Truncated file lengths

[Mitch]

Recently came back from recording with the QU-24 and discovered that I had audio files of varying lengths, some longer in time than others, let me add that the recording should of been 1 hour in length, all files except the stereo mix files, tracks 17/18 stopped at either 45 seconds in or a minute, with no indication that anything was wrong. Downside obviously was I have no separate tracks to mix, although I have a decent hot mix. Anyone else see this?

[Anonymous]

Did you do a soft shutdown or a hard shutdown?

[LKY]

Yes,

Shutdown hard, or have a buffer empty, or a hd that is “green” goto low power, or blah blah…

We will need much more info to try to replicate/look into…
Hard drive used…
Stable power…
Fw version…
That’s just to start

Now, in addition to a piece of hardware lagging (being to slow) to support the quite massive amount of IO…there are other issues I’ve seen in the area…

If the hard disk is banged, bumped, thumped, vibrated, molested, jostled, etc…you can quickly get some minor read/write errors…but, the hard disks do have a buffer to handle this to a point…

So, a hard drive that on a perfect day with no interference electrically or mechanically can easily go bad quickly…in the digital realm the second the buffer overfills the stream is corrupted (data lost) and the file will in all likelihood be unusable…so most software on getting a notice there is dropped data, will truncate the stream, thereby saving the steams that aren’t already corrupted in theory…

In practice, it usually ends up in a complete loss of the session the millisecond you start loosing packets in the stream…that’s digital…it either works…or not…

Now, of you have a very reliable (not many or little write errors) fast drive and more buffers that gives you some headroom…

My suggestion…

Check that drives performance, and for errors…
Build or buy a nice shock isolated platform…like for studio monitors…and use that to hold the drive…thereby taking some of the vibration out of the drive…even going so far as getting or building a small vented isolated enclosure would be perfect…

As example, I’m a pilot…I remember when the first iPods came out…the hard disk ones…I used it all the time for music into the headsets on my birds…

Worked great!

Then one day I was in a friends small (4 person) airplane…and the iPod was on the dash(glare shield)…and it started skipping and just eventually…after only a couple of mins stopped…

The vibration of that single engine at 2400 rpm was the right pitch to cause an issue…

Changed the rpm to 2450…worked great…2400 nope!

So a frequency at a specific spl can quite easily cause major faults…and one they start…it’s all but over!

Let us know your config, where your drive was sitting…and/or mounted…spl in that area…ability to be bumped or knocked around…

[Author]

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