Windows 7 + echo layla 24/96 + sonar 6 pe = pain in the ass

[Freudian Slip]

So, I thought I would post this here before I revert to win XP and see if anyone has any brilliant ideas.

Here is the story. I have been running windows xp32 with 2 echo laylas and sonar 6 for several years. All of this time I have been able to run WDM drivers. The setup was really trouble free and you had to really press your luck to get a drop out.
Well about a year ago I decided to go to 24bit audio. 24/44100 to be exact. Everything pretty much remained the same except for the fact that my hard drive became my bottleneck. So I got brilliant and decided to install a raid0.

Long story short I now have a win7 x86, sonar 6, dual layla 24/96, single primary sata drive with a data striped 600 gb audio drive. I am running a intel dg965wh board with a core2duo 2.44 ghz intel chip. I do have the latest win 7 drivers for the echo cards as well.

Problem is now. I can not use wdm/ks drivers for the echo cards. I can use asio but, latency is WAY worse and dropouts are pretty typical. I have searched the net for advise and tweaks for win 7 and have found non solutions.

I am thinking that short of doing a complete software/hardware ground up upgrade I should more than likely switch back to XP...??..?? The only thing that really makes that a pain in the ass is the lack of HD tools and drivers in XP. Setting up data striping in win 7 is so easy but if I want to do it in XP I will have to find a way to boot from usb or something to get the intel raid matrix drivers loaded.

I keep seeing everyone singing the praises of win 7 online but, I really don't think that it's ready to be the work horse that XP is.

What say you? Anyone else missing wdm drivers? Hate windows 7? Will XP mode in win 7 pro allow wdm drivers?

Thanks for any advise.

F.S.

 

[Beemer]

Yes I know your pain. I'm running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and Echo Mia Midi with the latest Echo drivers.

The ASIO latency issue plus the fact that you cannot run two ASIO drivers is maddening.

However here is what the latest manual says:

Using SONAR
SONAR supports ASIO and WDM/KS for low-latency access to audio hardware. The ASIO mode
performs well and is straightforward to set up, requiring no special configuration.
If you prefer, you can also use SONAR in WDM/KS mode. Here are the required settings for
using SONAR with our driver in WDM/KS mode:
Within SONAR, go to Options/Audio.
• On the “General” tab, set “Audio Driver Bit Depth” to 24.
• On the “Advanced” tab, we suggest selecting “Trigger & Freewheel”
• On the “Driver Profiles” tab, uncheck “Access Driver In Mono”. Be sure to set
“Stream > 16 bit data as” to “32-bit PCM, left justified”.
You may get a message that your audio devices are not compatible with the specified format; you
may need to restart SONAR several times. Make sure each time that the settings are correct;
once SONAR starts successfully without the “not compatible” message, be sure to run the Wave
Profiler under Options/Audio/General.
Note: When installing a new hardware device, you may need to delete the aud.ini file in your
Sonar install folder. This resets the settings back to their defaults and facilitates installing new or
different hardware.

Here is an extract from VS-planet forum:

"WDM/KS cannot work if something else is already using the WDM driver - Some Mediaplayers and Codecs keep the driver in use even when they are not open! This is a common occurence, especially with the MediaPlayer on XP install discs.
Once Kernal Streaming is in use, nothing else can use the WDM driver. Sonar has an option to release the driver when it's not running so you can temporarily use some other audio program that needs the audio hardware without first closing Sonar.

So, when all is well, WDM/KS works very well, but when it doesn't, ASIO can bypass the problem, even when the ASIO is provided by an included ASIO support on a WDM driver. The only time ASIO might not get you out of trouble is if you rely on ASIO4ALL, because that must contend with the same issues that Sonars WDM/KS has"

Does this help?

regards,

Beemer

 

[miroslav]

...I should more than likely switch back to XP...??..?? The only thing that really makes that a pain in the ass is the lack of HD tools and drivers in XP.

What lack of HD tools and drivers in XP...?

XP should have more than Win7 (which I won't touch for the same reasons you describe).
I run three Layla24 cards...and still running under WDM, actually, in the Echo Console I use their "Purewave" option instead WDM. I'm running under W2K...no issues, and will soon "upgrade" to a new box running XP because I have a couple of XP-only apps I want to use, but I know XP will still work with my hardware.

Until I switch to different hardware...I will stay with XP....and that's going to be for a long time tom come.

 

[Beemer]

What lack of HD tools and drivers in XP...?

