48/16 aiff Files?

[fusilierb]

I hear you. This economic meltdown killed my work 10 months ago. I now work three jobs just to stay behind. I just today landed a gig that's gonna save me, but its gonna take at least three months or four months to climb back up to breathing fresh air. (oil spill tainted air) Which means I'm now working probably four jobs for a while. And I've been writing and recording and editing and spreadsheeting the entire time and will continue to do so, cuase I like writing (not all this other BS). Dig deep.

So if you're machine crashes, freeze and render every single track to pure audio, then stack up your mix (kill the plugin's). I still have to do this a lot for really complex things. Get it down to where protools is only spooling out audio tracks. Then do the final render. You can squeeze a ton of life out of dying machine if your patient. You just have to get these things down to stereo mixes. You can find a way to do that without spending a dime, just a lot of time. Then convert. I'm assuming your on windows. The beauty of windows is the millions of freeware out there. Search for open source and audio conversion and you'll find a ton of options. Again, it will take time to sort through them all.

Ern you're soo close to at least completing this part. None of us may make a dime off of this, but at least get it there. Get creative. We'll help.
B

[t4mh]

Times are tough all over Ern. Everywhere. We can all appreciate that! In tough times you use what you've got. End of story. So do it.

Good Luck Man! I mean it.
Keith

[allends]

Ern,

I'm skimming the posts so forgive me if I'm off target for you. Did you notice that Mazz answered your question about the DAT format (I read a post of yours bringing this up again after Mazz' post)? You don't have aiff files on your DAT. You need to get those songs into your PC to convert them to aiff, then burn them to the prescribed media.

Live long and prosper!

All The Best,
Allen

[matto]

I know it's an old technololgy, but it's great for backing up work @ 48/16. A story: I took a class at UCLA in digital recording (not that it helped me much, though! ). One night, a Digidesign rep came in to lecture. He said "What would you rather have your masters on, in order that you were SURE you wouldn't lose your precious music: A computer hard drive, or tape?" We were silent, knowing that he was there to teach us ProTools. He said, "Well, TAPE, OF COURSE!" So there ya go!

Yeah but NOT DAT tape...I recently had to try to get a bunch of mixes from ten years ago off DAT tape and most of them took several passes and even then some sections could not be recovered. On the other hand the back-ups on CD-R from the same time all worked flawlessly.

I don't know when you took this class but things have changed quite drastically over the past ten years, I know would rather have my mixes backed up on almost anything other than tape...

Just a heads up to those of you who consider your music safe on DAT tapes...

[ernstinen]

You can squeeze a ton of life out of dying machine if your patient. You just have to get these things down to stereo mixes. You can find a way to do that without spending a dime, just a lot of time.

Thanks again everyone! And believe me, I'm SQUEEZING! It's just annoying when you almost have a mix or edit done, and the PC crashes and you have to do it all over again.

Wierdest thing: Files/folders of pieces I worked on (before this crashing started) playback fine. So I take a PT file from that folder that I don't need anymore, manually cut the audio on it (don't delete the track), rename it, and record a new audio track onto the (now blank) old one. THAT works! But creating a new file/stereo track from scratch DOESN'T work. It freezes up, then crashes. So I'm going into older folders that worked in the past, and do what I described above. --- I'm squeezing, scratching, and clawing my way through this process. My hair (what's left of it) is going gray, literally! But I'll get it done, if it kills me (and that's a possibility! ).

Best,

Ern

[mazz]

There's a school of thought that analog tape is a "future proof" backup technology. The magnetic technology to play it back might be fairly simple and straightforward, but the tape has a finite lifespan and once it's gone, it's gone.

There's some talk about CDRs eventually failing but it may be that by that time we'll all be dead anyway and won't care if anyone is listening to our music or not!!

As far as hard drives go: They're mechanical devices with bearings and the little heads that fly across the disks are subject to massive stresses by having to move so quickly to get data that may be spread all over the hard drive surface. I've read that if you leave a hard drive sitting for a long time without spinning it, the bearings may lose their lubrication and seize up. I don't know how true that is, but the reality is that it's a mechanical device with motors, little tiny components that can fail under continued stress, etc. Sure, there's places that can recover the data, but they know how desperate people are to get it, and they charge accordingly!

