Hi, I`m really hoping you can help me get to the bottom of this issue guys.
I have what seems to be a common problem, and from what I`ve read on various sites, has been for at least the last 3 years.
I`m sure some of the most clued up guys on forums like this shudder when they hear anything of the message "Core Audio. Disc too slow or system overload. (-10010)"

I`ve read threads from 2004 saying that they hope a fix will be out soon for this problem. Surely after 3 years some answers are available, but I`ve looked very hard and I cant find it. Please, have you any ideas that may help prevent me from going completely insane?!?


I have this occurring during record and playback using a macmini dual 1.83, 2gig RAM, lacie 2dextreme ext.h/drive, running Logic express 7, Presonus Firepod.

I`m not swamping my tracks with plug-ins as I`m going out to external valve units and recording back in. From 5 original audio tracks I`m ending up with a maximum of of 16 recorded audio tracks.

Any help will be gratefully recieved. Martin

quote:

Originally posted by Bluesdude:
Hi, I`m really hoping you can help me get to the bottom of this issue guys.
I have what seems to be a common problem, and from what I`ve read on various sites, has been for at least the last 3 years.
I`m sure some of the most clued up guys on forums like this shudder when they hear anything of the message "Core Audio. Disc too slow or system overload. (-10010)"

No it would take much more than that.

quote:

I`ve read threads from 2004 saying that they hope a fix will be out soon for this problem. Surely after 3 years some answers are available, but I`ve looked very hard and I cant find it. Please, have you any ideas that may help prevent me from going completely insane?!?

First, this is not something that Apple is going to fix since this warning just means you are asking too much from your system. Their fix would be for you to buy faster hardware or don't
ask so much from what you have.
What is your audio buffer set at. It could be set too low.If it is at 128 try 256. 512 if your mixing.

quote:

I have this occurring during record and playback using a macmini dual 1.83, 2gig RAM, lacie 2dextreme ext.h/drive, running Logic express 7, Presonus Firepod.

I`m not swamping my tracks with plug-ins as I`m going out to external valve units and recording back in. From 5 original audio tracks I`m ending up with a maximum of of 16 recorded audio tracks.

Any help will be gratefully recieved. Martin

I am not sure what you mean by swapping. Are you
sending 16 audio tracks to the mini at one time?

How is this external hard drive connected to the Mini? What is the external hard drives RPM?

The answers to these questions will say where the bottle neck is.

Hi Sonic, No mate, the bottleneck is sliding up and down the neck of my guitar.

Yeah, sorry as you can see its got me a little crazee. Thanks for getting back to me.

I`ll go through your points in reverse. The d2extreme h/drive is just a few months old (its formatted for OSX extended (journaled). Its speed is 7200rpm. It is firewire, but as the macmini only has one firewire port, the Firepod interface is connected here and the hard drive is connected via USB

I meant I am not swamp-ing with plug ins. No the maximum I intend to record at once is 8 tracks supplied by the Firepod, but so far have only used 5 at once. Any other recording during mixdown involves a maximum of 2 tracks simultaneously.

I gather the mini`s internal drive runs at 5400rpm, but can it be replaced with a 10000rpm raptor drive?, would that be noisy?

So glad of some response mate, thanks.

Martin

Oops I forgot, the buffer size can be changed to 512,256,128 and the same thing is happening. The system performance suggests that the I/O sometimes peaks when it occurs but sometimes is only at 40%. The audio meter only just flickers on one side occasionally, so I dont think its down to that.

Thanks again, Martin

I would be willin to bet it is because your external drive is on the USB port. The drive itself is good it is just that the USB bus is not as effiecient as the firewire. You could almost compare the Fire wire to a freeway and USB (even USB2) to city traffic. It tends to send packets in bursts and has more overhead. Where as firewire packets are more selfcontained almost like there is a traffic cop in each one so no need for a traffic grid.
You can't upgrade the drives on those machines
unless you do a hack which voids the warranty. I have not heard of anyone doing it but that does not mean it could not be done. Then you would run into the problem of the rest of the electonics limiting you. IMO it would not be worth the trouble. I would just get a new machine. If you want to avoid the cost of a MAC PRO I would go for the MacBookPro. A very capable machine and you already have an external to go with it.
Sorry for the bad news but if you try not to
record more than 2-3 tracks at a time you might be ok.

to avoid the cost of the $3k MacPro, buy a fractionally powered $2500k laptop? And bottleneck on FW?

