Mac Forum / Country Specific / Australian Mac Group / November 2003

Sounds to me like a "latency" problem, ie the machine couldn't handle
the data for a second, due to some other process in the system, and
those bits of the stream get lost. On a 1Ghz eMac that would most
likely be the result of heavy file fragmentation (for the
non-technically inclined: where there isn't a large enough block of
free space to write the file without breaking it somewhere in the
middle)

First get a copy of Norton Utilities (or other) and defragment that
disk.

Then where possible, record your files in smaller chunks than 1 hour,
10 minutes should be good for a maximum. If you're ripping vinyl, do
it one track at a time, if you're recording longish performances (ie
opera, theatre, radio, tv), open a new window in sound studio every 5
minutes +/- 1, start it recording, then stop the old window, save it
and close it. (If you use this method, defrag before editing and
playback, too)

I've had this problem recording when other processes on the machine start
doing things. Make sure you don't have any unnescessary software running
and especially timed backround processes doing things like backup.

I eventually got perfect recordings using rawrec, not on a mac but it is a
*nix utility so you maybe able to use it with OS X. Rawrec will let you
record upto a bit over 3 hours in one file. Interestingly the computer I
use is a pentium I 150 MHz with 32meg ram and a 60 gig disk. Works very
nicely now though. I don't necessary think that fragmentation is your
problem since it's new and i've never defraged my computer and have no
problems. Though i suppose we do run very different systems.

Anyway try stop other software and backround jobs, before investigating
other recording software.