Aardvark Multiple Q10 Problems - Challenge

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jdier

jdier

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Hoping someone here can help me out? I have been having some problems getting my two Q10's to work in my machine for some time now. Curious if anyone here has any info or suggestions...

Machine:
mobo: Iwill MPX2 Dual AMD motherboard (AMD 760MPX chipset)
chip: AMD MP 2200 (x2)
power: Enermax 430W
mem: Samsung 1024meg ECC registered
HDD: Western digital 20GB (OS) Western digital 80GB (Audio) >> Both 7200rpm, Audio has 8mb cache
Vid: Matrox G450 32 Meg Dual Head
NIC: D-LINK Fast Ethernet
OS: XP Pro

Aardvark Q10 (x2) running 7.04 drivers
Sonar 2.2 XL

(System is less than 2 months old and has never been used for anything but this. I have not other softwares or virus scanners or printers, modems installed or running. The machine is also not networked or connected to internet. The only cards ever in the machine are the ones listed above.)

This is where I started. During the past weeks I have done the following:

1. Removed the NIC for good.
2. Moved the Q10's until they were in slots where they DO NOT share IRQs with any other device
3. Got rid of USB mouse, moved to PS2 mouse
4. Uninstalled 7.04 drivers and replaced with new drivers provided by Aardvark.
5. Cleaned registry of all legacy Aardvark info
6. Tried ASIO drivers
7. Tried MME drivers

Things I have not done:
1. Disable ACPI - This I do not want to do based on difficulties that I expect would come from this due to the machine being a dual processor.

2. New Video Card - I do not have another card, but I think I am going to downgrade the drivers on this card to Generic VGA 1600 x 1200. This should be a good test if the Graphics card is the problem (which is one of Aardvark's suggested causes of my problems, the Matrox Card.)

The one other thing that I have not done is try to run the machine with only one Q10.

I am very reluctant to do this because the system is of no use to me with only 8 ins.

Next time I am at the machine I am going to try it because Aardvark explained that this would help them diagnose if my difficulties were related to the two card configuration.

I have the best luck and most stability running the new drivers and using the settings that the Sonar Wave Profiler suggests (this is the WDM/A|WDM driver setting.)

So, my symtoms are lock ups and crashes. At first they seemed to come only when we were plugging/unplugging XLR cables from the unit, setting volume levels or switching control panels views. Some times it would lock just launching the Q10 control panel. Now we can get it to crash many different ways and many times it will just crash on it's own.

Most of the time there is just a pause in system responsiveness followed by the inputs on the Aardvark card dying. In some cases I will get an Aardvark error, but most of the time it will just stop working. I can restart the service and relaunch Sonar in about 50% of the cases and be back up and running without a reboot. It seems if the Aardvarks die and I do not get the service restarted pretty quick one of two problems will pop up: 1. The services will not restart, or 2. Sonar will not quit.

The one other glitch that I have every once in a while (once every 3 hours) is that Sonar CPU usage will spike (not gradual, but very quickly) to 50%. When I try to shut Sonar down it will either generate a Sonar unrecoverable error or it will appear to shut down correctly. However, in either of these cases when I try to launch Sonar again, it will not launch. If I check task manager, I will see that while the Application is not running, the Sonar.exe process is still running. In these cases, I need to completely reboot the system.

I get to our studio (just a personal project studio) about two weekends a month, so if you post some ideas and I do not reply it is just because I have not had a chance to try them yet.

Thanks in advance for the help.

Jim
 
Still havn't got em workin yet? Damn, I don't know if I should get a those Q10's or look into getting 2 Motu HD192's. Let me know as soon as they begin to work and are stable.
 
Gix,

I am not 100% solid yet, but getting closer. All of the small tweaks and changes have helped. The biggest leap was updating the G450 driver.

I have gone up to 2 hours with only one crash.

Big tracking this weekend. I will let you know how it goes if you are interested.
 
Yup, I'm interested. If no one has any success with running more than 1 Q10 at a time, I'll be buying a Motu 2048mk3 with 3 nice Presonus DigiMax LT's :D Hope it works because it'll save me a bit of money but there's no point in buying something that doesn't work like they say it does!
 
I use Matrox G450 in all my client's machines because they are so stable. Dunno about use in the recording environment, but the G450 is a breath of fresh air for those tired of video drive hassles with Windows.

Dumb question, but you did leave the first PCI slot adjacent to the AGP open, yes? Most boards share hardware resources between these two slots, so leave the PCI open.
 
Gix, Sit tight. If it is possible for you to run your system on Q10's you will be very happy with the results. They sound great and have a fairly elegant set up.

bgavin, yes, slot one empty. In fact, I moved everything around until there were NO irq conflicts.

To both of you, it seems my problem is caused by a combination of the G450 and dual processor AMD's. My logic leads me to believe that the original G450 driver from the XP disk did not do a good job using both processors and this caused some trouble.

The new driver has helped us a lot. After this weekend I will be able to provide more feedback.
 
I've seen some grief posted about this board conflicting with the Canopus video editing card and other in-channel controllers.

http://www.2behold.com/NLE.htm

Normally, the AMD chipset is super stable... far more so than the VIA offerings. But... yours is dual processor, and not within my scope of daily experience. I used the AMD chipset (ABit KG7 boards) and G450 card with 100% success for business machines.

Inquire further on the AMD forums at www.amdmb.com, as this is a very active message board.
 
OK. This weekend I tracked for about 30 hours.

Since the last post I have updated the Matrox drivers, pulled the second monitor off the system and switched back to using the A|WDM drivers.

