interface troubles....again

[Fragle]

hey guys,

so, after getting some weird audio glitches that came out of the blue (see my old thread) i re-installed my OS, and upgraded to win7 64 bit while i was at it.

while it did solve the major hickups, there's still some trouble left. every once in a while i get audio glitches, and sometimes it even seems as if the interface loses sync or something, totally distorted audio that can only be fixed by rebooting.

latency check occasionally goes all the way into the red zone, which is fucking weird because i changed NOTHING on that system, as i said the issues came out of the blue.

i'm running a belkin firewire card with TI chipset. i installed rivatuner and set the performance level to low performance 3d, and recently to 2d only, without solving the issues.
no lan stuff going on, the system is really bare bones and totally tailored to audio production. no internet of course.

btw, i'm running an rme fireface 400.
installed all the latest drivers for the ff, patched the firmware, updated the graphics card driver, changed drivers for the firewire card around (legacy driver vs the basic win7 version vs the TI one), nothing solves it. changed firewire cables too.

while i'm able to record, i still feel extremely uncomfortable doing so. just imagine an audio glitch happening just during the *perfect* take, you know...

btw, this is totally weird, as i ran the latency check when i first got the fireface, and it never peaked out of the green area, it was perfectly fine and has been running smooth for the last 2 years.

i'm seriously considering to sell the fireface and go the PCI route. get's me lower latency anyways, plus you don't rely on fucked up firewire stuff.


so, maybe someone has an idea what might be wrong here?

also, any recommendations as far as PCI based stuff goes will be appreciated.
i don't really have any money to burn right now, i think i'd make around 600-650 euro out of the fireface sale, and i can spend a little on top of that, so i'd say 1k max.

what i absolutely NEED:
- 2 main outs -> monitors (captain obvious here)
- 1 reamping out
- 1 additional output to run the headphone amp off.
so at least 4 outputs. i frequently use more than that but not at the same time, i can get by with 4 outs, just need to patch stuff around.

- 2 decent (!) mic preamps
- 2 line ins
- adat would be ace

i was thinking about the rme hdsp 9632 - i wonder if it's possible to hook up the fireface via adat i/o, using the 6 ff outs powered by the adat output of the hdsp, and the same thing for the inputs? would the ff preamps still function this way??
if no, the FF has to go, but then i'd need two expansion cards (4 in 4 out) for the hdsp PLUS a 2 channel preamp on top of that, fmr rnp or spl goldmike or sth. that would be around 1080 euro i think, that's my absolute LIMIT.
otherwise, used hdsp pci + multiface, should be around 500 euro i think. still need a preamp though.
outside the rme world, the echo layla 3G would fit the bill, but i'm not sure about the quality of the pres and converters - i sure as hell won't be downgrading from ff quality.


please, lend me some advice!

 

[ahjteam]

have you tried to bring up the buffersize? also it might be a too slow hard drive that causes the audio glitches.

 

[John_C]

This all sounds like the reasons why i'm most certainly moving to a PCI interface as soon as i can afford to

 

[Fragle]

of course, but the problem is still there even at 512samples buffer size.
i'm even getting dropouts when playing back audio in winamp and opening another explorer window...sometimes at least.

i used to be able to go down to 64 samples for tracking. i can still do that, except for the random glitches. it's not like setting the buffer to like 48 samples and getting glitches all the time due to too small buffer size.

 

[Fragle]

will the fireface preamps work via adat? can i access them and adjust the gain, phantom power etc?

because if that's the case, i think i'll just order a hdsp 9632 tomorrow and try it out....

 

[Fragle]

anyone?

 

[AHChris]

This is how I solved a similar problem with my notebook:

Go to you device manager. Click on View --> Resources by connection. Now search for your firewire card and see if it shares the IRQ with another device. If so: use a different pci slot or disable the other device and check if anything changed .

In my case the WLAN card of my notebook caused the glitches because it shared the irq. As soon as I switched off the WLAN everything was perfect!

Hope it works!

Chris

 

[Fragle]

no irq sharing.

edit: actually, i already deactivated every printer/network etc stuff, i even deactivated all my usb controllers, no effect.

 

[Glenn Fricker]

What motherboard/CPU are you running, and most importantly, what chipset is on that motherboard?

What software are you recording with? Are you using WDM or ASIO drivers?

Sorry to answer with more questions, but it should help me diagnose your issue.

Meanwhile, try this: http://www.ylcomputing.com/content/view/9/27/

or this:
http://www.totalidea.com/product.php?Product=Tweak-7

Or this:
http://www.xp-smoker.com/

And, check this out too:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/21_steps_make_your_pc_betterfasterstronger
http://www.computingunleashed.com/speed-up-windows-7-ultimate-guide-to.html

Hopefully, this helps. I've been running a Fireface 800 with zero issues for about five years now.

