Just curious if there is some kind of alarm that pops up if there is a glitch or dropout silence while recording from a reference track, through the gear and captured onto an audio track
Would be good to know for peace of mind
thank you
You can test this with the ‘Null Test Track’? Is that right?
could you explain that a bit more?
What would you be nulling against, the original mixdown? But it wouldn’t null as the recorded audio had run through the analog equipment and so picked up changes
thank you
In REAPER you can have it drop markers when buffer under-runs are detected. I don’t think WaveLab has anything similar.
That said, the only thing I would trust is listening to the audio with my own ears to make sure there are no issues.
Same issue as this, when you boil it down: A Better Way To Find Dropouts? - #5 by mgoldey
The OP’s concern is why I stopped recording to a PC and bought a standalone digital recorder. I couldn’t rely on my PC and I couldn’t literally monitor every second of a tape being played back and recorded into Wavelab, either. But that not always a solution.
To me, this is an ideal task for computers: combing large sets of data for anomalies is the sort of tedious, repetitive task that computers excel at but humans get bored with and do poorly at.
While my ears will eventually be the final arbiter, QC-ing audio in real time for errors, or trying to keep up with the recordings once they’re made, is just not practical. Even if it was possible to maintain focus for hours on end, it’s a logistical nightmare: when do you answer the telephone or use the bathroom? When do you do your other work? When can I return these tapes to their owners and get them out of my living room? And I can’t dedicate Wavelab to QC-ing the recording process because I’d never finish up mastering anything. I only have one set of ears.
True, an automated tool to find dropouts isn’t a substitute for the human brain. But it would be very useful and a real time saver if it could reliably detect problems like dropouts.
A DAW (any) can detect buffer underruns within its domain. However, it cannot detect what happens at the driver level, where audio may also be missed due to buffer underruns or issues with communication between the audio interface and the computer (e.g., over USB, Thunderbolt, etc.). In other words, there is no 100% solution that can guarantee an accurate report of dropouts.
Or maybe post-analysis AI.
1 Like
Are you familiar with Verifile by Prism Sound? As far as I can understand, the software injects metadata into the audio data stream for data monitoring and comparison. Here’s a short quote about its functionality:
Verifile is a radical new proprietary technology exclusive to Prism Sound which allows computer audio streams and recorded files to be quickly checked for a wide range of clicks, errors and dropouts, without any compromise in the audio content or any additional metadata. The Verifile process is entirely invisible and inaudible to the user, so using it is simplicity itself.
Developed to meet the needs of our audio archiving clients where even the most minute, inaudible error is completely unacceptable. Verifile can quickly identify and detect any such imperfection making it also the ideal choice for mastering & mix engineers.
Verifile is bundled with their high-end AD/DA converters, including their flagship Dream ADA-128.
1 Like