Aardvark Q10 Problems

[Tekker]

My Aardvark Q10 keeps giving error messages that it can't connect to the driver.

I've uninstalled/reinstalled the driver, unplugged the PCI card and re-seated it, unplugged the connections from the PCI card and the breakout box, reinstalled the driver again.... and again.... and again.... I even tried moving the PCI card to a new slot (just in the odd chance it'd do anything).

Nothing has changed.

The Aardvark driver has always been very flaky and I run into this problem fairly often, but usually rebooting the PC fixes the problem or at the very worst, reinstalling the driver definitely fixes it. This is the first time it won't respond to any of the above, so I'm thinking it's something going on inside the card.

I was just using it a couple days ago to listen to music, and now all of a sudden it doesn't work and I haven't even touched it. The power indicator on the breakout box is on, so the lights are on, but nobody's home.

Am I out of luck here or does anyone have any other ideas to try?

I'm considering picking another Q10 up on ebay since they are cheaper than anything else with 8 intputs + mic pres (which I use for drums). But I don't know that I want to spend any more money on this POS company.... I had an Aardvark 24/96 before the Q10, and it stopped working also. No wonder the company went under.

This is very frustrating as I just don't have the money to spend on this right now. But it's either get something or don't do music, which is just not an option.

-tkr

 

[jmarques]

I have direct pro 24/96 is it possible that you don't have the Card Selected in your control panel.

I can say I've never really seen that error before so I'm kinda stabbing in the dark on this one. Which drivers are you using? If you are using the last one produce by aardvark you should download the previous one before since it consider more stable then the last one, here's the link:
http://asg.track100.com/index.html


gl

 

[Tekker]

I have direct pro 24/96 is it possible that you don't have the Card Selected in your control panel.

Unfortunately, no. Usually 5 Aardvark devices show up in the control panel but only 1 is showing up now and when I try to use it, that's when it gives the error messages saying it's busy or cannot connect to driver.

Which drivers are you using? If you are using the last one produce by aardvark you should download the previous one before since it consider more stable then the last one, here's the link:
http://asg.track100.com/index.html

I'm using the most recent one. The old one doesn't work on XP and the card doesn't show up at all. I've been using the newer driver for about 2 years and it's been working until now.


Well, I just tried getting one off ebay and lost.

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

I guess it's a good thing the ebay bid went to high.... I just tried the card on the family computer and IT WORKS!!

I still can't get it to work on my PC, so somethings really messed up on that end... But at least it's software and not the card itself, so I can breathe a little easier now.

In addition to everything I mentioned before I tried disabling the onboard sound in the BIOS, removing the Aardvark PCI card and driver, rebooted the computer so that it booted up with no sound devices enabled. Then reinstalled the card and driver and rebooted it again and still no change.

Also, I've been using this card on my computer for about 2 years, so I know everything works together, but now all of a sudden they won't play together anymore.

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

UPDATE:

I just got done re-loading Windows and it still doesn't work. I deleted the old partition with windows on it and created a new one so I could do a completely clean install of windows.

It "kind of" worked temporarily right after the install as all of the Q10's playback devices showed up in Sounds and Audio Devices Properties and I could play music files with media player. But as soon as I tried to play something in Samplitude using ASIO drivers the playback froze up and after that nothing would play at all (not even in media player). I rebooted the computer and again I could play with media player, but Samplitude would not play.

So I tried switching hard drives my old 6GB drive I used to use that still had Windows and Samplitude on it which I know worked fine right up until I stopped using it (so I figured this would be a good test). When I tried it on this drive I uninstalled/reinstalled the driver, and it messed up right from the start. The playback devices were missing in Sounds and Audio Devices Properties and I got an error message when trying to load Samplitude that it could not connect to the driver.

After putting the drives back, now this one is completely messed up also... I can't play media files anymore and the all but one of the playback devices are missing in the Sounds and Audio Devices Properties (and the one that shows up doesn't work).

I just got done testing the card on our family computer again, this time I loaded the same version of Samplitude over there and tried it again with the ASIO drivers.... It works just fine there!

