I have discovered a problem when attempting to record from the KN7000 to PC, using the USB connection and the Panasonic Audio Recorder program.
The problem shows up as severe break-up of the recorded sound and it is happening during the recording process. After recording for about 1 minute, I noticed that the 'Hard Drive' activity LED indicator on my PC, suddenly started flashing very rapidly and almost continuosly, showing excessive access to the hard drive. This appeared to be interrupting the flow of data from the KN7000 to the PC and resulted in what sounds like missing data in the recording. The recording is OK up to the point when the Hard Disc activity becomes excessive. Repeating the process, produces exactly the same result every time.
Thinking that some of the background programs, showing in the taskbar, may be causing the problem, I disabled all of them ( Virus checker, GoBack, Task scheduler etc) just leaving the essential ones running (Explorer, systray). I then tried the recording process again, but the result was just the same - recording OK until it had been running for just on 1 minute and then 'The Fun' started again.

Anyway, to cut a very long story short, after much hair tearing and some cussing, I eventually discovered that the problem was due to my very good friend 'Go Back'. Even though it was disabled in the taskbar, it still seems to interfere with the recording process, but only when this is done via USB, using the supplied Audio Recorder program. It does not seem to affect a recording done via audio inputs, using a different recording software package. I uninstalled Go Back and the problem disappeared. Just to confirm my findings, I re-installed Go Back, and sure enough, the problem re-appeared.
I emailed the supplier of Go Back yesterday and asked for their comments and if there was any way of totally disabling the program during the recording process, rather than totally uninstalling it - I await their reply.

Moral of the story so far - be aware that other programs running in the background on your PC, some of which may not be too obvious, can affect the recording process, when using the USB input and the Panasonic recording program.

I would be interested to know if anybody else has experienced this problem, not necessarily associated with 'Go Back'

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Willum

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bill Norrie:
[B]I have discovered a problem when attempting to record from the KN7000 to PC, using the USB connection and the Panasonic Audio Recorder program.
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It states in the manual that
Quote
"While SD-Jukebox is running we recommend disabling any power-saving functions on your equipment (e.g., the PC )"

And we already know that antivirus functions
can be a nuisance

yes this can happen with any background program, depending on the power of the pc. GoBack is trying to write the audio twice, once to the real file and once to its own backup file, thus doubling the data rate overhead on your pc hard drive, and trying to write to 2 different positions.

You do not need to uninstall GoBack, there should be an option to disable which just requires a quick reboot. This is not the same as just exiting the taskbar, but will lose the history file obviously.

Many anti-virus, screensaver, winamp agent, file tracker etc type functions running in the background will interefere with digital audio, and you should disable them all. It is exactly the same functions which prevent defragmentation from finishing.

The alternative is to get a gigabyte of ram

Thanks for your responses and I am aware of all the points raised. Disabling Go Back still did not clear the problem completely, although it did improve the situation, but there was still noticeable 'Dropout' - that's why I uninstalled it.

Johnnie, I wasn't using SD-Jukebox - I don't have it yet.

Again, just out of interest, (and a little bit of devilment ) I configured Window's own sound recorder to record for a period of 5 minutes, rather than the default 60 seconds. Set it up to record to CD quality ( Stereo 44.1Khz 16Bit). Re-installed Go Back, all background programs running as normal and recorded a sequence from the KN7000.
Guess What ?? Absolutely perfect results over the entire length of the recording - not the slightest trace of any distortion, dropout etc.
Also no excessive Hard Disc activity - just the occasional very short blip as the program writes to Disc. I had always regarded the Windows recorder as a bit of a 'Toy' but not any longer.
So, what's the big difference between the Windows Recorder and the supplied Audio Recorder Program ?? Apart from the Panasonic recorder allowing files to be saved after recording, in .WMA and .MP3 format, in addition to the .WAV format, which the Windows recorder uses.

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Willum

too many variables to be specific... try changing the store folder? try defragmenting first?

ctrl+alt+delete and end task on the programs. This will totally close them. task bar option can leave it still running in thr background.
Tony

Tony,
Now here's a funny thing - when I press Ctrl+Alt+Delete only the programme highlighted stops running. How do you stop all of them?