XP should have more than Win7 (which I won't touch for the same reasons you describe).
I run three Layla24 cards...and still running under WDM, actually, in the Echo Console I use their "Purewave" option instead WDM. I'm running under W2K...no issues, and will soon "upgrade" to a new box running XP because I have a couple of XP-only apps I want to use, but I know XP will still work with my hardware.

Until I switch to different hardware...I will stay with XP....and that's going to be for a long time tom come.

Purewave no longer possible with Windows 7

regards,

Beemer

 

[Freudian Slip]

Beemer: Thanks, I will try as the manual says I think I had it setup that way with wdm/ks but, I will double check and try again. ASIO is a fail as far as I can see. Sonar is tagging my cards inputs and outputs wacky in win 7. Win 7 it's self shows th two cards correctly in output devices, so it's a bit odd. I'll let you know.

Miroslav: It seems the raid drivers are all included in win 7 and setting up a raid0 is as easy as pie. The partition and volume tools seem to work better too when it comes to formatting, formatting BR, deleting partitions etc.

With XP you have to hit f6 on initial boot and try to load the raid / matrix drivers via floppy disk and I have no floppy drive. I am I downloaded the drivers and put them on a usb thumb drive and plan to try using that.

Win 7 was just a hope skip and a jump to load with raid0. Real straight forward.
Win 7 seems to really spike the processor though and along with the driver issues I just can't get the stability I want.

I seriously would have never bought win 7 except for the fact that on one o my attempts to load XP with Raid support I went to wipe the XP disk off on my leg before placing it in the cd drive and it snapped in F'ing half

Sooooooo

I am going to try one more setting on win 7 and if I can get the wdm drivers to work well then OK. Barring that I am going back to XP.

Thanks Guys
Dave

 

[miroslav]

Purewave no longer possible with Windows 7

One more reason I will not switch my DAW to Win7.

Miroslav: It seems the raid drivers are all included in win 7 and setting up a raid0 is as easy as pie. The partition and volume tools seem to work better too when it comes to formatting, formatting BR, deleting partitions etc.

With XP you have to hit f6 on initial boot and try to load the raid / matrix drivers via floppy disk and I have no floppy drive. I am I downloaded the drivers and put them on a usb thumb drive and plan to try using that.

Oh...I thought you were talking more about audio related tools/drivers in XP.

I don't bother with RAID...I use four SCSI drives for my audio, each split into two partitions...then I have them "criss-cross" assigned as:
WORK1
BACKUP2

WORK2
BACKUP1

WORK3
BACKUP4

WORK4
BACKUP3

IOW...WORK1 is on one physical drive while BACKUP1 is on a different physical drive.

At the end of any editing sessiosn...I save to my WORKx drive and then simply copy that over to my BACKUPx drive.

I keep all my drives in a "power-off" scheme...so only the drives I'm using are up and spinning. Yeah, it takes a few seconds to "wake up" a drive...but it saves power and reduces the drive noise.

For a double safety...I make additional backups to external drives and to DVD.

 

[Freudian Slip]

One more reason I will not switch my DAW to Win7.



Oh...I thought you were talking more about audio related tools/drivers in XP.

I don't bother with RAID...I use four SCSI drives for my audio, each split into two partitions...then I have them "criss-cross" assigned as:
WORK1
BACKUP2

WORK2
BACKUP1

WORK3
BACKUP4

WORK4
BACKUP3

IOW...WORK1 is on one physical drive while BACKUP1 is on a different physical drive.

At the end of any editing sessiosn...I save to my WORKx drive and then simply copy that over to my BACKUPx drive.

I keep all my drives in a "power-off" scheme...so only the drives I'm using are up and spinning. Yeah, it takes a few seconds to "wake up" a drive...but it saves power and reduces the drive noise.

For a double safety...I make additional backups to external drives and to DVD.

I had no use to go raid0 until went 24 bit. The striping raid is just super fast and cheap to set up. I use a usb 3 drive for backup right now. What I would like to do is set up a 4 drive system. 2 sets or data striped drives running as a mirror of each other. This will work for now but, I would rather not have to depend remembering to back up my work.

Well I am off to mess with this.

 

[miroslav]

How many tracks do you generally record simultaneously...and how many tracks to you generally playback simultaneoulsy for a typical mix?


I've been recording/playing 24/88.2 tracks for a long time now...on a 10 year-old dual 900 MHz Pentium-class computer without any HD hiccups....though like I said, I do use SCSI drives which are fairly robust.

 

[Freudian Slip]

How many tracks do you generally record simultaneously...and how many tracks to you generally playback simultaneoulsy for a typical mix?