Everything is exactly the same on both computers, except for the computer itself. I have a completely fresh install of windows here and it doesn't work! All I have installed are the windows updates and an antivirus (which is also on the family computer).

Maybe in a little bit I'll try stripping everything off this computer (disabling the on-board sound, uninstalling the antivirus, removing my other hard drives/DVD drive, and my second video card) and try again.... But right now I need to get away from this thing (been working on it since yesterday evening) so I'm gonna go pound the "you know what" out of my drums and relieve some stress.

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

And the hits keep coming......

I just stripped everything down and it still isn't working.

Here's what I did....

Uninstalled the Q10 driver and removed the card.

Disabled antivirus (the only thing currently running on my computer except windows, Samplitude, and firefox)

Unplugged all hard drives except the OS drive (which is partitioned and the program files are on one of the other partitions), the DVD drive, and the floppy drive. I removed my second video card and also unplugged the extra Firewire and USB connectors.

In the BIOS I disabled the following "onboard" stuff:
MIDI
Serial Ports 1 and 2
Audio
LAN
1394 (something else to do with the network)
Floppy controller

Then I booted up the computer with nothing on it and turned it off, plugged in the Q10 card and installed the driver again....

When it first came up it worked, so I started testing it and putting it through it's paces, then it locked up and now won't work at all.... So even when it was "working" it still wasn't working solidly. I've tried removing the Q10 driver/card and letting it boot up with no sound to reset it, then reboot (again) and reinstall the card/driver again but it won't come back now. The Q10 playback devices are missing in Sounds and Audio Devices Properties right after the reinstall.

Something is being stored somewhere that is conflicting with this card and I don't think it's in windows (though I could be wrong) as I did a clean install on a brand new partition and any old program registry entries should have been wiped out when I deleted the old partition.

Someone on another forum suggested replacing the CMOS batter and resetting the BIOS. So this is my next plan of attack.... I sure hope one of these fixes this thing as I'm about ready to give it the bench-to-floor check.

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

Reset the BIOS, no fix. The playback devices showed up in Sounds and Audio Devices Properties but would not play (the soundcard was "busy"). Upon reboot they were gone from the Sounds and Audio Devices Properties again.

-tkr

 

[jmarques]

Well it looks like you been really busy. What is the hardware set up like on the one that works good and the one that is not working?

The only I can suggest is to strip everything out of your computer except your video card, monitor, keyboard and mouse with aardvark card installed and see if it'll work.

If it doesn't work shut everything down and switch the aardvark pci card to a different slot. If that doesn't work go through all your pci slot.

If that doesn't work there maybe something wrong with your motherboard and or some of it's components.

Download this program and it'll tell you what kind of cpu and memory installed in your computer.

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuidsdk.php

I once ran into problems with ram when I got my first UAD-1 card and installed it. At first I thought the uad card was no good. Since my computer had been working fine with cubase sx and my aardvark card for a few years with both xp pro and 2000 pro setup on amd athon xp 3200 computer.

After I was looking at my components with the CPUZ program. I realize that one of my ram stick had two different ram speed rating on one half was for 400 mhz DDR and other half was for 333mhz DDR.

Once I switch my motherboard to the 333mhz mode I never had a problem with my uad card again, but I was really mad that the ram I bought 2 years ago from ULTRA wasn't truly a 400mhz ddr ram and was pissed off at that company that had made a ram stick with mix match ram chips.

Oh yeah if you have anything made by ULTRA I suggested replacing those components with something different. I have nothing but problems with the stuff I've bought from this company. Yeah it's cheap, but some times you get what you paid for I guess.

Other than that it seems like your Aardvark card is fine. The problems seem to be with your actual computer system.

Good Luck

 

[Tekker]

What is the hardware set up like on the one that works good and the one that is not working?

Family PC: (Working)
K7T MS-6330 Motherboard
AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4GHz
640MB SDRAM (don't know the brand)

My PC: (Not working)
Asus A7N8XE Deluxe Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP2800+ Barton
Corsair VS1GB300C3 1GB DDR SDRAM (x 2)

The weird thing is that the card has been working for a long time on my system. I was even listening to music with it the day before it crashed and burned. The driver has always been really flaky, but a quick reboot (or at worst uninstalling/reinstalling the driver) and it would be up and running again. This is the first time I haven't been able to fix it.

