[Ardour-Users] gak

Martin Lynch martin.lynch at shaw.ca
Mon Nov 12 19:18:34 PST 2007


Paul Davis wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-11-12 at 18:47 -0800, Martin Lynch wrote:
> 
>> I'm having the same problem re: Disk Can't Keep Up and posted this issue 
>> to Ardour forum but no response. 
> 
> it probably needs to be made more apparent that the forums are not the
> primary support venue for ardour, even though we do try to respond to
> most of the issues that come up there in some way.
> 
>> I ended up having to delete all the 
>> other regions it created in order to play the simple 4 track drum tracks 
>> I'd recorded from Hydrogen. Like you, I have a RAID 0 setup and there's 
>> no logical way my drives could be bogged down playing four simple tracks 
> 
> actually, yes, they could. i ran into a situation earlier this summer
> with a brand-spanking new, super fast system with two identical disks
> (both SATA 7200rpm). one of the disks (the system disk - coincidence,
> who knows?) was completely unusable for ardour - it couldn't record 3
> tracks without a disk underrun. the other disk (formatted identically)
> could handle 35+ tracks with ease. what is to blame for this incredible
> disparity in behaviour? the disk h/w? the filesystem? the kernel i/o
> scheduler? fragmentation? who really knows .... all i know is that to
> assume that the fact that ardour reports the error means tht ardour is
> to blame is premature ...

Many thanks Paul - appreciate the enlightenment! I find your comments 
very interesting - do you happen to recall what file systems were used? 
I use ext3 for the drive that Ardour's on and xfs for the RAID array 
that has the recordings.

On a broader point, you're right that I spoke out of turn - frustration 
getting the better of me - and I certainly don't mean to imply Ardour is 
not a fantastic piece of software, just that after spending many, many 
hours piecing together a drum track to get it just right only to find it 
unrecordable (or so I thought) sent the VU meter which measures my rage 
and profanity right off the chart...


> 
>> I did notice that there were an inordinately high number of regions - ie 
>> perhaps 50+, which was odd given I'd only tried to record the damn thing 
>> maybe 4 times. 
> 
> if they do not overlap, its not an issue. if they overlap, then you
> either did lots of punches or you edited them so that they overlapped.
> and *this* is an issue, currently.

Yes, they did overlap, and you may be right that I created them in that 
the disk error messages kept interrupting my recording efforts 
mid-stream and I guess I started over without erasing the prior capture, 
however the error came first. I then started a new, identical session on 
the same drive (but not partition - this was in an xfx partition) as 
Ardour, with EXACTLY the same connections, etc and had no problem. I 
then went back to the RAID session and, noticing all the regions, 
deleted them and voila, it worked.

Is there a workaround for the overlapping issue you describe, ie a way 
to send only the "active" regions to the output (or input) without 
deleting them? Can they be somehow "disengaged" from the process? Pardon 
my ignorance...

> 
> 
>> I'm blissfully ignorant about programming etc but I won't 
>> let that stop me from suggesting it's a RAID implementation error in 
>> Ardour...
> 
> ardour doesn't have a "RAID" implementation other than the capability to
> spread files out across different disks. that doesn't happen unless you
> specifically add stuff to the "RAID Path"
> 
> 
> 

That'll learn me for opining on topics I'm demonstrably ignorant 
about...point taken.

As an aside, Paul, how about a response to my subscription emails re: 
avoiding PayPal? I want to support your efforts again!!!

ML
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