Re: Cakewalk sequences are speeding up when slaved to a Fostex D-108, and the audio is making chipmunks out our music...
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Posted by Stef on September 01, 2003 at 09:10:34:
In Reply to: Re: Cakewalk sequences are speeding up when slaved to a Fostex D-108, and the audio is making chipmunks out our music... posted by Jeremy on September 01, 2003 at 07:42:01:
: : Yeah, I've tried the tempo ratios thing already, thinking it might have something to do with that. All it did is now s l o w down the recording; meanwhile, it's still the same problem with the sequences playing back at double speed.
: Okey-dokey, back to the drawing board. I wonder if you could play around with some of the timing options? You probably already have. E.g. in Project Options you could choose a synchronization method; the manual talks about SMPTE/MIDI Time Code Sync (SMPTE/MTC) as a "method of synchronization that lets Cakewalk act as a slave to an external device".
Been there, done that: (bear with me, this could take a bit...)
According to the Fostex rep I spoke with at the store (this is where I am gainfully employed) Fostex's clock output is absolute; in other words, it is the best one on the market in digital recording devices.
I was skeptical when he first told me this, but then I read up on it, and what I read was that it can drag... by about .001 seconds/minute, on average, with self-correcting ratios and all that.
I tested the D-108 with many computer-based sequencers: Cubase VST, Cubase SX, Cakewalk 8 (my research shows this is the one you are using), Cakewalk 9, etc. Slaving them via midi was fine, but it meant having to press 'play' on the computer, then 'play' on the D-108: a lot of shuttling around that I don't like. Slaving the D-108 via smpte/mtc was opening a whole other can of worms, as the sequences would 'hiccup' throughout the tracks: they'd fall behind the audio recorded to the D-108, and then for the next bar catch up. All those events have to go somewhere, so every few bars you hear them all play very quickly (like a Front Line Assembly rapid sequence machine-gun imitation done by a snare
sound).
When I say 'The D-108', I really mean 'The D-108s', as we have two of them in our studio. It was the same result with both of them in all the tests we did. The D-108 really works best with a hardware sequencer, like the Kawai Q-70 I was using before upgrading to a computer, of the Korg M1's sequencer... But all of this is A N C I E N T H I S T O R Y , as my friends and colleagues all convinced me that the computer was the way to go.
And don't bother asking Fostex for help - they're tech support & customer service is about as useful as a pair of tits on a bull.
I love Cakewalk, but it was purchased after the Fostex gear, and due to that huge of an investment makes me reluctant to go all Cakewalk.
In all likelihood, what I was doing last night with Cool Edit Pro might be the best solution. It's a lot of schlepping around but it is the least frustrating of all the scenarios.
Now I gotta go for some breakfast. It's 9am.
By the way Jeremy: I had a good laugh with Schwartz & Wortley.
- I do not know how to type... Stef 9/01/2003
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