Audiophile Sound Card Catastrophe!

  • Thread starter Thread starter rats
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rats

rats

New member
Needs help. It's so bad that I'm going against the direct orders of Bob and breaking my 666 post count seal!

I did some changes to my puter, installed new operating system, new hard drive, and now my audiophile isn't acting nicely. In the middle of a session right now and come to a stand still.

I reinstalled the M Audio software, and I believe I downloaded the drivers, not sure if I put them wheer they need to go.

I'm using cool edit pro 2.o and 1.2, they both do the same thing. I can record, I can see the led meters fine while recording in both the M Audio software control panel and in cool edit, but I can't hear the signal. However, I can play back what I just recorded and get the sound playback! Windows Media Player works fine. It acts like it's not a full duplex sound card.

Any ideas?
 
sounds like the sound settings in the windows control panel aren't set to play back properly or something, thats about all i can say to help you though, sorry
 
The audiophile has it's own control panel and doesn't use the windows sound mixer.

Rats, make sure in the Patchbay/Router section you have HW Out 1/2 set to "Monitor Mixer".

Slackmaster 2000
 
Thanks. Actually I fucked around with it a bit and got that problem fixed. But in general things are awry. For one, when I first went in to a cool edit session that was recorded in 32-bit, the sound card didn't want to recognize the format. So then I messes around a bit, started a new session in 16 bit, then later, after I'd rebooted a few times and dicked around with some device settings for a while it magically recognized the 32 bit format. Fine. However now I'm having another problem. I'm getting these skips in my tracks I am recording right now and there is no apparent reason. I recorded the first track fine and tehre are no skips now there are all kinds of them. I wonder if this is a Cool Edit thing, I experienced something like this last year and it turned out to be that I needed to reinstall cool edit.

Thing is, I have two versions of cool edit installed and they both do the same thing.:confused:
 
I had that problem yesterday in cool edit, but it was only when I was playing it back through Cool Edit, as soon as I moved it onto another format (mp3, cd) it was gone, I think my processor was just having trouble handling all the tracks with effects and compressors.
 
Since were all on this topic with this sound card, could someone help me please? Im using cakewalk and every other time i record it clicks and crackles like its part part of the song but its not...arg.
 
Just A Glance, start a thread...no shame.

Rats, you said that you have two versions of cool pro on the machine. Could that be the problem? I would try uninstalling both and reinstalling just one. Then if that doesn't work check the settings in Cool Pro you may have to resset the buffer settings or something.

I hate this kind of shit.
 
What's a good buffer setting? Or more specifically, what is a buffer setting?
 
Jeez, I ran outa breath posting all the problems I've had with my 2496.

(1) Slack is right about checking the monitor applet carefully. It's a very nice program actually, but it's easy to forget exactly what you are monitoring.

(2) The Audiophile is a 24 bit card, but at least in Win XP it ONLY works in 24 bit if your application supports WDM drivers. So it will not work in 24 bit when running Cakewalk 9, but works fine in Sonar. So make sure your Cool Edit software is up to date.

(3) Before installing new drivers, use the uninstaller program that you can download from M Audio. I would say Uninstall, then reboot, then re-install.

I had a lot of other problems as well, but those were due to a conflict between an ATI All-In-Wonder video card and the M-Audio. I'm happy to say that after many hours of flogging both of them, they are finally playing nice together.
 
A buffer is the amount of audio that is stored in memory rather than read directly from the hard drive. The idea is to get around any delays encountered by the computer trying to read data directly from the hard drive. Instead it gets the audio feed from the buffer, and the buffer is refilled from the hard drive. (Kinda like priming the pump, if you get the analogy.)

It is also similar to a cache if you are familiar with that.

Anyways... the larger the buffer setting, the smoother the playback. Simple, right?

Well.... no, because the larger buffer setting will also increase your system's latency. Therefore in general you want to set your buffers as low as possible while still getting adequate performance from your system.

I'm not familiar with Cool Edit, so I don't know if there is a place to change your buffer settings. Maybe try the online help. There is, however, a setting in the Delta Control panel.

If you are experiencing playback problems you might need to raise the settings. Sorry, I can't help you with the proper settings. It's pretty much a trial and error thing.
 
I'm using Cool Edit, the old one.
Am contemplating the Audiophile.
But you sure scared the hell out of me Rats!
I think I'll go for a nice mic and pre first.

