Crashing with looping/stuttering playback

[Geoff Cook]

Hi all,

Our brand new machine is crashing/freezing randomly every few hours while we are using SAWStudio. At these times SAWStudio is not using an abnormal amount of RAM or CPU. We’ve done a fair bit of research and troubleshooting but haven’t yet found an answer to this problem.

We believe the problem may be linked to the audio card / drivers, because sometimes the crash is accompanied by a looping/stuttering of playback of the last 250ms or so… but we are not sure this is the case. Pressing alt-tab seems to cause the graphics to freeze or disappear and not return.

We’ve tried setting up the RME cards using both ASIO and WDM, but we’ve experienced crashing with both.

Sophos virus scanner is installed, but on-access scanning is disabled. Bob L’s tweaks for Windows 7 have been implemented and we are running SAWStudio in XP service pack 3 compatibility mode. There is not much other software installed on this machine as we dedicate it to SAWStudio.

Has anyone experienced similar problems using RME HDSPe RayDAT cards, or any other combinations of the specs below? Does anyone have any ideas for further troubleshooting?

Many thanks,
Geoff

Machine Specifications
Sawstudio 5.0
Windows 7 64-bit
2 x RME HDSPe RayDAT with latest firmware and drivers
8GB Ram
Intel i7
Motherboard is an Intel DP67BG with latest BIOS

[Ian Alexander]

If you have the machine dedicated to SS, why the virus scanner? I'm no expert, but all virus checkers I've used on office machines are pretty intrusive, whether I had them set to be intrusive or not.

[Rabbit]

Agreed. I'd uninstall the virus scanner and see if things improve.

[jazzboxmaker]

Raydat here no problems.
Check for updated video drivers
Disable Virus checking
Disable onboard audio
Disable wireless network

watch what happens...

[Arco]

What kind of plugins are you working with?
Have you tried increasing the buffer size on your RME card?