New Equipment - Problems

[Mike Bizanovich]

Folks: I have a brand new SawStudio system from the ground up and am having severe glitching/dropout problems. Even with higher latency settings I cannot have more than two tracks playing without glitches. It happens on recording as well. I have played "old" clean files that glitch in the new setup as well. Here's what I'm using and what I've done. Also, please note: I can run these same files and record OK with Acid 5.

IBM Intellistation
P 3.4GHz (1MB L2 cache),
2x 2.5 GB RAM
80GB 7.2K-rpm SATA HDD (System Drive)
300GB Ultra360 SCSI Drive (Data Drive)
CD-ROM drive
No FDD
Ethernet (Turned off)
1394
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 280 video

Windows XP Pro w/SP2 (brand new clean install after first having problems, thinking the clean install would help)

RME HDSP9652 Card
Presonus Digimax96 Preamp
Presonus Central Station

ADAT output of Digimax going to ADAT inputs on 9652
SPDIF (coax) output of 9652 to Central Station

Have applied all the Windows Tweaks.

Running at 44100/16 no dithering

No fx, no eq.

I have not tried my SawPro to see what happens.

Any help would be appreciated.

Mike Bizanovich
Wheeling, WV

[Microstudio]

What drivers are you using in the "option, Diver Model Settings" ? Are you sure you are using the right drivers?

[Bob L]

My guess would be the NVidea card may be sucking up the PCI bus timing and starving the RME card.

My guess would be also that SAWPro will play fine because its lowest latency is 2 x 16,384 which will probably appear to be fine.

Look into the utilities that were mentioned on the forum about setting PCI Bus Latency for the motherboard slots.

Bob L

[Arco]

What motherboard are you running?

So Acid Pro plays glitch free using the same RME card?

Do glitches occur when you are moving quickly between F-key views?

Can you strip away all digital boxes and preamps from your 9652 and just play the wav files out through the analogue outs (headphones?) to make sure you're not having workclock issues?

How many PCI slots, can you move the sound card to a different slot?

Are you running "onboard" video or a separate video card?

Are you running any other mini-apps to monitor the MB (speedfan, etc)?
(check the taskbar and taskmanager)

..sounds like an amazing system. hope you get it working soon.

[Naturally Digital]

I run that video card on numerous machines and have had no issues at all. Not to say that you won't but it's been fine here.

You should however make sure the rme card isn't sharing an irq with the video card (in device manager).

As Arco has mentioned, check your clocking. Which device is your master? If you make the rme card the master, you'll need to connect wordclock to the digimax (but that shouldn't affect playback). I would make the digimax master during recording.

Do you have the central station locked to spdif?

It's weird that things work in acid but not ss...

[bit]

Are you using the ASIO drivers? If you do, try the MME instead.
Have you tried recording onto the system drive? It might be your SCSI controller that's causing this.

Bjørn

[Mike Bizanovich]

Folks:

Thanks for all the ideas. Hopefully, tonight I'll get to try them out. I dl'd the doubledawg utility but what it reported was odd. It listed only 4 pci devices and none of them were the RME or my video card.

Thanks again, I'll keep you posted on my (hopefully) success.

- Mike

[electric]

since the files play in acid this probably is not the problem
But make sure your hard drivres are running in DMA mode and not PIO

[Bob L]

Not necessarily... because of what I mentioned concerning play in SAWPro... if the buffer latency in Acid is much larger than realtime... the files may play fine... as they would probably do in SAWPro also... but when you get down to latencies of a few buffers at 64 samples... then you would see any bus interference come to light.

Bob L

[Mike Bizanovich]

Thanks so much for all the help. I am now able to record multiple tracks (up to 12 so far even with effects) and play at 2/64 with no glitches/droupouts, or other unwanted noises.

My HDSP9652 WAS sharing IRQ 16 with upmteen other devices.

I moved the card to another slot with no IRQ conflict or duplication and things were better except for an intermittent (what sounded like digital feedback).

I moved to another slot and again got a free IRQ and everything seems to be as it should.

I'm finally back in the saddle. I was an original SAW user way back in 94-95 and remember several of your names from the old BBS days. Bill Park, especially was helpful back then. It's nice to see the same "we're in this together" attitude from so many.

Thanks too Bob for continuing to be so involved with the user base and for continuing (constantly) to make the product better and better.

Thanks again folks. I'll be hanging around a lot now.

Mike Bizanovich
Wheeling, WV

[Bob L]

Glad you got things working... also pay attention to the thread about Clone mode on dual monitor video cards... this has been a discovered factor in acheiving low latency also.

Bob L

[Arco]

glad to hear you're up and running...