Multitrack recording skipping

[lesouvage]

I have done several recordings since I have the QU-16 and last week, with firmware 1.4 and a Western Digital 1 TB external HD, for the first time, I run into serious problems with hick ups in the recording. Is it possible that there is a relation between the use of FX, on several channels, consuming part of the cpu cycles available and problems with writing all the data to the harddisk. This is really a kind of disaster, with me attracting musicians to come on stage with nice equipment, good sound and a decent recording. This problem does not only affect the reputation of Allen & Heath but also mine. I have a four hour Acoustic Open Mic session every week and checking the whole recording for hick ups isn’t doable.

Using DAWN seems to be the workaround at the moment and I have a MacBook available. But I’m a total novice on this point: what software do I need on my MacBook to make this work. It would be very disappointing if making a recording stays the kind of gamble that it seems to be know but carrying my MacBook with me is not what I had in mind when I bought the QU-16.

To make a long story short: This really should be on top of the priority list of Allen & Heath. I added part of the hick up recording to this message just to give you an idea.

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[Anonymous]

@hawk
With the sandisk 64gb you can record 7 h 22 minutes

[Davec]

Lesouvage, what were the volume levels like near the mixer?

[Hawk]

I wish it won’t record any channels that are turned off (X) in the USB output patch. It’s such a waste of space and cycles to record the channels that don’t have any signal coming.

[Davec]

+1. It might solve some of these problems too. I don’t use any more than ten tracks, and I don’t need the stereo tracks.

[lesouvage]

Davec, it is kind of hard to measure the level of sound afterwards and it is easy to develop a kind of tunnel vision on this issue. It is at the end of a recording of 2,5 hour and during the last part of the evening the sound was pretty loud. Other evenings I had put the hard disk under the mixing table in the bottom of the flight case and, without any reason, this evening the harddisk was lying on the table.

Hawk, it seems pretty logical not to make a recording of the channels that are not in use. I’m not a techie but adding an option to disable recording for those channels not in use doesn’t sound like rocket science to me.

Not adding a USB 3 connection to the mixing table is a basic design flaw. With USB 2.0 the multitrack recording is just working properly under very constraint conditions (completely empty harddisk formatted by the QU-16 table, not to loud environment (perhaps), just a selection of the hard disk available on the market is usable) and there is no way to notice there is something going wrong. I’m pretty sure that in short time for new QU-16/24 tables the USB 2.0 connection will be replaced for a USB 3.0 connection. It would be nice if Allen & Heath launch a return program for mixing tables already sold to solve the problem in a structural way by replacing the USB 2.0 connection with a USB 3.0 connection. In the car industry design flaws are fixed this way on a regular basis.

[robbocurry]

@lesouvage
In fairness to A&H, USB2.0 is fast enough to read and write all available channels to either a computer or an external device.
There is no need for USB3.0 speed really so I can’t agree with you in saying no USB3.0 capability is a design flaw.
Yes it might make record arming and project loading a bit faster but this is not critical to me.
I’m not sure there is going to be any quantum leap in DAW technology that would require the faster interface any time soon – correct me if I’m wrong!
Rob:)

[lesouvage]

@Robbocurry, I think this discussion and the other posts about problems with multitrack recording proof that the multitrack recording to an external USB harddisk isn’t working properly 100 % of the time. If it is not the lack of speed of a USB 2.0 connection then what else can be the reason and what can be done to fix it? It is really no fun to be called by musicians that the provided recordings of their yesterday gig is useless because of the hick ups. If a critical feature of a device is not working 100 % of the time it shouldn’t have been added as a feature. Adding a critical feature to a device that isn’t working 100 % of the time is, in my view, a design flaw that needs to be fixed.

[robbocurry]

Vibration is the problem, or do it would seem, not USB speed.

[robbocurry]

USB stick, ext hdd and laptop all working really well for me. I haven’t had any skipping problems at all, nothing wrong with my USB. My suggestion to people with skipping problems is to try a fast USB stick (beg, steal or borrow) and see what happens!!

[lesouvage]

@robbocurry I will follow your advice except for the beg steal or borrow part and see what happens. I will post my experiences.

[lesouvage]

Would this one do the job? Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 USB-stick 64 GB

[Hawk]

@lesouvage

As suggested by other user in this thread, use San disk extreme usb 3.0

[robbocurry]

@lesouvage
I don’t have that particular drive so I can’t say definitively that it will work. If it’s a fast USB 3.0 I think there’s a good chance it will do your job – good luck:)
Rob

[Anonymous]

Thanks everybody for their trying and research! I’ve had the same issues with multi-track recording on USB hard drives and ordered SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 64GB sticks now. Hope that helps me too 😉 I’ll try them out with my QU-16 and QU-24 and let you know.

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