software/plugin to detect recording glitches?

[uncleswede]

Hi.

A few times a year I help with sound engineering small, live music festivals. We use a Behringer XR18 for FOH and the stage mix and also multi-track record all 18 channels using Reaper on a laptop.

The old HP laptop I use for recording has been fine except, on its last outing, some of the recorded tracks had a very occasional write glitch (BTW when recording, I use no plugins and set the ASIO buffer to 2048 samples)...

I suspected that the old 4500rpm HDD was now struggling to keep up with 18 channels of 48KHz/24bit data writes.

So, I've replaced it with an SSD which seems to work well and recorded 18 tracks of audio for 7 hours as a test.

OK - to my actual question at last! ....

Rather than listen to 18 x 7 hrs of audio to find if there are any glitches(!) do you know of any software or plugins that could automatically search WAV files for audio glitches - i.e. a sudden, unrealistic jump in audio value from one sample to the next?

Cheers
CD

[martifingers]

Hi uncleswede. I use a Soundcraft UI16 for live sound and it can only record a stereo mix to USB so no multichannel recording. The Soundcraft model that does offer that, is twice the cost of the Behringer unit. I am glad it is working well for you - maybe our reservations about build quality were unfounded.

Anyhow as to your great question... I have no idea about such a thing but would be interested in finding one. On the other hand it occurs to me that if you have gone to the trouble of recording the multi-tracks then presumably for any serious use they are going to be remixed, edited etc. and at at that point the glitches will be all too apparent.

[uncleswede]

Originally Posted by martifingers

Hi uncleswede. I use a Soundcraft UI16 for live sound and it can only record a stereo mix to USB so no multichannel recording. The Soundcraft model that does offer that, is twice the cost of the Behringer unit. I am glad it is working well for you - maybe our reservations about build quality were unfounded.

Anyhow as to your great question... I have no idea about such a thing but would be interested in finding one. On the other hand it occurs to me that if you have gone to the trouble of recording the multi-tracks then presumably for any serious use they are going to be remixed, edited etc. and at at that point the glitches will be all too apparent.

We've been pleased with the recording quality of the XR18, for live work, at least (I've not used it in my studio - I have an RME interface there).

Yes, the raw tracks are subsequently re-mixed and the glitches were obvious when I mixed the last recordings I did. But some of them were gross and difficult to eliminate without introducing other artefacts, so I'd rather just make sure I get no glitches :-)

[cfillion]

Are those glitches detected by REAPER (flashing transport bar/incrementing xrun count in the Performance Meter) (on Windows I believe that depends on the ASIO driver passing the message through...)? If so, I made a script "Project underrun monitor (xrun)" (available in ReaPack) that can insert project markers when they occur during recording.

[uncleswede]

@cfillion

Thanks I'll check that script out.

I recorded 3 hrs of 18 tracks of (44.1/24) audio today on that upgraded laptop and the Reaper performance view shoed no xruns, so that's good, at least

[beingmf]

Originally Posted by cfillion

I made a script "Project underrun monitor (xrun)" (available in ReaPack) that can insert project markers when they occur during recording.

Very cool!!