Peter

keep on doing it

Sparky, With all all programs except Go Back, disabled by 'Unticking' in MSCONFIG and rebooting, problem still exists. Remove Go Back and problem disappears.

Alec, my hard drive was defragmented just last week, but just to take one 'variable' out of the equation, I ran the defrag program again this morning, then disabled all background programs, except Go Back, using MSCONFIG and rebooted.
I then tried the recording process again using 'Audio Recorder' via USB - same result - distorted recording after about one minute. Without doing anything else, I then recorded the same sequence using the Windows Recorder - Result? Perfect recording
So, I guess I'll use that method. QED

Bill, I am not sure if you know you can highlight any of the programs you want to end task, either by the down arrow on your keyboard or the mouse, and then end task on it. Unticking in config is not something I know if works or not. All I know is I am pretty darn sure that ending task on go back totally closes it. But I could be wrong. It could be that some programs are made to be very persistant. But its not likely.
Maybe the question to ask is "is go back" that important to you. And is there a similar program that will substitute go back
Tony

I've now had a chance to further investigate the Recording Problem, posted at the start of this thread. Using some system monitoring software, I can now see what is apparently causing the problem. The Panasonic Audio Recorder seems to write almost directly to disc, with very little RAM buffering whereas the Windows Sound Recorder reserves quite a large chunk of RAM, the size of which is determined by the initial configuration of the recorder ie the preset recording duration and the format (44KHz 16 bit Stereo for example). So rather than writing the recording in chunks to Hard disc, the Windows Recorder writes to RAM, which is of course much faster and does not interrupt the recording process, to the same extent, that disc access does. Obviously, quite a bit of 'Free' RAM is required since a 44KHz 16Bit Stereo recording uses up just over 10 megabytes per minute. However, this should not be a problem for most PCs of today, when the average KN7000 tune length is probably no longer than about five or six minutes.

During the recording process, using the Panasonic Audio Recorder, Disc activity is quite pronounced, as can be observed by watching the Hard disc indicator LED and if 'Go Back' is active, then of course every write to hard disc, is regarded as an event and is therefore recorded to disc by Go Back, which increases disc activity even further. Although why this goes really berserk after about 1 minute, still escapes me. Perhaps the Panasonic Recorder has a 10Mb RAM buffer, which fills up after about 1 minute and is then transferred to Hard disc ?? Unfortunately, it is not possible, as far as I am aware, to reconfigure the Panasonic Recorder, to carry out further investigations.

I have tried the two methods of recording on three different Win 98SE PCs, all with Go Back installed, (2 Laptops and one Desktop) and the results are essentially the same. All recordings using the Panasonic Audio recorder showed the distortion, all recordings using the Windows Recorder were faultless. With Go Back disabled on all the PCs, there was still a small amount of distortion, which varied between the PCs , when using the Panasonic Recorder.

I then uninstalled Go Back on all PCs and repeated the tests. The Desktop and one Laptop produced faultless recordings using both methods but one Laptop showed very slight breakup during recording. I half expected this result, from watching the Hard disc activity LED, which was quite a bit more active, than on the other two PCs. I then disabled all background programs, by using MSCONFIG to stop them from loading at start-up, but there was no improvement.

So it looks like the Panasonic Recorder may not suit all PCs, even those without Go Back installed and all background programs disabled. The Laptop which still showed the problem, is about 12 months old with a 1.8Ghz processor and 512Mb of RAM.


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Willum

The idea of any hard disk recording with Go Back is a non starter in the first place. I have had faultless results with one sixth of that processor speed and one third of that ram so this is not the problem. Maybe the particular usb controller is pertinent? a hub might cause more problems, or maybe having other usb stuff connected at the same time?

No Hub, nothing else on the USB ports - guess it may be as you say, the particular USB controller. Think I'll just dedicate one of my PCs to the KN7000 and not use Go-Back on it. Thanks for all the input.

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Willum

Bill, How did you configure the Windows sound recorder to record for a default time of 5 minutes. I have probably missed something obvious but have been unable to locate the proceedure to achieve this. I am hoping it may solve a similar problem I have encountered.
Cheers Len C.