QU-16 multi-track playback issue jumping

Qu Qu General Discussions
1

Hi all,

I’ve been recording my band since I first got the QU-16 (Either firmware 1.4 or 1.5). The multi-track playback works fine all these times. Recently, I noticed that when playing back the recorded multi-track with the QU (firmware v1.7-v1.73), it skipped backward couple seconds every 8 seconds or so. In other words, it played fine for about 8-10 seconds and jumped back about 2 seconds, then go on for 8-10 seconds… The process repeated the whole 3 hours of recording. It’s like walking 8 steps forward, take 2 steps backward, then take 8 steps forward…repeat…

It did not do this back then with the old firmware. I think this issue started with v1.7 and v1.73.

I had lots of shows recorded on this hard drive (WD Elements 500GB, one of the approved HD) and it does that to all of them, not just the recent recorded. I recorded another show and played it back immediately afterwards and it played just fine with the QU; no jumping. I backed up the files to my computer, then tried to play the tracks back with the QU and it started the jumping on the new files that I was able to playback before backing it up.

Note: The track played fine on the computer…

So, the issue is plugging in to my desktop/laptop. The files play fine after recorded as long as I don’t plug the HD to my laptop… Not really sure what is going on. I did check the HD and there’s zero error or fragment on the drive. Anyone had seen this before?

2

HDDs do odd things in laptops. The data wants to be fragmented in this case, since you want to have a bit of track1,2,3,4… Then the next bit of 1,2,3,4…

3

Yes, sounds like sort of auto-defragmentation “service” is installed on your computer, which voids the audio tracks for QuDrive playback.
If a QuDrive recording is defragmented (stuffing all fragments of each WAV together) this will result in 18 head seeks whenever a new bunch of audio data needs to be loaded. The PC does have larger file buffers and need to seek less often during playback.
If you need the projects to work on QuDrive, you’ll need to copy them on a flash drive.

4

I see. Let me start with a fresh HD and see if I can turn the auto-defragment off on the laptop to avoid future issues. The thing is that it use to work just fine before. There’s a lot of data on the HD, so maybe if I re-format the drive then there’s less data to process.