is unrelated to the initial problem.
So, looking at this new problem:

When you have recorded the file in Audacity, are you able to play that file in Audacity and does it sound OK?
Do you have just one track in Audacity or multiple tracks?
How big (vertically) is the waveform in Audacity?