cant win with this stuff
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Posted on Sep 27, 2005 11:49 am
btglenn
Member Since: Dec 29, 2004
just purchased a custom audio desktop 1 gig dual channel ram, 3 ghz pent 4 win xp with all teh tweaks. two 160 gig sata hard drives all on the best motherboard to pprevent any traffic jams and i can still only play back 13 mono tracks without dr0pping out on sonar 3 at 96khz,24bits. buffer is set to standard 64. supposedly im supposed to be unstoppeable with this setup. 60 track no prob??????
someone tell me i didnt just spend all this oney for nothing. ive been going around in circles with this stuff for a year. using motu 828 firewire straight into the motherboard, not a pci card, although i have one
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pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Sep 27, 2005 01:40 pm Your firewire may be the problem. I don't think firewire is nearly as fast as the PCI buss is.
Also, 96khz is making the PC work twice as hard as 48khz, being as how there's twice as many samples taken per second.
I certainly wouldn't say you spent all the money for nothing, as good parts is still good parts.
Just my .02$us
zekthedeadcowEat Spam before it eats YOU!!!Member
Since: May 11, 2002
Sep 27, 2005 02:33 pm well... whats your latency set at?
Firewire shouldn't be an issue as it's 400-800Mbps and 24bit 96khz audio is 2.3Mbps... it is possible that the firewire interface on the mobo sucks... but more than likely the latency is set too low. Up to 33ms should be fine.
Sep 27, 2005 03:06 pm what's your FSB glenn?
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Sep 27, 2005 07:23 pm btglen, you will need to set that buffer up a bit. Try 128 first then go up from there. The latency jusmp wont be big. 64 is an extremely low setting.
jmailjimmie neutronMember
Since: Feb 14, 2005
Sep 27, 2005 10:29 pm Install your firewire card and check it out. I'll bet you find a lot more thru-put with it. Some mb implementations of firewire are rather restricted by where & how they place it. Drivers make a diff, also. If you find the card works better, be sure to disable the onboard in order to free-up some resources. Also, have you optimized for audio? Look for that WinXP audio site... has to be linked to around here somewhere... I can't find it in my "Favorites" links... (I've *got* to get mine organized!!!)
Sep 29, 2005 02:38 pm yes i have tweaked my settings on win xp, what is an FSB again? i had the pc pro built by using info from this site www.pcmus.com but with the most modern stuff, this site is about 2 years old.
so i should use the oci firewire rather than the firewire built into the motherboard? the guy who built the thing saud the opposite.
thanks for advice, ill try thoise latnecy and buffer settings when i get back to teh pc.
Sep 29, 2005 02:40 pm "Front Side Bus"
jmailjimmie neutronMember
Since: Feb 14, 2005
Sep 29, 2005 11:42 pm I really don't know which Firewire would be better, but try the card. I've got an Adaptec firewire card and it is faster than blue-blazes. Then again, I never had firewire before... But seriously, some motherboards implementations are more of a "we've got firewire!" for the ad campaign than they are for the actual functionality.
zekthedeadcowEat Spam before it eats YOU!!!Member
Since: May 11, 2002
Sep 30, 2005 01:47 am ...and apple is discovering the hard way that firewire isn't as hotswapable as they initially thought. They need to recall a lot more than the nanos.
jmailjimmie neutronMember
Since: Feb 14, 2005
Sep 30, 2005 09:04 am That's one thing that cracks me up about this. They come out a few months ago (RME? MOTU?), telling their customers not to "hot swap" their firewire interfaces, that there is the potential for damage to the interface &/or the computer. One of the computer hardware sites (can't remember which) discusses it a bit, but comes to no conclusion as to whether it's with gear powered thru the port or not, or what... I've not seen a thing myself since. Is there a possiblity of shorting something out if an attempt is made to plug it in backwards? I don't know, but to be safe, shut-down the computer and the gear before plugging-in or unplugging, I guess.
zekthedeadcowEat Spam before it eats YOU!!!Member
Since: May 11, 2002
Sep 30, 2005 07:50 pm I had a personal run in with the firewire problem...fortunatly it wasn't my computer :) Basically it seems to be boiling down to the fact that voltage is sent through the firewire interface so it develops a memory and when suddenly unplugged it stresses the motherboard and can corrut external firewire harddrives...well... it will just refuse to mount them, the data is fine though. We were having this problem on our iBook G4 and it was the motherboard going bad...it stopped booting before we figured it wasn't a software issue... without applecare it would cost $600 to fix but we had 3 weeks left on applecare :)
Imagine hotswapping a harddrive on a windows computer which doesn't have native hotswapability or a durable motherboard.... the mere 5V drain could even slow the spin of other drives causing head crashes... or a sudden 5V surge could cook the CPU or some other chip.
PC's are seeming to suffer less because they are used to abuse IMHO.
I would expect USB2.0 to suffer the same issue too.
...on a side not I'm typing this with a fresh install of Slackware 10,2... I feel much better now... :)
jmailjimmie neutronMember
Since: Feb 14, 2005
Oct 03, 2005 08:59 am Kinda like a "bounce-back" of an unterminated SCSI adapter or old coax ethernet NIC?