The only I can suggest is to strip everything out of your computer except your video card, monitor, keyboard and mouse with aardvark card installed and see if it'll work.

I tried it and it still didn't work... See my 2nd post up from yours that starts with "And the hits keep coming......"

If it doesn't work shut everything down and switch the aardvark pci card to a different slot. If that doesn't work go through all your pci slot.

I've tried moving it around to different PCI slots (and the current video card too). No change.

If that doesn't work there maybe something wrong with your motherboard and or some of it's components.

I don't know because everything else works fine. The onboard sound works as well as the networking and everything else. It's just this card that won't work anymore.

Oh yeah if you have anything made by ULTRA I suggested replacing those components with something different.

I don't think I have anything by them.

Other than that it seems like your Aardvark card is fine. The problems seem to be with your actual computer system.

Yeah, it works great on the family computer with no problems at all. I'm totally stumped!

-tkr

 

[jmarques]

I'm curious. Have you tried going through the DirectPro 24/96 manual or Q10 owner manual? There is a troubleshooting section in both guides and they are very extensive.


I once had a problem along time ago with my sample rates constantly changing. The drivers would be constantly be reconfigured by the various media programs I had on my computer.

Is it possible that one or more of your programs is reconfiguring your drivers and possiblely muting or rerouting your Q10 main output to a different outputs not going to your speakers?

I would look at these guide if you haven't already. If you don't have them you can download Q10 manual here:
http://asg.track100.com/q10-manual.pdf

try going through the trouble shooting section and trying the ones that may apply to your problem.


Oh yeah check and see if the aardvark is you main perferred play back and recording device:
if your using XP pro goto:

Start -> Setting -> Control Panel

click on Sounds and Audio Devices Properties.

click on "Sounds menu" and select No Sounds from the Sound scheme list. - This will eliminated windows os from screwing up your sample rates since it has alot of 32khz samples.

now click the "Audio" menu

make sure your Q10 is the prefered playback and record device for you computer.

under Sound playback and Sound Recording:

select the output of your Q10 device and make sure it's the one that goes to your speaker or monitoring set up. - This will make sure when windows boot up all the proper devices are selected and windows will be setup right at start up.

Lastly. You have to check your other media programs that use audio and are not using the same channels at the same time. Some programs are very bad for taking control of a sound port and not releasing them when they are done with them. It's some time hard to figure which programs have this behaviour and cause windows to go fatal, crash and restart, freeze up and or hang.

 

[jmarques]

Hi Tekker. I've tried cross referencing your motherboard with Q10 and I've ran across a bunch of your post from other board. I'm not going to post on those boards since I'm not a member of any of them, but there were some interesting comments on the other boards.

Your Temperture reading for you cpu was at 52 degrees.

First. What clock speed is cpu fsb running at? 400mhz? Tried down clocking fsb you fsb to 333 mhz. This should be a setting on you bios.

Is you computer working better yet?


If you are having a problem with pci latency. What is PCI latency read this article and follow troubleshooting links.

http://www.geocities.com/phileosophos/tech/pcilatency.html


There are some other ideas I have but I gonna wait and see what kind of feedback you'll be reporting.

 

[Tekker]

I'm curious. Have you tried going through the DirectPro 24/96 manual or Q10 owner manual? There is a troubleshooting section in both guides and they are very extensive.

Yes, it was mostly "is it plugged in and turned on" kind of stuff. lol There was nothing in it about the kind of problem I'm having.

Is it possible that one or more of your programs is reconfiguring your drivers and possiblely muting or rerouting your Q10 main output to a different outputs not going to your speakers?

The problem is connecting with the driver. There should be 5 playback devices for the Q10 and only one of them shows up in Sounds and Audio Devices. Whenever this happens it is an indication that the card is not working as it will not connect to that device.

There are no other programs installed. I reinstalled windows (and deleted the old windows partition). No other programs have been installed on this computer other than Samplitude, the antivirus (which I uninstalled to do further testing so that's not loaded anymore).

click on "Sounds menu" and select No Sounds from the Sound scheme list. - This will eliminated windows os from screwing up your sample rates since it has alot of 32khz samples.

