The problem shouldn't happen if you use MME drivers with both programs. When using Asio or WDM drivers n-Track claims exclusive ownership of the soundcard while the program is running. To make it temporarily close the soundcard you can open the File/Settings/Preferences dialog box. When the preferences box is open you should be able to access the soundcard with other programs.
The choice of the soundcard (or audio interface) depends on many factors, among which recording quality, number of inputs, MIDI I/O, mic/guitar inputs (XLR etc.), external vs internal, and of course price.
n-Track is compatible with any soundcard that has standard WaveRT, WDM, MME or Asio drivers, including USB, Firewire (IEEE 1394) and PCI audio devices. Follows a list of a few soundcards that have proven to work well with n-Track Studio. New audio devices are released all the time and others quickly go out of production so the list below may sometimes report devices that are no longer in production.
n-Track works great with your PC or Mac built-in audio device. Builtin audio devices recording quality is often not very good and they typically allow to record only 2 simultaneous inputs, so when you get serious about audio recording you'll get a big improvement by switching to an external audio device specifically designed for audio recording, which may also have direct XLR mic and instrument connections, headphones monitoring etc.
When you select the "Settings/Soundcard's settings/Recording mixer controls" or "Playback mixer controls" menu command (or the corresponding icon in the toolbar) you get an error message similar to "There is a problem with your sound hardware. to install mixer devices go to control panel, click printers and other hardware, and then click other hardware".
The 'Recording mixer controls' command simply opens the Windows Volume Control (Windows XP) or Control Panel/Hardware and sound/Manage Audio Devices (Windows Vista/7). If you get the error message it means that your soundcard(s) settings can't be adjusted using the standard Windows Volume Control (Windows XP) or Control Panel/Hardware and sound/Manage Audio Devices (Windows Vista/7). That usually happens when the soundcard has its own proprietary control panel, which you can typically access through the Start Menu / Control Panel folder. Check with your soundcard's documentation for instructions on how to adjust its settings.
Soundcards that have their own proprietary control panel typically are advanced models whose settings go beyond the standard settings supported by the Windows Volume Control (Windows XP) or Control Panel/Hardware and sound/Manage Audio Devices (Windows Vista/7) and consequently need a special software to adjust all the details of the soundcard's configuration.
You should be able to obtain decent results with the computer's builtin soundcard and standard computer mic.
However builtin soundcards are typically designed for games or communication uses and are not usually very good at audio recording.
For better quality results you can get a soundcard specifically designed for audio recording and a good quality mic.
You can find suggestions for mics here and for soundcards here
Yes, n-Track takes advantage of quad core and dual core CPUs. The gain from switching from 2 to 4 cores depends on both the structure of the song(s) and the audio buffering used.
The more channels (i.e. tracks, groups, auxs) and/or effects per channel you have, the more n-Track will be able to split the work among the available cores.
Buffering comes into play because the less buffering you have the smaller must be the chunk of work that n-Track assigns to each core, so as buffering decreases the efficiency of splitting the work decreases too and you reach a point where it's faster to just use a single core. It's kind of like dividing work between people: if you have many dishes to wash you finish quicker if you many people and assign to each a portion of the available work. But if you put 4 people to wash 1 single dish you're likely to be slower than one lone washer.
Again depending on the song and CPU type (speed, number of cores, cache, shared vs non-shared cache) the point where single core may perform better than multiple cores may be from 64 to 256 samples per buffer. You can test this by toggling the 'Multithreaded audio processing' box in Preferences/Options and then performing mixdowns of a test song and measuring the time each mixdown takes for decreasing buffering settings.
Follows results mixing down a benchmark song on various systems.
The benchmark song consists of the Sometimes n-Track sample song (that can be download from the download page), with an instance of the n-Track Reverb (with default preset) on each track (instead of on just a couple of tracks in the original song) to make the song more CPU heavy.
Hardware: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 / 2.4 GHz processor, 1066 MHz FSB, 8MB L2
4 Gb RAM installed (3.25 Gb recognised by 32 bit XP)
n-Track 32 bit on XP 32 Bit Service Pack 3, all meter windows closed.
Measuring the time it takes to mixdown the whole song to a 16 bit .wav file.
8192 x 4 (Default buffering)
No multithread: 37 sec.
Multithreaded: 15 sec. (60% speedup)
256 x 2 buffering
No multithread: 37 sec.
Multithreaded: 22 sec. (40% speedup)
128 x 2 buffering
No multithread: 39 sec.
Multithreaded: 29 sec. (26% speedup)
64 x 2 buffering
No multithread: 43 sec.
Multithread: 41 sec. (5% speedup)
Hardware: Core 2 Duo T7300, 2.0 Ghz, 800 Mhz FSB, 4 Mb L2 Cache (shared between the 2 cores)
4 Gb RAM
n-Track 32 bit on x64 Vista, all meter windows closed.
Measuring the time it takes to mixdown the whole song to a 16 bit .wav file
8192 x 4 (Default buffering)
No multithread: 42 sec.
Multithreaded: 27 sec. (36% speedup)
256 x 2 buffering
No multithread: 47 sec.
Multithreaded: 33 sec. (30% speedup)
128 x 2 buffering
No multithread: 50 sec.
Multithreaded: 39 sec. (22% speedup)
64 x 2 buffering
No multithread: 55.4 sec.
Multithread: 51.6 sec. (7% speedup)
The speedup from using two cores instead of one decreases as the buffer size decreases, but it remains positive even for very low buffering.
Adding a 2nd reverb for each track yields for 64 samples buffering 1:12 vs 1:30, i.e. 20% speedup, which means that increasing the song CPU load the relative advantage of using multiple CPU cores increases even for very small buffering.
Support for hardware control surfaces with faders (motorized or not), knobs and buttons can be configured in the Settings/MIDI Control box.
n-Track automatically detects and has pre-configured MIDI Control settings for the following devices:
Behringer BCF2000
Korg Nanokontrol2
Mackie Control
Tascam US428
Tascam US224
n-Track also works well with The Pok (a wireless foot controller that sends keyboard shortcuts)
You can use the following gestures:
Start playback: quick left to right hand gesture.
Stop: top to down gesture
Rewind: right to left gesture
You can also use the Leap Controller to move and rotate the 3D frequency spectrum view. Open the 3D view by clicking on a track's EQ button (to the left of the three small EQ knobs), then click the 3D button.
Perform a quick pressure gesture with the palm of your hand towards the Leap to activate tracking, then move and rotate your hand to move and rotate the 3D spectrum. Use another pressure gesture to disengage tracking.
Draw a circle in the air (while tracking is not engaged) to reset the view to the default.
If you have difficulties please make sure that the Leap controller is connected and that the Leap application is running.
n-Track Software