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Trying to stay away from 80 tracks.
there must be another way !!
-masking to reveal squares and repeating process
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something to consider.
It’s not just about noise floor.
It’s the quality of the converter and its bandwidth.
I’ve had a quiet converter sound like an AM radio.
Alot of onboard stuff was designed to be suffice with the tiny little spkrs that come with the tower and reproduce the 8bit 22k windows sounds.
Compare !! …there is a huge difference out there especially if you record voice.
Good luck
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I started in the audio world as a sound engineer for bands etc..
When I discovered how to do audio on a computer I noticed right away there was a horrible sound chip on the MOBO and immedietely started looking for alternatives.
There are quite a number of good USB choices for around $200.
there are simpler good choices for the $70 range as well.
(edirol UA-1X)
I prefer and external card/box. Hands on routing and level setting.
software switching between consumer/pro input sensitivities (-10 db or +4)

The keypoints are-
-ASIO driver option- this makes metering much more responsive and has lower latency and load on system. Especially if you do voiceovers and punch-in editing.
-Direct monitering switch. – to choose whether the input sound is re-routed right back out or not. (feedback loops or unwanted sound being re-recorded)
-adjustible input and output VIA knobs as opposed to software.

there are other points but these alone will greatly enhace your workflow over a little mixer and an on-board sound card.
I have tested and tried quite a few of these devices.
(freind owns a music shop) happy to answer ??’s

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I hear what your saying.
I have a Belkin (TI chipset) fire wire card in my tower with a legacy 4 pin power connecter on it.
It’s sole purpose is to route power from your power supply in the tower to the extra 2 pins on your firewire jack. This is mostly used for external drives with a 6 pin connecter on them. This alleviates having to use the power supply that came with the drive.

If your are using a 6 pin cable that turns into 4 pin which goes into your camera then the power wont get there anyways. the 2 extra “power” pins never get there. Thats the reason that the camera is 4 pin. It doesnt use the same power. also prevents accidental problems.
so unless you need the extra power to run a hard drive…dont worry about it.
Hope this helps
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I must agree with Edward’s response.
I have seen “offset” when recording but never a drift in time.
Visually or audibly.
I’m Curious how you are recording, the process and the equipment.
Usb unit or straight to a 1/8″ soundcard on the tower.
A lttle more info would help.
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Dont know your price bracket but…
around the $500 ballpark.
sennheiser g2-100 series has alot of options
great feature set.
the included ME4 cardiod mic is well known and good sounding
there is a kit that has lav transmitter as well as the handheld plug-on.
Reciever.

1440 user selectable freq’s or something ridiculous like that.
also has the cables to connect the reciever directly to a mixer .
I did research for that price bracket and thats what I came up with. Never ended up buying anything but did the research.
Good luck
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Just to clarify ??
Do you mean “speeds up” or do you mean “ahead” or “late”.

I mean is it consistantly off for a minute or is it drifting time ..over time.(starting on beat then loses sync)
Are you using Vegas5 by any chance?
I had past issues with this and just want to see if you have similar problems.
I spent hours narrowing it down. I recorded The metronome and put it on a track as audio file. Then I recorded myself clicking wood blocks together in sync with metronome. So I could visually see the timing/recording sync
I have had problems that the metronome was inconsistant with itself. (fluctuating patterns and audio levels.)
As well as issues that the recorded audio (wood block) was earlier than the “pre-recorded” metronome track.
I was using a edirol UA1A usb souncard (a basic 2ch I-O unit)

Using the “directsound surround” audio driver as opposed to the “classic” helped the timing issue.
USB soundcards using classic wave driver tend to be finicky. A Windows thing
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I think that I might be up to the challenge.
To keep it simple at first with a basic groundwork goal.
Start thinking one step at a time,
Your team (although very busy) I’m sure would be invaluable with occasional input.

Start with..
-10 most important hardware considerations if building one.
-10 most pertinent/important windows settings.
-10 most valuable adjustments in vegas for V6 (Not 3rd party software)

Then add ” how to’s ” as well as extend the list then place them in order of pertinance.
I would be willing to start a email acct to have info sent to.
Set a goal of 1 month to have a reasonable setup guide.

I set forth this question to all that have a list of their own.

If you were given a machine from scratch with Vegas 5 and could only do…
5 hardware choices
5 windows optimizations
5 vegas settings.
…what would you do to get it to behave for you.
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Chris-
Noticed I had the default ram value still set at 64. (new recent install)
changed from 64 to 16.
I’ll run tests tomorrow, give an update.
Thanks

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Donna-
I can maybe help you track this down to where the issue might be.
Lets determine if its an audio problem or a data acquisition problem.
Did you do the “extract optimization” trick ??
Was the external drive firewire or USB ??
Are there any yellow check marks in the device manager ??

Did you say that any audio that wasnt ripped plays fine ??

Can you play back 10 audio files simultaneously.
Like a multi-track mixdown ?without dropouts.

Do you have the ability to record multiple tracks..like 8 simultaneously.

Can you record at all??

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