I just tried this and rebooted, but nothing changed.

First. What clock speed is cpu fsb running at? 400mhz? Tried down clocking fsb you fsb to 333 mhz. This should be a setting on you bios.

333 MHz according to CPU-Z.

Is you computer working better yet?

I'm not sure which problem you are referring to (I've had a lot of computer issues).... Since my computer has been running fine other than this Q10 issue, I'd tend to say yes it's working better, but if you can post a link I can let you know if that problem has been resolved (and how).

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

Somone on another forum just suggested switching video cards and........


..........IT WORKS!

What's funny is I did try removing one of my video cards (I had two in before) but I just tried swapping them and it's working now. So apparently I left the one that was causing the problems in while doing all of my tests! LOL

I tried a test that caused it to crash before (selecting S/PIF as the clock source) and I even rebooted the computer with this setting still active and when it booted up I was able to switch back to internal clock and it started working again. Before it would not come back after doing this.

I've tried all of the drivers MME and ASIO and both work now! I even loaded in a full project with effects and still going strong. So I think that did it!

.....and now I'm going to take this video card outside and give it the thrashing of a lifetime.

-tkr

 

[noisewreck]

Take the BIOS battery off for about 5 min or so, then put it back in, and reboot. See if that makes a difference.

 

[Tekker]

NOOOOO!!! It's at it again.

I let it run overnight so I could test it today warmed up, and after rebooting the computer it went right back at it. The playback devices no longer show up.

It ran perfectly last night just enough to get my hopes up. I gave it a good testing and even played my guitar through it using the VST monitoring (with ASIO drivers) for 30min or so and thought for sure that it was fixed. But today it's acting up again.

The guy who helped me on another forum gave me a couple more ideas to try, so I'm gonna try them out:

Checking RAM (I have two sticks in so I'll try each one separately)
Checking IRQ's


So the saga continues......

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

Take the BIOS battery off for about 5 min or so, then put it back in, and reboot. See if that makes a difference.

I tried it and also did the jumper setting to reset the BIOS. After resetting it I went in and disabled all the "extra stuff" again and nothing changed.

-tkr

 

[tom18222]

are you using 7.13? thats the problemed drivers. i suggest maybe downgrading.

 

[jmarques]

Is your Q10 still having connections problems?

You said someone recommend switching out the video card and work for a while then it went back to it's old ways. Have you tried reducing the video hardware accellator for the video card. Tried that and see if it makes it any better.

Yes could you also tell us which driver you are using?

 

[Tekker]

are you using 7.13? thats the problemed drivers. i suggest maybe downgrading.

Yes, I'm using 7.13. I've been using this driver since I started using XP (which is a long time). I haven't been able to use the old driver at all under XP.

Is your Q10 still having connections problems?

Yes, it still won't connect to the driver.

You said someone recommend switching out the video card and work for a while then it went back to it's old ways. Have you tried reducing the video hardware accellator for the video card. Tried that and see if it makes it any better.

I haven't tried this yet. I'm running memtest to see if the memory could be the cause of the problem, but I'll try this when it's done.

-tkr

 

[Tekker]

Now this is weird.....

There seems to be a lag of about a minute or so before the Aardvark drivers load. If I check the sounds and audio devices properties and the playback devices aren't there I just let it sit for a minute and they will show up. I tweaked the graphics accelerator also, so maybe this has something to do with why it is working now. I know before even when they were showing up trying to select ASIO drivers in Samplitude would cause it to crash. So I don't know what exactly I did that fixed it. LOL But it seems to be working now.

It's weird now because I don't know what I did that fixed it. LOL But it seems to be working now.

Also windows will sometimes not load when I try to log on (I've let it sit there for over 5 minutes), but after rebooting (once or twice) and it does load it takes less than 2 seconds to log in. So I'm going to try reloading windows again and see if that clears this issue up.

But for the time being IT IS WORKING!! I'll keep you posted if this changes. I'll be giving it a good work out over the next couple days just to be sure.

Thanks everyone for all your help!

-tkr