Aardvark released its XP and 2000 drivers!

  • Thread starter Thread starter neirbo
  • Start date Start date
I don't think I have a problem with win-2000, I know n-track works better with w-2000. The only difference I can think of is the new Aark. drivers. It works better with w-98 than W-2000 and I KNOW it should not. If its not the drivers then it's the way I have it set up.

Tell me more about the latency issue. How do you set latency and how do you know what latency you are running at? I don't see anything in n-track reguarding it.

I e-mailed aardvark support last Saturday but have not heard anything yet.

Thanks,
Larry
 
Larry,

There should be some way to adjust your audio settings (where you set sample rate, but depth, which inputs and outputs you use etc.). There should be some way in there to set the latency. In Sonar, there is a little slider that you move left or right and you can see the effective latency vlaue go up or down.

Aardvark tech guys are usally pretty good at responding, and knowledgable. I'd call them at 734-665-8899. Ask for Ben.

You can also check N-tracks web page to look for known issues with certain drivers and hardware. They may have a tweak or two posted under "support" that you can try.
 
My experiences with my Aardvark Direct Pro 24/96...

Firstly, I use Windows 2000 on an IBM Netvista with 512MB RAM and it is tuned primarily for use as a DAW with absolutely no extraneous software running silently in the background.

The motherboard comes with a very fine SoundMax Audio interface which, in July of last year, notified me via the internet that new WDM drivers were available. I installed them and the PC has worked faultlessly with SONAR XL v1.30 ever since.

In August of last year I purchased via the web Aardvarks Direct Pro 24/96 - but at the time, Cakewalk's Hardware guide did NOT note who did or didn't provide WDM drivers and who was, or wasn't compatible with Windows 2000. The card cost me $1,600 AUS by the time it arrived at my front door here in Australia. In ignorance of course, I tried to install the card and the appropriate software drivers and I met a brickwall straight away due to the software bot being Windows 2000 compatible. Accordingly, since August of last year my Aardvark 24/96 has been of no use to me.

In December, I attempted to use the Aardvark Windows 2000 Beta drivers for the Direct Pro 24/96 - and the result? My hitherto stable machine went absolutely heywire. Thank God my IBM had it's weekly OS photoshoot which allowed me to reinstall a previous version of the OS configuration. I removed the 24/96 and decided to wait for the official debugged Windows 2000 drivers.

I went back to using my standard SoundMax D/A converters and they worked just fine thank you.

Last Friday night I downloaded the official Windows 2000 drivers and tried once more. I installed the card and did everything as per the company's specs. Please note that I'm a Systems Analyst by trade and I've been writing software for some 14 years so I know my way around PC's. Most importantly, I know when something is out of whack.

And the result? After much poking and prodding and being able to work out what would, and wouldn't work, I was able to record audio thru my Direct Pro 24/96 and I was quite impressed with the card's silence - that is - because it's shielded in a lead casing it's really quiet from extraneous electrical noise when listening thru headphoes.

HOWEVER.... when I opened existing SONAR music projects, even after ensuring for the 15th time or more that every possible parameter was tuned to Aardvark's recommendations, no matter what I did, my CPU consumption was just plained max'd out no matter what. So I would deactivate audio tracks looking for tell tale signs of what the culprit was/is. My other audio software was killed in the arse too. After much experimentation, I reached the conclusion as follows...

The Aardvark drivers simply are NOT WDM drivers sadly. They are MME drivers which are carry overs from the WIN 9x era. And quite frankly, they are dreadfully CPU intensive. Moreover, they are dreadfully thread priority whacko too compared to my SoundMax WDM card. In short, I pulled the sucker out and wrote off my $1,600 as bad experience.

In closing, anyone thinking of getting Aardvark's products? Seriously think again... until they are prepared to bite the bullet and design '100% true WDM drivers' you're actually sending Windows 2000 backwards by forcing ALL of your audio drivers to use MME technology. Not worth it I'm afraid...
 
Boo,
Amen.
To anyone considering the Aardvark soundcards; do yourself a favor. Don't do it. Not only what he said, but still no support for multiple cards with 2000/XP despite the pretty pictures of the Q10s all stacked up on their website.
SS
 
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