Midas MR 18 OSX 16 track 24bit 44.1khz 4-second-long random dropout issue

Question

Weird issue recording 16 tracks at 24bit/44.1kHz on a Midas MR 18 connected to Ableton Live on OSX via USB.

Within a period of about 4 seconds, there were handful of missing parts on each track randomly between 10ms and 500ms in length and randomly spaced, resulting in audible stutter. The tracks were synchronous again later, but about 0.5 seconds shorter than a room microphone track recorded over a different audio interface. The room track was synchronous with the 16 before the issue, and 0.5 seconds delayed in comparison after the issue.

I was able to salvage the track with minimal disturbance, so all is well- but what could have been the problem? Could there be a problem with the USB stack that I could tune for more robustness, or another workaround?

Thanks, everyone!

Answer 1

Seems like, possibly, a spike in CPU or RAM usage. Maybe upgrade the computer specs.

Answer 2

Sounds like a buffering issue to me. If you are having problems with your computer specs not being quite up to scratch, increase the buffer sizes. Although your CPU will be moving more data around each time it fills up a buffer, the overall effect will be lower load on the CPU as it will not have to fill and empty its buffers so often.