In 2 or 3 years, we'll all be talking about solid state drives. The only thing they need is power. I think that's going to be a great storage medium as well as being screamingly fast. Right now they're expensive but fairly soon I predict that they'll be what is in every computer and they'll be a dime a dozen like hard drives are right now.

If one chooses to be a modern composer, one must factor the technology and the upgrades into the cost of doing business. I don't think we need to be on the bleeding edge, but being on the very far trailing edge is going to be a handicap to efficiency, productivity and professionalism, eventually. Such is the world of technology we live in.

[mazz]

You can squeeze a ton of life out of dying machine if your patient. You just have to get these things down to stereo mixes. You can find a way to do that without spending a dime, just a lot of time.

Thanks again everyone! And believe me, I'm SQUEEZING! It's just annoying when you almost have a mix or edit done, and the PC crashes and you have to do it all over again.

Wierdest thing: Files/folders of pieces I worked on (before this crashing started) playback fine. So I take a PT file from that folder that I don't need anymore, manually cut the audio on it (don't delete the track), rename it, and record a new audio track onto the (now blank) old one. THAT works! But creating a new file/stereo track from scratch DOESN'T work. It freezes up, then crashes. So I'm going into older folders that worked in the past, and do what I described above. --- I'm squeezing, scratching, and clawing my way through this process. My hair (what's left of it) is going gray, literally! But I'll get it done, if it kills me (and that's a possibility! ).

Best,

Ern

Maybe your hard drive is getting full or it's way fragmented.

[ernstinen]

If one chooses to be a modern composer, one must factor the technology and the upgrades into the cost of doing business. I don't think we need to be on the bleeding edge, but being on the very far trailing edge is going to be a handicap to efficiency, productivity and professionalism, eventually. Such is the world of technology we live in.

I agree, Mazz! But I didn't choose to be a modern composer, IT chose me! So, I'm a modern composer, but a technological dunce. But I'll learn. --- I remember when I chose MOTU's Performer and Mosaic back in the Eisenhower Administration. Bad idea, living in CA. The phone bills to MA just killed me!

Maybe your hard drive is getting full or it's way fragmented.

Ahh, now we're getting somewhere! Just tried to defragment my HD, and it said it was 90% full and couldn't defragment without me trashing some files. So I trashed LOTS of files, including EWQLSO Gold. I don't even know why it was on this computer, since I have a VisionDAW which is dedicated to Gold. I dragged it to the trash, and the trash told me "This file is too big for me! Do you want to delete it?", and I said "Yes, trash, thank you very much."

The computer is happily defragmenting as I type this. THANKS, MAZZ! I'll report later ---

Best Regards,

Ern

[fusilierb]

Yes, on windows defragging is a huge issue and should be done at least once a month. Especially do it once you've deleted large files. If you have anti-virus software installed, I'd disable it while your mixing, that stuff eats a ton of background processing. Also open your task manager and see everything that is running, if there are some obvious programs running that shouldn't be, shut em down. And also make sure you reboot the machine from completely off before you start mixing and that you don't have any unnecessary things loading at startup. You need your RAM and your harddrives as tuned as possible on underpowered machines.
B

[ernstinen]

UPDATE: Well, Mazz's plan basically worked! I ALWAYS defragment my hard drives, but for some reason I hadn't done it in awhile on this computer. My Bad!

BUT, there were also some corrupted files. My backup plan to get this sh!t down onto DAT saved me hours and hours of work. I put them back on the computer, by going into my Masterlink first at 96/24, and then digitally transfering them into ProTools. I've gotten 6 pieces of music done in a few hours!

I'm sure I coulda backed these pieces up on DVD, or a separate HD, but since I'm so broke (and since my computer has been so flakey), I just didn't trust doing that, nor could I afford to buy an external HD. I'm learning, I'm learning! But DAT ain't dead yet! It save my a$$. I am SO glad that I did that. You never know with computers.

STILL, some new files that I created have crashed. I've gone into previous folders I didn't need, wiped out the audio, and replaced the audio with new tracks from the DAT/Masterlink. Don't understand that yet. But that seems to work, for some reason.

Thanks again, everyone, for your wise ideas!

Ern