For those of you who are running cubase on a HP laptop and wondering why you are getting this message come up, even when you’re only recording one track, I think I might have the answer you are looking for.
A while ago, me and my brother (Joe!) were filming a pilot episode, for a series that we want to do, called ‘The Jayme G Show’.
Seeing as we didn’t have any money to fund it, we couldn’t afford to buy the proper equipment for the job, so we had to be creative with what the equipment we already had. Luckily ‘Joe!’ recently got given a boom mic for his camera, as a birthday present. But we still needed something to record the audio on to, and plugging it into the camera’s mic input means that your boom-mic guy is tied to the camera man.
So, seeing as I already had a portable audio interface (the one that we did the video about) ‘The Session I/O‘, we decided to use my laptop.
Here is my setup:
As you can see I have two bags; One with the audio interface in and the other one with my laptop in.
I would set up a project in Cubase, using the ‘Session I/O‘ as the audio device, then press record, shut the laptop and put it in the bag.
The first time I tested this setup, I ran in to a little problem…
After doing a short test recording, I opened up the laptop to see how it went. I then saw an error message in Cubase; (I can’t remember exactly, but it was something like..) ‘Error-too many record tracks’.
What does that mean?
It means that too much information is trying to be recorded at one time for your hard drive to handle.
Now, when doing multi-track recordings it’s understandable for this to happen because if you have a lot of tracks, recording at a high bit rate and sample rate, it can be too much information for the hard drive to handle. (depending on the speed of the hard drive)
But this seemed crazy, I was only recording one 24 bit mono audio track @ 44,100 Hz! That’s nothing!!! How slow must my hard drive be!?
So I started looking for information on the hard drive that I have in my laptop, to see if it was actually this ridiculously slow or if it was something else…
It was something else.
Upon reading up on my hp hard drive I found out that it has a built in: HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
This little thing does this:
“Built-in HP ProtectSmart detects if your laptop has been dropped, and during that split-second journey to the floor, it automatically locks your fragile hard drive. This safety mechanism helps prevent the loss of your files and media library from damage caused by the fall.”
Which is great if you’re a cluts with an expensive piece of equipment, but not so great if you’re trying to record audio with the laptop in a bag that keeps setting off the damn ‘HP ProtectSmart‘ because of the movement!
So that was it! Cubase must have thought that the hard drive wasn’t recording fast enough, because when the hp protection thing was triggered, the hard drive wasn’t spinning at all! So it must have assumed that it was because of too many tracks being recorded at once!
All I had to do then, was go to; start menu, control panel, Hp 3D Drive Guard and then disable it! (And also be extra careful not to bump or knock the laptop much, while it was disabled!)
Hace un tiempo, mi hermano (Joe!) y yo estábamos grabando un episodio piloto, para una serie que queremos hacer, llamada “El Show de Jayme-G”.
Como no tenÃamos dinero para financiarla, no podÃamos costearnos comprar el equipo apropiado para el trabajo, asà que tenÃamos que ser creativos con el equipo que ya tenÃamos. Afortunadamente a ‘Joe!’ le regalaron hace poco un micrófono para su cámara como regalo de cumpleaños. Pero todavÃa necesitábamos algo para grabar el audio, y conectarlo a la cámara teniendo el micrófono unido a esta.
Asà que, como ya tenÃamos una interfaz portátil de audio (aquella de la que hicimos un vÃdeo) ‘The Session I/O‘, decidimos usar mi portátil.
InstalarÃa el proyecto en Cubase, usando la ‘Session I/O‘ como dispositivo de audio, entonces presionarÃa grabar, cerrarÃa el portátil y lo meterÃa en la bolsa.
Significa que se está intentando grabar demasiada información al mismo tiempo como para que tu disco duro pueda manejarlo.
Ahora, cuando se graban múltiples pistas es incomprensible que esto ocurra porque si tienes un montón de pistas, grabando en una frecuencia alta y tipos de muestra, puede ser demasiada información para que el disco duro pueda manejarla. (Dependiendo de la velocidad del disco duro).
Lo cual es genial si eres un afortunado con un equipo caro, ¡pero no tan genial si estás intentando grabar un audio con el portátil metido en una bolsa que mantiene la instalación apagada del daño de ‘HP ProtectSmart‘ a causa del movimiento!
¡Asà que eso era! Cubase debe haber pensado que el disco duro no está grabando suficientemente rápido, porque cuando se activa la protección de hp, ¡el disco duro no gira en absoluto! ¡Asà que debe haber asumido que era porque habÃa demasiadas pistas grabando al mimo tiempo!