moebius7
Level 1 (109 points)
Audio

Q: Sample drop out driving me insane

OK, this problem is now officially driving me insane. Before I continue, I must explain that this issue has "semi-plagued" me for several years, and spans different computers and hard drives, so I'm now led to conclude the problem is a software one, though I'm not expert enough to be sure. Otherwise I would have solved this and not be asking for help. I have never got to the bottom of this issue.

 

So, I work in Logic , and overwhelmingly use Kontakt, but I also use EXS24, and the same thing happens there, so it's not Kontakt. I have suffered sample dropouts, while constructing cues and tracks. And it doesn't seem to matter how much is loaded. It can happen with one instrument or many. I'll be playing away ( I mean physically playing the keyboard ) and suddenly the sound drops out. This usually happens on notes which are held for long periods, but in actual playback, it can happen to anything. A crash cymbal, starts to play, but immediately gets choked. Then again, there are periods when the whole thing behaves itself, but trouble is never far away.

 

The worst and most infuriating examples of this are when I'm hold down long notes for the purposes of drones. Randomly the sound will "choke" and I actually hear the hard drive mechanism protest ! Then the sound stops. This causes a huge waste of time for me, as I have to start all over again. It's important ,while playing this stuff to have it behave, as you have to keep the vibe going. Imagine repeatedly having to hold down notes, and pray that the thing won't drop out randomly before the end. It's ridiculous.

 

Weirdly, there are also occasions when a sample ( or samples) will cut out at exactly the same point every time. Then , mysteriously, that clears up. It's baffling, intensely annoying and I'm really at the end of my rope with it.

 

I must stress that when I bounce a mix, offline, this never, ever happens. The mixes are flawless. What the **** is that ??

 

So, in terms of technology this is what I'm using right now. A late 2012 iMac i7, 32 GB RAM, and still on Mountain Lion 10.8.5 ( don't ask ). I'm currently streaming the audio from a LaCie TBT2 12 terabyte RAID drive, configured as JBOD. It's Thunderbolt 2, and the iMac is TB1. This is not the problem , of course ( is it ?! ) . It's all backward-compatible.

 

Previously to that I was working with the LaCie 6 terabyte version, JBOD. Same problem. Further back, different iMac and drives… doesn't matter. Same problem. I'm on LPX 10.0.7. As I'm emphasising, I feel that none of this technical data means anything, because I've suffered this issue across many different systems, in the past 7 years.

 

I used to have Mac "farm" and ran that over ethernet successfully for a long time. I never had sample drop out issues at all, that I can remember ! I should point out that I do not use a sound card these days. I simply bounce to disk, "internally". All my clients are extremely happy with my results. The end mix is right up there, in quality. I'm happy in that respect .

 

Right now, I just completed a Discovery Channel series and this issue plagued me all the way through like never before. I cannot understand why , but this problem seems worse than ever on this new 12 TB drive. What should have been a pleasant creative assignment, turned into a total train wreck , all because of this utterly baffling problem. I've worked  on a lot of TV and games ,etc., and this has blighted me all the way through. I know, I know, I should have solved it sooner. What can I tell you? The jobs get done. I have no technical staff and work alone. Honestly , I'm beginning to wonder if LaCie is the problem. In the past i've had more than one drive go down, and they had a bad reputation. but these days, they are much more solid.

 

At some point , ASAP, I want to buy the latest iMac, install 64 GB RAM, and go over to a SSD equivalent drive system. Expensive, but if that solves it, I'm happy.

 

Can anyone help , please?? I've looked on the internet, but not yet found a solution .  Sorry for the overlong post. Many thanks to anyone who can solve this.

Posted on Oct 15, 2016 3:21 PM

Close
moebius7

Q: Sample drop out driving me insane

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

Previous Page 2

  • by moebius7,

    moebius7 moebius7 Oct 17, 2016 7:15 AM in response to Pancenter
    Level 1 (109 points)
    Audio
    Oct 17, 2016 7:15 AM in response to Pancenter

    Of, course, I'd not be reconfiguring my sample drive in the middle of a project. However, it's the sheer busy-ness of work that has prevented my moving up to at least El Capitan. It's highly unlikely that I'll do anything further with this device. It'll stay as JBOD. Rather, I'd simply buy the equivalent SSD's, with, say Black Magic or OWC, and assume that this problem will not occur with such technology. Then both LaCie's will be backups.

