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.