DAW Horrors, part II.

  • Thread starter Thread starter NashBackslash
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NashBackslash

NashBackslash

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Hello. A while back, I had really nasty problems with my computer always restarting.

After lots of forum posts and some friendly replies, I came to the conclusion that it was time to build a new PC rig.

I've recently built a new rig:

Pentium 4 3.2 GHz
Intel motherboard / onboard Firewire (Texas Instruments chipset) / PCI-e
1 GB RAM 667 DDR2 (2 x 512 on separate channels)

ATI Radeon PCI-e video card

2 x 160 GB Western Digital SATA-2 hard disks

So I thought I wouldn't run into problems. Then I checked my hardware list and I see that I have all these devices that go up to IRQ 19. "Not good", I thought. Lo and behold, I was correct.

I'm using a MOTU 828 MKII. With my new rig, it wouldn't record anything more than 1 second (Sonar 3.0). It will ALWAYS drop out. So what is the problem now!??!!?!?

I spent four digits on this new setup. I just want to start recording music, dammit! I don't want to waste time configuring computers!!!!!!!!

Please help. The money I used to build this new setup was loaned. I'm sure you know it's very depressing to pay back a four-digit loan, with a PC system that won't #$@^$^ work!!

ARGH....... :( :( :( :( :( :(
 
well, DAW's are not always plug and play. You certainly need some PC experience to get things tweaked up for the audio program & hardware.
Is your video card and audio interface sharing IRQ's ?
Is there any conflicts in your new system ?
Does it have onboard audio ? Is it disabled ?
Lot of things can go wrong without notice.
 
"Is your video card and audio interface sharing IRQ's ?"

There's tons of sharing with so many devices. The IRQs go all the way up to 22. As far as I know, IRQs only go up to 15, and anything beyond that are virtual IRQs. It's so hard to track what is what because there's so many things in it. To make things worse, the Intel BIOS doesn't show that neat table before Windows XP startup, that lists all the devices and their IRQs. And the BIOS software sucks, there's nothing much in it.

The weird thing is, I'm not using any devices, if any! I just have a PCIe graphics card... and... well that's about it! I'm not using any USB devices or anything like that.

"Is there any conflicts in your new system ?"

Well, when I open "System Information" and click the "Conflicts/Sharing" tree, as I said before, there's tons of things sharing and the IRQs go all the way to 22. The funny thing is, nothing much is using IRQ less than 15. There's the usual reserved IRQs for disk controllers and stuff, but none of these devices are using IRQs < 15 like my old computer was doing. They are all using virtual IRQs. How on earth am I going to isolate the problem?

"Does it have onboard audio ? Is it disabled ?"

Yeah, it does. I haven't tried disabling it. I'll try that in a bit.

Any more ideas? I've had about enough with meddling with computers. I haven't done any music writing in quite a long time because I have to deal with all this computer crap! It's very depressing and boring...
 
amra, I tried using ASIO and WDM. Both had problems.

However, I think I may have found the culprit... it appears that the problems are coming from the SATA2 hard disks themselves!!!

I stuck in my old IDE hard disk into the primary slave (all these new mobos have only one IDE channel :/), and recorded onto it... voila! No problems recording 10 tracks of 24/96 audio!

The problem doesn't seem to be too severe as far as IRQ and resource sharing goes. I was using the onboard Firewire port when I did the IDE hard disk test record.

Now WTF is up with that? Isn't SATA2 supposed to be all that? Why on earth is it choking?

Any users using SATA2 hard disks, please post your experiences!

Oh and here's an updated list of system specs. In my other post, I didn't actually provide detailed information, especially model numbers and what-not because I was trying to remember them off my head.

*Pentium 4 640 3.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2MB L2 cache
*Intel D945PSNLK motherboard, onboard Firewire (Texas Instruments), 8 USB 2.0, onboard LAN, onboard audio (Sigmatel audio codec), PCI-e x16 graphics slot
*1 GB RAM (512 x 2 DDR2 667)
*HIS (some Chinese company) ATI Radeon X700SE PCI-e graphics card
*Two 160 GB Western Digital SATA2 hard disks
*LG DVD-RAM DVD R/W drive

*MOTU 828 MKII audio interface

(Unrelated - Doom III ran a happy 60 FPS (without monsters) XD)

Do I *really* have to disable the onboard audio? I kinda need it for the MIDI playback so I can monitor the metronome...

Anyway, back to the SATA2 problem. Is this supposed to happen?
 
"Forget about the IRQ's! :)"

Yeah well, I figured that out. The whole problem now is that it won't record on a SATA2 hard disk.

Does this happen with MOTU only? Or are other people happily recording multiple tracks in real-time on SATA2 hard disks?
 
Hello, sorry to bump this, but I've fixed the problem, and I am posting this in hopes that people who might run into the same problems in future will stumble upon this piece of information that will ultimately save them.

All I had to do was move the SATA2 hard disks to a different port. My mobo has 4 SATA ports - I was using 1 and 2. I only had to move them to 3 and 4, and I was able to smoothly recording 10 tracks of 24/96 audio.

The recording session yesterday went really smooth. Not a single crash or hangup. I was so happy...

(Yes, it is THIS hard to be happy when you are working with DAWs!)

So, in conclusion, anyone who has problems with recording on SATA/SATA2 should try unplugging the disks and move them around to another port. That SHOULD fix the problems...

Happy recording!
 
NashBackslash said:
So, in conclusion, anyone who has problems with recording on SATA/SATA2 should try unplugging the disks and move them around to another port. That SHOULD fix the problems...

Happy recording!
Click to expand...

You could have swapped the ports over in the BIOS and saved yourself the trouble. While in there dissable everything you don't need....onboard audio, video, lan, usb, serial ports, paralel ports.....if you're not using it it's hogging system resorces
 
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