Seems to me Slack and Jake-owa have promising
thoughts. Have you tried their suggestions?
Sorry, I don't know the answer to your prob.
 
Well the problem persists and I'm running out of ideas. I keep running into dead-ends. There are many variables here that could be the root of the problem, if anyone has a minute I can get into what I have done briefly. Slack and Rwhitey, if you read this I'm hoping you may have an idea.

On December 31st I did some stuff. I had recently aquired some new software that was not compatible with Windows ME, the OS I had been using for the past few years, so I upgraded to Windows 2000 Pro. It's something that I had been wanting to do for some time anyway. I also installed a second hard drive to increase my space to 60GB. I also upgraded my RAM by a 256 card to 384 (my machine is running on a P-III, 800MHZ, 7200RPM). After I installed the new OS, I installed my motherboard drivers, and downloaded and installed the motherboard driver updates. Then I reinstalled all of my old software, downloading updates where neccessary.

I got the monitoring the signal during playback/recording issue squared away, but was still having problems with the clicks, skips, and pops. I downloaded the drivers from the M-Audio website, uninstalled the card, removed the card from the slot, put it back, reboot, and reinstalled the card from a floppy disk. It still was giving me problems. I tweaked the buffer settings in the M-Audio HW settings in the software, which did help quite a bit, but the latency was off the hook, and it did not cure all. I was still getting skips and pops sporadically. Incidentally, I am getting the same problem is all of my music software that I have checked- Cool Edit Pro, Cubase, and WinAmp. Even the MP3's I'm playing back in Winamp are occasionally popping. The really weird thing is that every now and then I can hear faint pops in Windows when NO other applications are running. That scares me!

So I went to Microsoft's Windows updates page to hopefully download the updates to 2000 Pro. No dice. Problem there is I'm on a 56K modem and when scanning my hard drive for updates, it just sits there at 0% for over an hour, does not appear to be doing anything.:rolleyes:

Hoping there's an experienced PC guy out there that may have experienced or heard of a similar situation that can offer some advice!:confused:

Could this have anything to do with the extra RAM card?

Is this a Windows issue? Anyone have a good idea on how to get my Windows updates?

What is a good buffer setting for my sound card for this computer?

Is there another factor I'm not taking in to consideration?:confused: :( :confused: :eek: :) :confused:
 
The fact that you are getting noises in other applications is troublesome. Generally playing a stereo wave file, or an .mp3 is not too taxing on a system - versus trying to run a multitracking program with realtime effects.

Did you try using a different version of the Delta drivers. I have seen many stories posted by people who had issues with a specific driver release. My suggestion is to try and use the release prior to the one you are using now (and even try the one before that).

I think when you get to the driver page on the M-Audio site you have to click a checkbox asking for ALL driver versions.

It could also be a conflict with some other piece of hardware you are running, as RWhite indicated in his post. I would try changing the drivers first.
 
Rats, If you have the same PCI cards conflict as RWhite and myself, this would manifest itself as you only being able to use the 2496 in non-WDM modes. What was done to rectify the problem you had was to go to device manager and experiment by disabling other WDM drivers you found (in our case it was the ATI All in wonder WDM driver named "ATI WDM Rage Theatre Audio") It might be worth a shot just checking...


(2) The Audiophile is a 24 bit card, but at least in Win XP it ONLY works in 24 bit if your application supports WDM drivers. So it will not work in 24 bit when running Cakewalk 9, but works fine in Sonar. So make sure your Cool Edit software is up to date.
Click to expand...
 
Johnhoe is right about WDM isssue. Initially it helped me in a situation where the Audiophile was conflicting with a ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon card.

Strangely enough, when I later upgraded to a Radeon 7500 All-in-Wonder card (uninstalled old card, then installed new card & new software) the problem went away - I now have both cards fully enabled and working together.

Rats, I think I may be up for paying a service call to help you out. I'll bring along my repair tools - ketsup, Geiger counter, BFH (Big Fucking Hammer) - and some software.

Seriously though, one thing to check - look in your motherboard manual. A lot of motherboards share IRQs between certain slots on the motherboard. For example, it's common for the AGP (video card) slot to share an IRQ withy the first PCI slot. This could possibly cause a problem like what you are experiancing. If your manual is decent it will have a chart saying which slots share IRQs. If you can't find the manual, open the PC up and see if you can find manufacturer and model number, and I'll download the manual before I come out there.

Email me at my work address and we'll set up a time to destroy ... er, I mean repair your system :)
 
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