FWIW, yes, you can hook up your fireface to a 9652 via lightpipe.

 

[kev]

Question. Do you have an option to change the driver latency in your sound cards mixer? (im not talking about buffer size here). When I got my saffire 56, i was having terrible drop out issues (also reflected by the DPC latency checker in red spikes), then i discovered that there was something called firewire driver latency, which you can have short, medium, long & very long.

I have mine set to "very long" now and never get any glitches. To this day I have no idea what firewire driver latency actually does, as it doesnt interfere with my buffersize settings. (actually doing some reading, this appears to be output buffer size!)

 

[Fragle]

cpu is an intel core 2 duo e 8600, 3ghz dual core.
motherboard....not sure, will check and post it here.
asio drivers.

i'm running reaper. i don't know if there's a setting like that in reaper @ kev.

as for the adat connection, i was wondering if the mic pres on the fireface will still function?!


edit: btw, as i said, this is a clean install of win7 64bit, really stripped down. optimized for running background services, disabled the whole aero thing (win7 looks like shit now, but this takes up the least resources), all drivers up to date, no programs installed other than winrar, winamp, and acrobat reader (and audio stuff of course), no internet connection. i don't get it, it should run smooth and fast as fuck.
and as i said, it actually used to do just that, but then all of a sudden the problems appeared.

edit2: see my old thread http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/equipment/619132-urgent-need-computer-help.html?highlight=fragle for further info

 

[bryan_kilco]

This is how I solved a similar problem with my notebook:

Go to you device manager. Click on View --> Resources by connection. Now search for your firewire card and see if it shares the IRQ with another device. If so: use a different pci slot or disable the other device and check if anything changed .

In my case the WLAN card of my notebook caused the glitches because it shared the irq. As soon as I switched off the WLAN everything was perfect!

Hope it works!

Chris

I have the same exact problem. My wireless adapters were causing glitches in the audio during recording. Was driving me nuts. Did some reading online and fixed the issue.

For me, I did:

Control Panel -> Device Manager
open Network Adapters folder/tab/whatever
Disable wireless and any other network adapters

but it sounds like the OP may have already tried this?

 

[Glenn Fricker]

If you've got an nVidia motherboard chipset, that could be causing the problem.

They're fucking notorious for screwing up audio.

But yeah, i'd check the wireless, too.


Perhaps you should strip all extra hardware out & disable just about everything in the BIOS (onboard audio, serial & paralell ports, any temperature monitors) and bring things back in one at a time to localize the issue.

BTW, you mentioned a brownout... did you have to reconfigure your BIOS after that? If so, DOUBLE CHECK to make sure there aren't any temperature monitors, QUiet & Cool, or any other crap like that running.


Also, try a different Firefire port. It might help. Your card should have two.

 

[Fragle]

will try the firewire port!

there's no extra hardware involved other than a graphics card....geforce 9600gt.
on board sound and graphics are disabled. i think the temperature monitors are too, but i will check later.
wireless card is disabled.

edit: if it helps, i can provoke the dpc latency checker going into the red zone by browsing through some folders in windows explorer. like, open a folder, open a subfolder, return to folder, open another subfolder etc. it doesn't happen every time, but close to it.

 

[Fragle]

update time:

changed firewire ports - no effect
plugged the FW card into different pci slot - no effect
unplugged interface - no effect on the dpc latency readings
changed graphic card - no effect
checked bios for any wrong settings - nothing found, no effect. onboard LAN, graphics and sound positively disabled


MoBo is a gigabyte G31M-S2L

i'm desperate over here...

 

[Glenn Fricker]

Wish I had some better solutions for you... can you borrow someone else's machine to try out your FF400? At least that should tell you if it's a computer problem or an issue with your FF.

Shouldn't be too hard to get the FF fixed if that's the issue.

 

[kev]

God damn these problems. This is one part of it all that drives me fucking insane. Wireless is a biggy, but you've omitted that. I'm racking my brains... i bet its not the fireface though. I wouldve put a big bet on you needin to change to the legacy firewire driver but you've checked that too.

 

[Fragle]

yes, tried all available FW drivers.

btw, new issue: when playing back audio in reaper (just an imported song, no multitrack) it'll play fine for a while, then a glitch occurs, followed by distorted audio playback AT A HIGHER SPEED. meaning that the song is sped up, but in a distorted way. hitting stop/play doesn't fix it, but changing the buffer size in the FF control panel does. the problem is independent of buffer size and also occurs at 1024 samples.

 

[Glenn Fricker]

At this point, I'd say to try a different machine. I'm thinking your motherboard might not have liked that brownout you had.

 

[drew_drummer]

Is there a later firmware update for your mobo?