Hello everyone,
I've been a Mac guy my whole life, but last year, after overloading my mac pro on a large song, decided to build my own PC sample slave. With the help of a friend we built a SMOKEN i7 VE-pro slave and since then I've been able to load this thing with a full template and if I try hard and load it with synths/guitar amp sims, it MIGHT break 50% CPU! I have maxed out the 16GB ram on big projects, which is a shame, but given the shear amount of samples and synths I'm running outside my main DAW mac, I couldn't be happier!
But I seem to have a problem. What was once a smoken system doing full orchestral mockups, now cannot sustain a 3 note chord!! Whenever I hold a chord (using either Kontakt or VSL VI pro) the samples will cutoff after about 2-5 seconds.
Any idea whats going on, or better yet how to fix it? I didn't change any settings in Kontakt or VSL, but the fact that its happening in both players leads me to believe its not a software setting, but something else. I recently was backing up my system & sample drives, but that couldn't cause this problem, right? I did install the program "paragon backup" but that was for cloning my system drive. I also had to install Seagate software when using my external seagate drive (data lifeguard & seagate Dashboard).
Thinking it was an HD problem I contacted Hitachi and got my HD replaced. However, this new one is experiencing the exact same problems!!
I have noticed that when notes drop out that the "disk" meter in kontakt spikes, and the VSL Voices meter will show a red line. For example, I loaded my VSL App string ensemble sustain patch in VI pro, I'll hold a 3 note chord which is 16 voices in the VI pro player, and the sound will cut off and I'll be down to 8 voices. Tried another chord, held it for about 5 seconds and it dropped from 16 voices to 4 and a red dotted line will shoot up under the voices meter. Does this mean anything to anyone? To me it seems like I'm missing some sort of sleep mode or something, but I'm fairly sure I do not have any sleep settings on (in my "adjust power settings" I have it set to never put the computer to sleep & "turn off hard disk after" set to never). I mean, this computer should be able to hold a 3 note chord!!
Thanks in advance for the help and reply. I'm at a loss as to what to do and its driving me nuts. Basically my sample slave is useless in this condition and I have no clue what steps to take next to fix it.
edit: I just ran roadkil's free HD speed test and it seems I scored extreamly slow? Remember, this is on a new replacement drive from Hitachi http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=13%2F&Action=NewOSID&DownloadVersion=9
Cache Speed 241.67 MB/sec
Access Time 21.76 ms
Score 421.75
Update, I put the PC sample drive in my mac and tried playing samples off it, and they all playback fine!! What is going on in my PC?!