     

    Not sure what you mean by "breaking the array". I only have two choice yes? use it as RAID  or JBOD. That's it. It seems that there's no way round that.

     

    And, yes, when I mentioned about the protesting drives I absolutely felt it was like they actually gone into sleep mode. This cutting out strongly resembles a drive attempting to play audio from sleep.

  • by Pancenter,

    Pancenter Pancenter Oct 17, 2016 1:54 PM in response to moebius7
    Level 6 (10,039 points)
    Audio
    Oct 17, 2016 1:54 PM in response to moebius7

    moebius7 wrote:

     

    Not sure what you mean by "breaking the array". I only have two choice yes? use it as RAID  or JBOD. That's it. It seems that there's no way round that.

     

    And, yes, when I mentioned about the protesting drives I absolutely felt it was like they actually gone into sleep mode. This cutting out strongly resembles a drive attempting to play audio from sleep.

     

    I meant ditching JBOD in favor of two independent daisy chained drives.

     

    Is this your product.

    http://www.lacie.com/professional/d2/d2-thunderbolt-2/#specs

  • by moebius7,

    moebius7 moebius7 Oct 17, 2016 2:15 PM in response to Pancenter
    Level 1 (109 points)
    Audio
    Oct 17, 2016 2:15 PM in response to Pancenter

    I see. That would basically mean not using the device at all, then. Well that's what I'm planning to do, once I've done more research on SSD and I'm satisfied that it's the best option. To replace what I have with SSD will cost me over 4200$ , Canadian.

     

    No, that's not what I have. I don't think that's RAID is it? This is what I have : http://www.lacie.com/ca/en/professional/big/2big-thunderbolt-2/

     

    6TB and now 12TB

     

    Btw, I tried the core core configuration in Logic. I've not tested it throughly, yet, but it seem that it evens out the four threads, but they are, of course "hotter" in the cpu read out.

     

    Many thanks.

  • by Pete_in_Denver,

    Pete_in_Denver Pete_in_Denver Oct 18, 2016 12:49 AM in response to moebius7
    Level 1 (48 points)
    Audio
    Oct 18, 2016 12:49 AM in response to moebius7

    I used to work in the storage industry, so perhaps I can shed a little light...

     

    JBOD means just that... just a bunch-o-disks. They present independently to the host computer.

     

    In your case it seems like you have 'concatenated drives', if it all appears to you as one big disk.

     

    RAID could also look like one big drive, albeit with less capacity than the total of the separate drives' capacity.

     

    RAID is likely not the issue here, but you're not running true JBOD if you're seeing one big disk (as above).

     

    That means there is some lower level software 'layer' that's aggregating the physical disks for you, either in your computer, or in the disk array.

     

    If you could configure your disk(s) for true JBOD operation (i.e. seeing each physical disk independently from the perspective of the computer), you could be fairly confident that you aren't using any of that 'translational' software.

     

    Clear as mud?

  • by moebius7,

    moebius7 moebius7 Oct 18, 2016 6:35 AM in response to Pete_in_Denver
    Level 1 (109 points)
    Audio
    Oct 18, 2016 6:35 AM in response to Pete_in_Denver

    Hi, Pete, firstly ( and no disrespect to all on this thread who have kindly helped ) I do know what JBOD stands for

     

    You make some very interesting points about the legitimacy of my particular "JBOD", and you're absolutely correct: LaCie's version mounts the two drives as one. I didn't know about this point you make. There is no way to separate them that I can see. LaCie offer hardware switching between "JBOD" and RAID , so there's no way for an idiot like me to modify this to make the drives appear separately.It seems, then , that I've made an ill-considered purchase.

