So I had a gig recording a local band at a studio I don’t normally use, and was eventually forced to use pro tools (which I’m not good at) due to Cubase misbehavior. I set up the mics, got the sounds, then when the band started tracking periodically we would hear a crackle/pop noise which was written into every track - so it had to be a computer issue. So i turned up the buffer until the band was complaining about the latency, and still the pops happened. So then I switched from 88.2 KHz to 48KHz, and suddenly the monitoring was totally screwed - the band was playing tightly, but the monitoring sounded like a marching band falling down a set of stairs. I tried rebooting Cubase and then rebooting the computer to no avail. Band is getting frustrated, so we move to pro tools - which caused more frustration because I don’t know much about it and couldn’t pull off an edit that would have required 15 seconds in Cubase.
The studio is using a Mac/high sierra. Because I don’t use real time monitoring in my normal work space (instead just using the Lynx mixer which is more flexible and has no noticeable latency), and plus, I use a PC, I’ve never come across this problem in the past. I’ve worked in that studio in the past (using my dongle - no one else in the studio uses Cubase) with no problems. The intern suggested there was an incompatibility due to an OS update together with the fact that I was using a version of Cubase that came out a year and a half ago, and I don’t believe I ever installed any of the updates on their computer. I tried to download the last update for Pro 9, but it was 13 gb and would have taken forever to download while the band is paying by the hour.
Questions: 1. has anyone else had this sort of issue? 2. can this problem be solved by updating the installation to the most recent 9 update, or would I need to buy 9.5?
Also, Today I brought the consolidated tracks into my computer, using a template I had created for the session - so control room was enabled. When I tried to disable the control room (I don’t need it for mixing, and I did want to use the audition tool which mysteriously stops working when you enable the control room) and the playback malfunctioned in terms of the tracks’ timing - the marching band thing again.
What a clusterf@ck. This could seriously impact me professionally - the band already posted on facebook mentioning it was a difficult session.
This is a Cubase issue as pro tools worked flawlessly - except, of course, for my lack of facility with it. They are using an Orion converter fwiw.