Skipping while recording/playback

Question

Level 1

4 points

Skipping while recording/playback

I've had this problem the last 3-4 months and its been driving me nuts. Basically is happening is it seems as though the computer is short on memory and it starts cutting out and skipping rapidly during recording and playback. So I looked into the activity monitor only to be surprised that I wasn't indeed using all of my memory or CPU. My memory is only at about 52% usage and my CPU is at 50% usage. So I cannot figure out why it skips. When I first bought ILife 08 when it came out I had no problems, then one day out of no where this occurred.

I narrowed it down to the Airport. If I turn it off, it suddenly works smooth and perfect. When its on, it acts as listed above. My question for those of you who know is, why would the airport effect garageband's flow? and how do I fix this without turning off airport?

Macbook 1.86 Intel Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.4.1)

Posted on Jul 5, 2008 5:13 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 13, 2008 9:58 AM in response to Brak23

I'm having the exact same problem also. Have just turned off my wifi and it is now working fine so thank you for that tip! Perhaps it'll actually be a good thing as it'll now stop me procrastinating on the net when I should be composing. . . Have a listen to my band http://www.myspace.com/dollandthekicks - none of the tracks done on Garageband but I'm looking to write key/string parts for us with it.

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Answer 2

Jul 16, 2008 10:41 PM in response to Brak23

hey i was having the same problem with my garageband playback, if airport is on, i get really choppy playback, but its perfect once airport is off. i did some research found two suggestions that may help your situation. the first one solved my problem all together.

1. reset disk permissions, use Disk Utility and fix the disk permissions on your drives, software updates and other things can get these out of whack and cause sluggish performance or application failure, the only thing to note about this is that sometimes it wont fix third party applications, but it fixed my problem with garageband in under 10 minutes

2. revert to an older version of the Airport software, i didnt look into this, but some people said they originally didnt have a problem with Garageband until they performed a software update, so reverting to a previous version of the Airport software may solve the problem

my best guess is that the problem lies between both of these solutions. the newest Airport updates may have screwed up the disk permissions on my machine, so Fixing the disk permissions got everything back into line and everything runs good now. another thing that affected the playback was the Buffer Setting under the "Audio/MIDI" tab in the Garageband preferences. if it's set for Large Buffer Size (Maximum number of simultaneous tracks) my machine performed smoother MIDI playback, but if you're working with real instruments you may need to leave it on Small Buffer Size (Minimum delay when playing instruments live). hope this helps get things running smoothly!

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Answer 3

HangTime

Level 9

53,853 points

Jul 5, 2008 5:22 PM in response to Brak23

This is a known issue. I can't tell you why, but several people have reported problems with record and playback that were all cured by turning off the wifi connection

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Answer 4

Brak23 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 5, 2008 5:25 PM in response to HangTime

Im just confused as to why this suddenly occurred. It was not after any update or anything new. It just suddenly started out of the blue.

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Answer 5

isteveus

Level 5

4,340 points

Jul 5, 2008 6:49 PM in response to Brak23

I never had this problem but I have read that the either the 10.5.4 or latest Airport update has fixed this for some people.

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Answer 6

Jul 8, 2008 9:08 AM in response to HangTime

I just installed 10.5.4 and my machine doesn't have a wireless card and I'm still having this problem... any ideas? I've re-installed the program as well

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