     

    Here's a little story. Before  moving to Canada from the UK I was working with a Mac farm. I bought a high-end RAID system ( well over 5000$ -worth ) to serve two of the Macs. It's an 8-bay " military-strength " system, that makes the LaCie look like a toy. I had it configured as JBOD, straight from the manufacturer, and this device mounted all eight drives separately. So, as you point out, this is true JBOD. RIght now its capacity is "only" 4 TB, but according to the supplier it will support up to 24 TB : 3 TB per bay. The reason why I didn't use it with the iMac was because its interface is a dual pci fibre card.

     

    Perhaps what I should have done was to buy a pci to Thunderbolt converter ( not too up on this stuff ) , and upgrade the drives to greater capacity. I never experienced any sample dropouts with this thing. Perhaps I should still look at that option, as it would be cheaper than replacing the LaCie with two SSD enclosures.

     

    So, as you and Pancenter state, there's clearly some software at work, here, thats hindering the performance of the device . Another layer, as you mention . I guess it was only really designed as backup-type system, though LaCie seem to be illustrating it as perfect for high-end video work. I dunno.

     

    Many thanks for that useful info !

  • by Pancenter,

    Pancenter Pancenter Oct 18, 2016 8:39 AM in response to moebius7
    Level 6 (10,039 points)
    Audio
    Oct 18, 2016 8:39 AM in response to moebius7

    Good info on the LaCie version of JBOD.

     

    I know this is basic and you've probably set this long ago, in OSX's System Preferences, under "Energy Saver", you've disabled "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible".

  • by moebius7,

    moebius7 moebius7 Oct 18, 2016 12:37 PM in response to Pancenter
    Level 1 (109 points)
    Audio
    Oct 18, 2016 12:37 PM in response to Pancenter

    Well Pete's useful info made me aware of this curiosity. It's annoying that I cannot do anything about it. It's pretty much a closed system. I'm seriously thinking about getting my older RAID system up and running. Have to do some research into a good fibre to Thunderbolt convertor. It would save me over 3000$ on two SSD system, but ultimately would SSD be better? I like the idea of no moving parts to break down, and theoretically must faster access.This really isn't my area.

     

    Thanks re: the preference setting. Yes, it's set to " infinity".  BTW I've just tried out a cue with only 4 cores selected. Seems better, though the fourth is at times permanently maxed, yet it doesn't actually overload Logic and grind to a halt. Weird. The overall cpu levels are higher.

     

    Here's my older RAID unit….RAID 1.JPG

  • by Pete_in_Denver,

    Pete_in_Denver Pete_in_Denver Oct 18, 2016 1:13 PM in response to moebius7
    Level 1 (48 points)
    Audio
    Oct 18, 2016 1:13 PM in response to moebius7

    JBOD is almost always going to be inferior to flash (SSD) storage. These days, SSD prices are way down there, and going lower. I run a 960 SSD as my main drive and a 500 SSD for recording content on my 2008 Mac Pro. I'd rather see you invest in SSD than a potentially pricey or unavailable Fibre Channel solution to support a legacy disk array. I think I paid about $250 for my 960 GB SSD.

  • by moebius7,

    moebius7 moebius7 Oct 18, 2016 2:02 PM in response to Pete_in_Denver
    Level 1 (109 points)
    Audio
    Oct 18, 2016 2:02 PM in response to Pete_in_Denver

    Thanks for that. I was afraid that SSD would be better. This would buying two Black Magic or OWC enclosures and fitting it out with enough SSD's to cover my current sample resources,which is quite a lot. I need about 6 TB's right now, but that will expand, so I'm looking at a 12 TB system, I guess.The two devices I was looking ate would total over 4200$. It's true SSD's are getting cheaper though. Not only that, but I simply have to update my iMac sometime. Now I'm scared of Sierra and what that might bring. That's for another thread.

     

    One thing I'm not clear about. The old philosophy about mechanical drives is never fill them up to more than about three quarters, otherwise they slow right dow. I'm assuming this will not apply to SSD's. Now the question is: what the **** am I going to do with all these RAIDS systems ??

Previous Page 2