Disagree. If you need the power, get a workstation class machine. PCIE, FW800, and internal SATA available for whatever expansion you need.

What happens if you switch it to 16bit recording? Can you get a lot more stuff going? That's the free fix for you.

Hi, thanks for your suggestions. I still cant figure out why I was having a good success rate with recording 5 tracks at once, with it giving the core audio only very occaissionally, like once every 20-30 consecutive records. Whereas now it is occurring virtually every time, when just attempting to record a single track. I feel there must be something to this.


Could this have anything to do with me extending the maximum record length, I set it to 120 mins so that I could sit in another room and record away from any noise, leaving it running and editing afterwards. I had about 13gig spare on the drive (using internal), and though I`d set the max to 120mins, the max length was around 72mins, I imagine to match the remaining h/drive space. I was at this time recording at 96k.


I only realistically need 5 tracks to record at once maybe 8 max in the future. I have`nt got the ££££`s (uk) to invest in a new machine.


So I have to try and get some sort of result from my existing kit, if I can. The results that I had prior to this problem worsening were very satisfactory. With valve mics and analogue valve pre`s, eq and compression units, I have little need for plug-ins other than for some reverb, and I intend to get an outboard reverb unit at some point too.

I need quality, I`m recording acoustic music with lots of space and feel, and I need it up to professionally recorded standard. Having that in mind, is recording at 16bit rate as opposed to 24bit going to produce the necessary results. In other words, what will I be compromising in quality for this free fix Popmann?

One thing that appealed to me about the mini is its size, as my recording set-up has been designed for being portable so that I can record live mixes of bands from my PA (I`m also a live sound engineer), and record in favourable spaces.

I have`nt actually used the external drive for running Logic, just the internal. Is there anyway I can daisy chain an interface and an external drive from the one firewire port, or is there any other piece of kit that will enable this? Bear with me as I should imagine this may sound about as newbie as it can get, but I dont suppose my interface will firewire directly to my external

Is there anything else I can do to lighten the load on my mini whilst recording
I am at the moment erasing and re-installing my OS tiger and then reloading Logic Express.

Ah if only I had the money to "just get a new machine", cos I have been tempted to throw this one in the bin a few times!

Thanks for you support guys.

Martin

sounds like a FW buss overload.

16bit may do the trick, but don't forget about the difference in gain staging.

Uh? Sorry Tonio, you could be speaking in a different language. FW? Difference in gain staging? Will the quality difference between 24bit and 16bit be audibly noticeable?

Regards, Martin

quote:

to avoid the cost of the $3k MacPro, buy a fractionally powered $2500k laptop?
And bottleneck on FW?

I had not check the prices. Your right at that price it is not a great idea.
On his set up I did say the bottleneck was probably on the USB.

quote:

Could this have anything to do with me extending the maximum record length, I set it to 120 mins so that I could sit in another room and record away from any noise, leaving it running and editing afterwards. I had about 13gig spare on the drive (using internal), and though I`d set the max to 120mins, the max length was around 72mins, I imagine to match the remaining h/drive space. I was at this time recording at 96k.

It sounded like your were getting it for 5-16 tracks. The first post was not too clear in that it did not say anything about getting the error for recording just one track. That should not be happening even with USB. So I am thinking something else is going on.

Just for reference, Logic must be on the startup drive. You can daisy chain a external with an interface. There is a preferred chain order though I forget which one should be first. I would not try to record 5 tracks at 96 khz in your situation.
You should always try to record audio on any disc other than the startup. You should have a minimum of 25% free space on any disc to maintain efficiency.
Never try to tell a program to do something it thinks it cant do like record for 120 minutes when it thinks it only has 72 minutes available.
You are just asking for trouble.

Hi again, thanks for your trouble. It looks like I`ve probably caused some by not explaining thouroughly enough the first time I posted, so please accept my appologies for anyone missled.

I have now done an erase install of my OS tiger and of Logic Express. I will try running the audio from my external and wont be so stupid in what I ask of the set-up.

