Alternative to M-Audio?

  • Thread starter Thread starter legionserial
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legionserial

legionserial

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Ok so my delta 44 went screwy the other day. Not had it too long, but it appears that its probably broken considering that I have tried every possibility to get it working propery. (I have been screwing with IRQs for 4 days) It was working at first and after a few days, all the sound went all garbled, like its not a the right sample rate of something. Its seems a bit more than the average pops and clicks, and seems to be getting worse, which leads me to beleive that its knackered.

However, tech support seemed to think that it wasn't broken (or should I say refused to admit that it might be). So I 'm gonna send it back to retailer, get it tested, and see what happens.

If it turns out theres nothing wrong with it, and its just one of those 'computer being fucking insolent' problems, I'm guessing I will have to get myself an alternative that my computer does like.

I've heard few good things about the E-MU cards. Anyone have an opinion on these?

Otherwise can anyone recommend any other good alternatives to a delta?
 
I've heard few good things about the E-MU cards. Anyone have an opinion on these?
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Good cards, good quality, the worst software in the world. Patchmix is a nightmare so you have been warned.

I have been using delta's (44 followed by TDIF) with no problems for years
 
Yeah thats the thing. Thats why I'm convinced that the card itself is broken. I cannot beleive that it would give me this many problems. when I first installed it, it worked like a dream. A few days later. Kaput. I've been told it maybe that I'm using RAID. But I dunno. I've been using RAID for over 2 year in this pc and never had problems with anything. If the card comes back and theres nothing wrong with it I might get myself an IDE drive and see if that helps. I just find it slightly hard to beleive though.
 
I had a guy sell me a delta 66 for "parts" that he thought was broken because he couldn't get it to work properly in his computer. I dropped it in mine and it worked just fine. I can't say for sure that the computer is the problem, but it's possible.
 
I can't see a SATA drive causing conflict. Shouldn't matter if your HD is SATA or IDE. Try removing the card, reset CMOS, install card and fire it up again, see what happens. I had some slight IRQ conflicts when adding my second Delta Series card and a quick reset of the CMOS did the trick, granted it took me a few hours before I got to that point, but it worked out in the end.
 
Lot I feel like I'm cross posting here, as I have a similar thread with a slightly diff angle going on in the Cubase forum. Please don't hate me :p

Dont know if the resetting the CMOS would help. I heard that it needed to be on its own IRQ below 15, so as one of my last resorts I changed my pc from AICP (or whatever) to Standard PC mode. That helped me get it onto IRQ3 without sharing. Still the same prob. Might give it a try tho...seems to be almost the only thing I didn't try.

I have been over every possible resolution that I, M-Audio, or internet forums could come up with but nothing. I am willing to accept that it might just not work in my PC. Stranger things have happened. My mobo's been through the wars a bit so its feasable, however evrything else seems to work fine. If it is the case that theres nothing wrong with it and my pc just doesn't like it, I'm going to have to find an alternative, which is a shame, cos the card was like dream when I first got it :/ Does absolutely everything I need and didn't cost too much either....
 
legionserial said:
(I have been screwing with IRQs for 4 days)
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If this is a Windows 2000 and up machine, I'd strongly suggest you stop screwing with the IRQs. This was necessary in the pre Win2K days, but nowdays you're more likely to screw things up than fix them as the OS takes really good care of this on its own just fine.
 
noisewreck said:
If this is a Windows 2000 and up machine, I'd strongly suggest you stop screwing with the IRQs. This was necessary in the pre Win2K days, but nowdays you're more likely to screw things up than fix them as the OS takes really good care of this on its own just fine.
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Yeah it was a last resort. I've since reinstalled. In fact I myself didn't even touch an IRQ. I just switched into Standard PC mode to see if it would work. The only other 'IRQ screwing' I have done was as simple as changing PCI slots and diabling unused things like parralel port etc. I'm not confident in myself enough to actually change IRQs myself.

One positive tho, I picked up a few more tidbits of useless knowledge about computers in the process. Which is always good.
 
are the irq's sharing ? if not then its not that

has the sample rate set it's self to 22000 in the delta hardware section
?
have you tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling them ?

does your daw have some sort of wave (audio card auto detection) profiler ?
if so try rerunning it.

usually if it worked ok to start with then the card will generally be ok its more problery a software fault (something accidently changed a box ticked or a setting change)

sorry to tell you things you proberly have tried but sometimes its the simple things we over look.
 
axeman_ukl said:
does your daw have some sort of wave (audio card auto detection) profiler ?
if so try rerunning it.
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Good point. Problem is, Cubase seems to only do that when it wants to. There doesn't seem to be way you can get it to do this. It just does it automatically when i put in new hardware, or install Cubase. But then its tempramental as to whether it does...unless I'm missing something.