I also turned off input monitoring in Sonar and I am monitoring directly through the Q10's into an Oz Audio 6 channel headphone amp (This set up rocks!... individual controls for each headphone for the stereo mix + 4 additional mono inputs to customize the mix for each of 6 headphones!)

On other problem that we have been experiencing that was not detailed in the previous post is our inability to quit sonar completely. When we exit sonar, it appears to close, but task manager will show that it is still open. I have to kill from task manager, then use the services screen to restart the Aardvark Audio service.

The good news is that I can track non stop with out any crashes as long as I do not change ANY of the inputs. By this I mean, I cannot open Aardvark and change a level or mute or unmute a channel or change a headphone level... (This is a huge problem since I am now using the Q10's inputs for direct monitoring and I have to turn the mute on and off since I have everything set up in one room. To listen to anything through the monitors requires a lot of messing around and risks potential crashing.)

Likewise, I cannot reassign inputs in Sonar. "...Now use that mic for a new track in Sonar..."

Anything related to changing ins or outs (in either Sonar or Aardvark) or levels on the cards (in Aardvark) or muting/unmuting inputs (in Aardvark) could result in a crash or a lock up.

So, to get through the weekend, here are some tricks we used.

When I needed to change a level in Aardvark, I saved my work in sonar, exited the SONG, not the application... opened the Q10 control panel, made changes, closed the control panel and then reopened the song in sonar.

If I was able to do all the Aardvark work in less than a minute, I would usually not crash. If I had to do anything major like checking drum kit mic levels, I would completely quit Sonar and then make adjustments only in Aardvark, once done, save that aardvark setting file, quit aardvark, launch sonar.

When changing assignments of inputs from within sonar it seemed to work best if we did this routine:

While in current song, assign inputs, save song, close song, open song, set levels, save song, wait 15 seconds... if the application did not appear to be dragging, good to go, record.

Most crashes were directly preceeded with some pauses/hick-ups in sonar that manifested in the cursor acting strange or lagging.

When I saw this coming, I would save my work (WITH AS DIFFERENT FILE NAME) and then quit everything... song, sonar*, sonar again from task manager, restart Aardvark service, open song file.

I saved with a different name because in about 30% of the cases of this happening while I was quitting sonar(*prior to using task manager to quit) sonar.exe would generate errors and crash. When this happened, my song file would be corrupted and work lost.

My one other type of crash seemed related to midi and sonar, not aardvark at all (as services never required restarting.) These would happen if I changed pad settings in cyclone and played the keys to quickly after a reassign. They also happened if I was moving around in the application too quickly with either the Cyclone or Edirol window open.

Guys at Aardvark have recreated my problem and it appears that the dual amd board is the culprit. I have been somewhat impressed with the people at Aardvark... After the initial run around where they had to verify that I was not a complete idiot and had not installed the up my ass, they have been pretty responsive. My impression is that they have kick ass hardware and they have drivers that are about 90% of the way there. For most people in most situations it appears that the Q10's work fine, but there is a small group of people who have problems. I am convinced that Aardvark WANTS TO HELP. I am hoping for the best.

On the positive side, the stuff we did sounds great! I had my SP C3, a couple B1's, Beta 52, Beta 58's, SM57's all plugged in and recording... over 12 tracks at a time in some cases and the sound is superb, and no crashes WHILE 'tape' is running!

I get to the studio only once every 3 weeks, so any suggestions or ideas will not be attempted for a while now.

If anyone has any questions or wants any additional information... Just let me know.

Jim
 
Nice and detailed post. Just the way I like them. :D So you've narrowed the problem down to the dual CPU motherboard, correct? Although I still consider the Q10's from time to time, I'm leaning towards a Motu2408mk3 and 3 Presonus DigiMax LT's. I might try the Q10 instead simply because of their great value. Getting ready to order an Abit IC7-G, hope it works with the Q10. *crosses fingers*
 
Gix,

Call Aardvark during the day and tell them what you are trying to do. They will likely be able to point you in the right direction.

Also, where are you getting the Q10's and for what price?
 
I'll give them a call and see what they have to say tomorrow. As for the Q10's, if I get them, I'll more than likely be getting them at Long and McQuade (hope they still have them) for about $1200 Canadian.
 
Just a thought about multiple Q10 here...

I'm not a recording guru. My specialty is computer systems.

Check into your particular mother board, and determine which PCI slots share IRQs, and which are independent. I have very good stability by putting high intensity cards (network) on a non-shared IRQ.

Windows ACPI might fiddle with this a bit, so check it after the software installation. It is obvious to remove all other sound cards, and any non-essential cards from the sytem.

If you have a VIA or ALi chipset board, consider replacing the board. Get an all Intel board, or an nForce/AMD board. Asus and Abit make top quality nForce boards. I'd lean toward an all Intel solution for multiple Q10, if I were building a machine specifically for this purpose. The Intel chipsets are "the" standard for compatibility.
 
Thanks for the thoughts. Actually I have all empty pci slots except for these two cards and they are in slots where I do not have ANY conflicts.

It turns out my problem is not with two cards, but with Aardvarks lack of support for dual amd systems.

I was able to recreate the problems even with only one Q10 installed.

Jim
 
Just get a Dell.


They are compatible with almost everything.
 
I'm sorry... slept right through the dual processor statement.

That is a whole different ball of wax. Kinda like IDE RAID... something I also avoid, for this very reason.

Nothing wrong with Dell, for sure. I put a lot of them into my clients' facilities. They are all Intel, also.
 
bgavin and others,

The new drivers from Aardvark have really turned this thing around for me. I have only run them this weekend so it may be a bit early to call all clear, but for what it is worth I locked up one time all weekend and It did not look like any of the lock ups I would get prior to the driver upgrade.

Stay tuned.

Jim
 
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