I've been recording/playing 24/88.2 tracks for a long time now...on a 10 year-old dual 900 MHz Pentium-class computer without any HD hiccups....though like I said, I do use SCSI drives which are fairly robust.

Well, I was not freezing up or anything but I was hitting over 50% on the HD.
But, it was pretty solid unless I really started moving effects around during playback.
The song I have loaded to test this out is 19 tracks playing with 10 recording. I am likely running about 20 real time effects.
It's not that unusual that I would have 1 to 2 effects running per track.

The thing that gets me is that I may do a loop record of the drums using 8 to 10 mics and let it run for 3 to 5 takes. In that case I would likely freeze the most cpu intensive tracks.

I just figured hell, I am really barely tapping the CPU but, the hard drives are killing me soooo.

As it turns out, I am hating it right now. Trying to load XP on the drive that had win 7 on it and it looks like the only XP disk I have was pre ntsf sooo I may have to format the drive to fat32 and then convert it back after I update XP. Arghhhhhh.
Once I get XP back on there I will not even think about windows 7 unless I upgrade everything to the latest and greatest.

I have to try and research this. Thanks for the help!

I just wish MS was selling a fully updated XP pro. I know win 7 pro/ultimate is supposede to have XP mode but, I don't trust the driver compatability until I hear more from people running it.

F.S.

 

[miroslav]

But that's just it...the CPU issues won't really be fixed by the HD speed, so all those FX are eating up CPU and RAM...not HD transfer rates.

Not sure how a RAID setup is going to help resolve CPU and/or RAM issues...?

 

[Beemer]

Hi again,

In XP you can convert Fat32 to NTFS See How to Convert FAT32 to NTFS in XP Operating System | eHow.com

I know your frustration about F6 method of installing the Raid driver. One thing I think you should check is to see if your Intel motherboard has built-in RAID hardware. My Gigabyte does and this is always better than software Raid.

Your best method is to slipstream XP that is to make a new XP disk that contains XP and SP3. The following link shows how this is done using nLIte and this will call for your "F6 driver at the correct time"

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...sg=AFQjCNGUd6oLjIoio7ACc6SQIFaRn9WImg&cad=rja

(If the long link does not work just Google Slipsteaming

My raid is RAID1 as I'm using it for data protection rather than speed

regards,

Beemer

 

[Freudian Slip]

But that's just it...the CPU issues won't really be fixed by the HD speed, so all those FX are eating up CPU and RAM...not HD transfer rates.

Not sure how a RAID setup is going to help resolve CPU and/or RAM issues...?

I may have mis spoke but anyway. I did not have any cpu issues or spikes until win7. You are right though. the freezing of tracks and effect is beside he point , except when freezing a track with multiple takes that I have not discarded the excess audio on.
That does seem to free up bandwidth.

F.S.

 

[Freudian Slip]

Hi again,

In XP you can convert Fat32 to NTFS See How to Convert FAT32 to NTFS in XP Operating System | eHow.com

I know your frustration about F6 method of installing the Raid driver. One thing I think you should check is to see if your Intel motherboard has built-in RAID hardware. My Gigabyte does and this is always better than software Raid.

Your best method is to slipstream XP that is to make a new XP disk that contains XP and SP3. The following link shows how this is done using nLIte and this will call for your "F6 driver at the correct time"

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&so...sg=AFQjCNGUd6oLjIoio7ACc6SQIFaRn9WImg&cad=rja

(If the long link does not work just Google Slipsteaming

My raid is RAID1 as I'm using it for data protection rather than speed

regards,

Beemer

Thanks Beemer,

Ya I have heard of slipstreaming but have not tried it as of yet. The other day I tried to load XP and it failed. I had placed the raid drivers on a usb drive but the xp install disk did not recognize it even though I have set it up in the bios. It also did not want to recognize my C drive. The only thing it recognized was the portion of the drive that win 7 had partitioned for system files. It showed that it wanted to write to that drive as fat 32. I am thinking that it may not be recognizing the rest of the drive because it's an old xp disk and does not recognize ntfs. I don't know, but Win7 has this thing about not letting you format the system drive so I am in a bit of a catch 22. I tried using an old IRS wipe disk I have an it would not run properly. I am thinking the wipe disk failed because of how microsoft has crippled the DOS environment.

I am gong to give it another shot today. It's to frustrating to work on for too long at one time

Thanks Again.

F.S.