Tried everything else tho...
 
Well it looks like there's no solution. I've been getting the impression due to numerous setback, one of which this is, for a while that somethings been telling me to stop with the music making malarky. lol maybe its time I took the hint. Or perhaps I should just go back to using Acid on my 333. That never gave me any gip and I enjoyed every minute of it. All this technical bollocks is just getting in the way. :mad:
 
i would uninstall the drivers shut down the pc and remove the card , restart and run cubase it should find no sound card and wipe any stettings it has for a soundcard ,turn off the pc, put the soundcard back in reinstall the drivers and run cubase, hopfully cubase should refind the soundcard think its a new card and run a audio scan on it.

if al else fails get a big hammer........and bash it till it works or you feel better !!!!!
 
Its not just in Cubase tho. Its with everything. Even Winamp.
 
does your delta have a m sign in the toolbar ?

if so what is the sample rate set to ?

in the control panel is the delta set as you sound card for playback and recording ?

i have told that if you turn down the graphic card acceleration it help audio.
 
I appeciate the help dude :) Thanks. Even though theres nothing fixed yet its nice to hear these suggestions :)

Yup the Delta control panel is in the tool bar.

Rate is set to be variable. However I have locked the rate at 96khz, which is what my projects are at in Cubase, but it doens;t improve matters. I have also tried recording and playback in other sample rates too to see if it was an issue with using 96khz (obviously ensuring the rate wasn't locked at 96). The problem is still the same.
In fact, recording is fucked up, when I play them back, it has recorded pops and clicks aswell (to be expected) but the strange thing is its more like the pops and clicks recorded to the file are kind of rhythmic. They aren't random, its like, every second maybe *crack* *crack* *crack*, and then with the pops added in playback it tuns into a mess. But its definitely recording rhythmic noise. Like its on some kind of clock.

It is set as playback, reording, voice playback, and voice recording device in control panel.

Graphic card acceleration etc I put down the minute I installed my graphics drivers after new install of windows.
 
legionserial said:
Yeah thats the thing. Thats why I'm convinced that the card itself is broken. I cannot beleive that it would give me this many problems. when I first installed it, it worked like a dream. A few days later. Kaput. I've been told it maybe that I'm using RAID. But I dunno. I've been using RAID for over 2 year in this pc and never had problems with anything. If the card comes back and theres nothing wrong with it I might get myself an IDE drive and see if that helps. I just find it slightly hard to beleive though.
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I'm using a Delta 1010 in a machine with dual harddrives. I had the machine built with RAID, but experienced the same as you are, switched to seperate IDE channels and it's worked like a dream for the past three years. RAID is great for data pc's and Gaming pc's it just isn't right for a DAW.
 
BushTheChrist said:
I'm using a Delta 1010 in a machine with dual harddrives. I had the machine built with RAID, but experienced the same as you are, switched to seperate IDE channels and it's worked like a dream for the past three years. RAID is great for data pc's and Gaming pc's it just isn't right for a DAW.
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Sounds like a plan. :) Havent tried that yet. How dyou go about switching them to separate IDE channels? For info I am using 2 x Seagate Barracuda SATA drives. Sorry if I'm asking dumb question. I seem to have aquired a fair bit knowledge over the years about all this stuff, but I will admit there are some gaping blank spots... :)
 
with the sound clips being rythmic i would be inclind to say the raid is to blame and the clip is when it swithches to the other drive.

mind you when you say it does it in winamp is that audio data off the hard drive or cd(i would have thought that if it was off cd that would eliminate the hard drives)and they are not to blame
 
is there anything you have changed in the last couple of weeks any new software.the fact it used to work still puzzels me....

have you tried winding back windows to an earlier date
 
altitude909 said:
Good cards, good quality, the worst software in the world. Patchmix is a nightmare so you have been warned.

I have been using delta's (44 followed by TDIF) with no problems for years
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Hmmmm...I use the E-MU 1616m, and I can't say that PatchMix has shown me any negatives. It just does what it's supposed to do. What were your problems, specifically?

I think the E-MU cards are hard to beat, value/performance for the money.
 
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