Anyone here ever try to install THREE soundcards?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nutdotnet
  • Start date Start date
N

Nutdotnet

New member
I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for gaming and midi.
I have a Delta 44 for my main recording stuff.
I have a Gina 20 which was given to me and I want to try to use the digital in w/ my POD.

I can install all of the cards, but once I install the final one my computer becomes unstable and locks up more.

Any suggestions? I have turned off the Printer and Serial Ports....to try to free up more resources.

My Specs-
AMD Athlon 1500+
MSI KT266 Pro2
512mb DDR PC2100 Crucial RAM
30gig 7200 Maxtor HD
Radeon 64mb Vivo AGP Video Card
Santa Cruz
Delta 44
Hopefull a Gina 20

Thanks in advance!
 
you can try but when I tried to add a 3rd card / or my TV card that was thre high bandwidth multimedia cards in the system (not including my graphix card) and all hell broke loose.
 
Vox might be right, on some motherboards specific PCI slots share IRQs with other PCI slots (and the AGP slot). Not all motherboards do this. If it does, there should be a chart or reference in the motherboard manual.
 
Yeah this may help:

AGP Slot, PCI #1 and PCI #5 share one IRQ
PCI Slot #2 has its own
PCI Slot #3 has its own
PCI Slot #4 shares its IRQ with my USB Ports.....

Is it possible to manually assign the IRQ to the specific slot?
 
Yes, sounds like IRQ sharing (shortage problem).
I have SB, Audiophile 2496 and Seasound Solo in the same box with no problems. Maybe this is because it is a dedicated computer and it has no modem, network card or other unnecessary things in it.
I think IRQ can be reserved for legacy devices, but not for slots.
 
if you can use the suggestions here to get it working, fine...if not, no biggie...the converters on the Delta 44 are good enough that S/PDIF won't make that much of a difference.....
 
Yeah I gave up...I tried to re-install XP as a "Standard PC" opposed to the ACPI version but I am not computer savvy enough to do what I need to do after that.

Oh well, anyone want to buy a Gina 20 card for a good price? ;) It doesn't have the breakout box, but it has a connector for that plugs into the back of the card (I think it is off a Darla).

:D
 
Hey Nutdonet,
Before you pick up the dagger
1. try to make sure that drivers for your cards are XP compatible,
2. check how your IRQs are allocated. I am not familiar with XP, but in 98 you should go Start > Settings > Control pannel >System Icon > Device Manager tab. Highlight "Computer", choose properties and check IRQ lineup. Post it here if you are not sure.
Cheers.
 
You actually can assign IRQs to PCI slots manually through the BIOS (I thik it's called INT pin 'x' IRQ assign in non-Asus BIOSes, where 'x' is the PCI slot #), but the problem is that everything sharing the initial IRQ will now share the new IRQ assigned. No gains to be found there.

Try and tweak the BIOS a little bit, to squeeze a little performance out of the PCI bus. Specifically look for PCI latency settings and Master caching/delay transaction, in the BIOS screen. Nothing to do with XP, except I'm not sure how all of this could affect the hardware restrictions. I think XP has an issue with changing/shifting hardware, it sees that as a new computer and asks you to re-activate...

You might also want to consider getting a low-powered PCI video card (not a PCI hog like the GEForce MX or TNT2 ultra), that way you can put it on slot 4 (sharing with USB), and 2, 3 and 1 (or 5) can be the three soundcards. You'll be losing out on gaming resolution and framerate, but you'll get some resources freed up for sound. That is, if you want to.

The AGP controller is a very high-priority item on the mobo's to-do list, the AGP 4x requires about 266 MB/s of bandwidth alone. I still think it's not likely to work, I'm not sure the bus can handle 3 sound and one video cards. After all current PCI specs are 133 MB/s, which may not be enough for the total bandwidth required by the three cards.

But as Gidge says, if it don't work, no big deal. The Delta's a good card (I'm sure) and you could whack the Gina off for a good price.

Sang
 
Well what i was thinking was just selling the Gina and trying my hand at a pure digital card....
 
I have three sound cards installed on my GA-7DX 1.2 Athlon and they all seem to cohabitate reasonably well together: Digi 001, M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 and Soundblaster Live! Value. I tend to use just two at a time, the Digi 001 for recording and the Soundblaster as a midi sampling device (controlled by Digi 001) with the Soundfonts. Works great. Occasionally, I will also use Gigastudio with the Audiophile and route the sound by SPDIF or just audio to the Digi 001 for recording. When I use all three soundcards and two recording programs (Giga and Digi), things tend to bog down and I get some irratic midi timing, which tend to make the recordings unuasable. Gigastudio just puts too much strain on the harddrives, so I am considering getting another PC just for Gigastudio. But Gigastudio and Audiophile by themselves work great.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top