Unexpected quit......

[dylanger]

So I was working last night on one of the tunes that I recorded last weekend and after about 4 1/2 hours of work as I was doing the finishong touches garage band decided to unexpectedly quit. I lost everything I did last night. Is this because I was using a a low end daw or does this happen to the best of softwares?

[Christian LeBlanc]

I think anything that's part of a computer can crash. Cubase used to crash on me all the time, but it had more to do with a soundcard issue.

Protips:

-keep track of crashes to find out why it happened and hopefully head it off in the future. Write down anything you think is relevant.
-save frequently (sorry to bring it up, I'm sure you know this already)

Question: were you recording anything more last night, or just tweaking settings?

Sympathy: dude! Sorry to hear :(

[dylanger]

I recorded 6 tracks then deleted 3 old ones

[Christian LeBlanc]

The only reason I ask is that with Cubase, any music I record gets saved somewhere in the computer, even if the software I was working in craps out. If you haven't already, you may want to look for those files to see if you can get them back.

Apologies if I'm telling you things you already know.

[dylanger]

No I haven't tried that, I've only been doing the recording thing since December so I'm still a beginner so any advice is appreciated.

[Christian LeBlanc]

Cool! In that case, go over the options in your software to find out what folder it saves your recordings in (it may change from project to project, and may be named weird, too), and maybe there's some .wav files waiting there for you. Good luck!

[macrae11]

Good advice. Also many programs include an autosave function. Don't know about Garageband. With ProTools, even if you never save(which is a bad idea) it will automatically backup your work every 5 minutes.(or any other desired interval.) Garageband may have some similar function, but I'm not sure. It's probably called autosave or autobackup, or something similar.

[Mathieu Benoit]

Yeah Cubase has an auto-save feature. But once in a while a computer may need a good kicking...

Lesson: SAVE OFTEN.

[macrae11]

Yeah anything having anything to do with a computer will crash at some point, so always be saving. It's good that you're learning that lesson early. There's always a key command too, in Garageband, I'm pretty sure it's Command+S. Just hit that every few minutes, or after every major edit, and it won't even affect your work flow.

[gamblor]

i agree with going back to hunt for the audio files. they must have been written and stored somewhere on the hard drive during your session.

you might lose your mixing settings, but i bet you could recover the raw tracks.

try something similar to this

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=389374

[Malcolm Boyce]

What was already said about looking for your audio files is important. Many programs print audio directly to the drive and even if you lose or corrupt the project file, you'll still have what you tracked. Knowing where to look is the key thing. DAWs usually have options as to where things are kept.

In Sonar, you can either use a master directory for audio files, or individual project directories. Individual project directories makes life so much easier when you have to go fishing for files.

With regards to crashing, another good thing about Sonar is even with a major error causing a total failure, most times during the pause before closing the DAW, it still allows you to save changes. How 'bout some of the other rigs? Just curious if you guys have the same kind of luck?

[Mathieu Benoit]

With regards to crashing, another good thing about Sonar is even with a major error causing a total failure, most times during the pause before closing the DAW, it still allows you to save changes. How 'bout some of the other rigs? Just curious if you guys have the same kind of luck?

Cubase automatically creates a backup file if it crashes. It let's you know that it's doing it as soon as a problem occurs. In some cases you can still actually run the program but since a crash has occurred it won't allow you to do a normal save until you've closed the program and it's running properly again.

But yeah, with Cubase (and I'm assuming with most DAWs) the audio gets printed directly to the hard drive as it goes. I was in the middle of tracking one night when a blackout occurred. The next day I still found the 2 minutes and some that I had recorded until the power went out. I was pretty impressed with that actually.

[Malcolm Boyce]

The next day I still found the 2 minutes and some that I had recorded until the power went out. I was pretty impressed with that actually.

Ditto about the impressed part. I've had similar flails and been amazed on the recover-ability with some of these platforms.

[macrae11]

With regards to crashing, another good thing about Sonar is even with a major error causing a total failure, most times during the pause before closing the DAW, it still allows you to save changes. How 'bout some of the other rigs? Just curious if you guys have the same kind of luck?

Depends on what kind of crash it is. Sometimes Melodyne Plugin tends to get a little crash happy when running multiple instances, and once it goes down it usually locks up hard. If it's a pro tools only issue, most often I'll be able to get a save in, but those are pretty rare, maybe one every 6 months. If it's the OS or other program I can always save, and usually either shut down PT manually, or just reboot the other program and keep running PT without a hitch.

As it is with Melodyne, I've learned all the functions that tend to cause crashes and save before and after each one of them.

[gamblor]

Individual project directories makes life so much easier when you have to go fishing for files.

can't say enough about this. really good habit to get into. i'm in the process of archiving some old projects to an external drive but it's damn near impossible without having the corresponding audio files in separate directories.

[Mathieu Benoit]

It's the most important lesson I ever learned about computer based recording. That and SAVE SAVE SAVE!

[gamblor]

i thought you told me your most important lesson was no pr0n on the studio computer?

[Mathieu Benoit]

i thought you told me your most important lesson was no pr0n on the studio computer?

Maybe it would be if ever I actually learn that lesson...lol

[RoadDog]

Once upon a time, back before the turn of this century, when this digital thing was getting itself on it's feet and learning to walk, a wise person mentioned, in passing, that digital data does not truly exist unless it is stored in two discrete locations. i believe, to this day, that he was indeed correct. I'm just sayin'....