I will get a chance to fully try out the set-up over the next couple of days, I`ll let you know how it goes.

Just some small points if I may.

1. To use the exteral to run audio, am I right in thinking this is simply a matter of setting the record path to the external drive?

2. Is there any advantage to recording from mics on 96k, or am I misleading myself in thinking this will keep quality higher in my final mix? I know it will come back to 44k for cd/listening purposes.

3. Is thee a safe max record time for my rig that is going to be higher than 15mins? Or is it just a matter of experimentarion?

Once again thanks a bunch guys, and sorry if I`ve given information (more likely a lack of it) that has led to any of you to feeling that you`ve gone down the wrong path with this one. I can only say how valuable your help has been, even if I just needed a kick up the arse and have it pointed out to me how stupid I`m being in what I`ve been expecting of my equipment.

A little embarrassed, Martin

quote:

1. To use the exteral to run audio, am I right in thinking this is simply a matter of setting the record path to the external drive?

You can do it that way though I would recommend that each time you start a project, go to the file menu and select"Save As Project". This will bring up a dialog where you can select which files to save in the project folder. It keeps everything in one place (that you choose) and keeps thing more organized. It is the only way I work now.

quote:

2. Is there any advantage to recording from mics on 96k, or am I misleading myself in thinking this will keep quality higher in my final mix? I know it will come back to 44k for cd/listening purposes.

It would be an advantage if:
1.You were NOT going to do the conversion to 44.1 inside of Logic. If you had another program like Peak Pro or something like it of
a higher quality because Logic's Sample Rate Conversion is not that good right now.
2. You dont mind eating up your disc space over
twice as fast.
3. Lowering your track count is not a problem.

quote:

3. Is thee a safe max record time for my rig that is going to be higher than 15mins? Or is it just a matter of experimentarion?

Do you need to record more than 15 minutes at
a time. This figure is for any one take. I am
pretty sure the only people that change the time
is if you are recording live situations or doing other studio work involving long takes.
You can record 14 min tracks all day with no problem.

quote:

Once again thanks a bunch guys, and sorry if I`ve given information (more likely a lack of it) that has led to any of you to feeling that you`ve gone down the wrong path with this one. I can only say how valuable your help has been, even if I just needed a kick up the arse and have it pointed out to me how stupid I`m being in what I`ve been expecting of my equipment.

A little embarrassed, Martin

Not a problem, we have all been there at one time. SD

Thanks Sonic, I may look a little further into the other programs to make use of higher sample rates, but I need to gain an understanding of subject and the difference to a commercial quality sounding recording.

Thanks for the "save as project" tip, I`ll employ that from now on. Things were starting to look messy the way I was filing.

Yes the reason I`d like to set a longer max record length, is I am often recording myself vocals and fingerstyle guitar. I have my studio in my celler, but prefer to record a floor above and run leads to my mics from downstairs. I have to take a trip up down and back upstairs for each take. I also get better if I can just sit and play for a while and then, once I`m in the flow go through a few songs at a time, as I find the whole business of recording a real drain from the energy and the headspace I require for good moody recordings.

Thanks again, Martin

Martin,
external FW drive, ext FW interface could give you the snap crackle pop if you tax your buss.

24 vs 16 bit has different gain staging i.e.
16 bit you need to hit hard, 24bit shoot for 18-12dbfs on input.

rgds

quote:

Originally posted by Bluesdude:
Uh? Sorry Tonio, you could be speaking in a different language. FW? Difference in gain staging? Will the quality difference between 24bit and 16bit be audibly noticeable?

Regards, Martin

Thanks Tonio, I have a little more idea now.

Things seem to be running a bit better so far, though I have`nt tried recording 5-8 tracks yet, and I am still in the process of sorting the program to my liking, but fingers crossed.

I am running the external from usb2 at the moment, but will try the daisy chain with the firepod being the first on the port. This is something that is known to work on another similar set-up, apparently it does`nt work the other way round.

Regards, Martin

Cool all is working fine again now. Did a live recording using up 8 tracks with a max rec time set to 100mins. Recorded without a hitch.

Alls well that ends well. Thanks for eveyones help

Martin

Have a look a this video. I've tried everything to stop overloads posted on these forums with zero joy. This may shed some light on the matter.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GNUR3ZUIwUo