 

[Beemer]

Thanks Beemer,

Ya I have heard of slipstreaming but have not tried it as of yet. The other day I tried to load XP and it failed. I had placed the raid drivers on a usb drive but the xp install disk did not recognize it even though I have set it up in the bios. It also did not want to recognize my C drive. The only thing it recognized was the portion of the drive that win 7 had partitioned for system files. It showed that it wanted to write to that drive as fat 32. I am thinking that it may not be recognizing the rest of the drive because it's an old xp disk and does not recognize ntfs. I don't know, but Win7 has this thing about not letting you format the system drive so I am in a bit of a catch 22. I tried using an old IRS wipe disk I have an it would not run properly. I am thinking the wipe disk failed because of how microsoft has crippled the DOS environment.

I am gong to give it another shot today. It's to frustrating to work on for too long at one time

Thanks Again.

F.S.

I may be mistaken but I think if you download SP3 it is actually a complete XP disk. You can then use this to make a slipstream disk.
Another use for a slipstream disk is that when making it you can add all your motherboard and DAW drivers so that they automatically are installed.

Also if you have a floppy disc in your computer you could try that instead of the usb stick.

regards,

Beemer

 

[Jim Lad]

I should more than likely switch back to XP

Asked and answered.
I have two PCs that I built myself = Vista Ultimate 64 bit. One board will accept 32 bit if I choose.
One of those is in the family room and the other is tucked away as a spare.
My studio computer is a simple Compaq C with Windows XP. There's a Vista Upgrade disc in a drawer, No Thank You!.
I'm using the Echo Mona. Have been for a couple of years now.
Windows 7 is too new.
If you are starting to build a studio today, Fine! Go with it but if your studio is already a few years in the making, forget it.
XP is where it's at.
In my humble opinion, of course.

 

[Jim Lad]

.......................................................................

 

[Freudian Slip]

I may be mistaken but I think if you download SP3 it is actually a complete XP disk. You can then use this to make a slipstream disk.
Another use for a slipstream disk is that when making it you can add all your motherboard and DAW drivers so that they automatically are installed.

Also if you have a floppy disc in your computer you could try that instead of the usb stick.

regards,

Beemer

Well I downloaded nlite and made a slipstream disk with xp pro, sp3 and my raid drivers. It's chugging away as we speak. I had to switch the hard drives to ied to have them recognized. I will try and convert to raid later. According to intel I can convert two disks to a raid array at any time.. We will see.
ON the USB , I tried that several times. I went into the bios and made it bootable. I later went into the bios and switched the usb options around (treat usb as fixed disk, etc) and still no luck so...... We will just see how this works.

Thanks Again.

 

[Freudian Slip]

Well XP is back on. Was able to slipstream sp3 in with it. I thought I was able to slipstream in the intel raid drivers but when I went to set up a raid volume it went blue screen on me. I went ahead and set up a software raid via xp pro / dynamic disk. Still going to try and find a way to edit the drive files to install the intel drivers.

miroslav: I was wondering what driver version you are using for your cards?

Thanks

F.S.

 

[Beemer]

Are you certain you setup RAID correctly in the bios? There is a setting that will give blue screen if you select it incorrectly but I'm struggling to remember what it was. My bios has two places where Raid is mentioned. One is for Intel chipset raid and the other is for software raid but only one of them should be selected. I'll look at it next time I boot.

I have just remembered Windows 7 does not need to use the F6 drivers as they are already built-in!

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-021701.htm

Beemer

 

[miroslav]

miroslav: I was wondering what driver version you are using for your cards?

The last XP version...I think it's 7.1 (?).
I know it's not any of the 6.x versions...though it might be the 7.0 (?).

I'll check a bit later when I hit the studio and confirm.

I know the benefits of a RAID setup...but honestly, unless I was running a commercial studio where I needed that kind of *immediate redundancy*...
...it seems like it's more trouble than it's worth. *shrug*

It takes me about 30 seconds at the end of a session to run my backup "manually" to a second drive....and that's even with me having all the drives in a "power off" mode (which saves AC and reduce HD noise/heat), and waiting a couple of seconds for the to spin up before I can copy. Not to mention...I LIKE doing the backups "manually". It lets me see my files, see what if anything needs cleaning up, see that that backup actually happaned...etc,
I know it's kinda' nice to let the computer do all that for you without having to think about it...but I prefer to think about it...it's just more "safer", and since we obviously worry about the safety of our files, it's the surest way to go, IMO.
I know if the main drive shits the bed...I'm 100% sure I have a backup on y other drive ('cuz I put it there)...and another backup on my external "safety backup" drive...'cuz I also put it there.