Middleman
Professional Amateur
One other thing that came to mind. Have you physically moved the soundcard to another PCI slot? That sometimes has been an issue even on a dedicated IRQ. Could be a noisy slot.
Chris Long
New member
Middleman said:
How exactly is this accomplished, Middleman? I've been aware of the possibility, but haven't focussed on how it's done. How is it done?
BTW--No good news from the PCI Latency front yet. There are so many variables, it'll probably take me a good while to work through them all, but so far no luck.
Also, I have tried all the slots except one--Slot #1 one, actually. It shares an IRQ with #5, which is where the card is now. I might as well put that on the list of things to try. But if Slot #5 is a noisy slot, so are 2, 3, 4 and 6--the others that I've tried.
Chris
Middleman
Professional Amateur
Yeah the slot thing is hit or miss.
Monitoring externally to avoid the latency issues can be done a variety of ways, here are a few:
-Tap your preamp or mixer directly back to the headphone for the voice or instrument you are tracking, blend this with the mix from the computer.
-Same thing but for some reason people like this, route the computer mix to the left head phone jack and take a feed directly off your preamp or mixer and route the voice or recording directly to the right side.
-Forget monitoring your voice at all, just put up the mix and sing along, same with instruments.
-All this said, some singers, me included, want to hear their voice coming back in reverb. The solution, route your voice directly into a nice external unit after the preamp/mixer but take the dry signal to track and not the reverb one. This allows the vocalist to work with some ambience and hear the mix.
I like this last one the most. Later I can route back out to the external reverb if I like its vibe or use an internal plug in.
Hope that helps. It's all in routing prior to the computer while monitoring the music.
Yikes, forgot the most important thing, don't route the track you are recording to any output. Keep it out of the mix you are monitoring. If you don't have a limiter going into the computer, watch your levels or keep an eye out for distortion. If you have a seperate monitoring room, than this is not an issue.
Monitoring externally to avoid the latency issues can be done a variety of ways, here are a few:
-Tap your preamp or mixer directly back to the headphone for the voice or instrument you are tracking, blend this with the mix from the computer.
-Same thing but for some reason people like this, route the computer mix to the left head phone jack and take a feed directly off your preamp or mixer and route the voice or recording directly to the right side.
-Forget monitoring your voice at all, just put up the mix and sing along, same with instruments.
-All this said, some singers, me included, want to hear their voice coming back in reverb. The solution, route your voice directly into a nice external unit after the preamp/mixer but take the dry signal to track and not the reverb one. This allows the vocalist to work with some ambience and hear the mix.
I like this last one the most. Later I can route back out to the external reverb if I like its vibe or use an internal plug in.
Hope that helps. It's all in routing prior to the computer while monitoring the music.
Yikes, forgot the most important thing, don't route the track you are recording to any output. Keep it out of the mix you are monitoring. If you don't have a limiter going into the computer, watch your levels or keep an eye out for distortion. If you have a seperate monitoring room, than this is not an issue.
dachay2tnr
One Hit Wonder
Chris Long said:
You can also do this through the patchbay in the Delta mixer. Assign the input connection that you are recording from to the output pair that you are monitoring off.
This essentially sends the signal coming into the sound card directly to the sound card's outputs, rather than routing it through the computer and creating latency.
Of course, you won't be able to apply any software effects to the incoming source while you recording using this method.
J
Jim Y
New member
Chris, I know you say it isn't IRQ sharing but if the IRQ is higher than 15, it actually is sharing. XPs ACPI gives a unique number to shared IRQs - the real IRQ may be 7 and items sharing it may be given IRQ20, 21 for example. Usually a BIOS page or the Mobo manual will show which PCI slots share with what. With the addition of USB, Firewire and other stuff, there aren't many modern mobos that can provide an unshared slot at all.
The very worst slot is the one nearest to the AGP as it shares with this. With more than 3 PCI slots, 4 or 5 will share with the AGP too!
Having said that, the XP sharing system is pretty efficient, and my Audiophile is on a high IRQ and sharing with onboard USB happily. I can get the minimum latency but I keep it at a conservative buffer of 256 just to be safe.
When I upgraded to the .36 driver, I got horrible glitching. What I did to fix it was to switch Windows performance back to Foreground Applications rather than Background Services. Background services is recommended in a lot of tweak articles but for me it was bad although with the .27 and .29 driver it was ok!
The very worst slot is the one nearest to the AGP as it shares with this. With more than 3 PCI slots, 4 or 5 will share with the AGP too!
Having said that, the XP sharing system is pretty efficient, and my Audiophile is on a high IRQ and sharing with onboard USB happily. I can get the minimum latency but I keep it at a conservative buffer of 256 just to be safe.
When I upgraded to the .36 driver, I got horrible glitching. What I did to fix it was to switch Windows performance back to Foreground Applications rather than Background Services. Background services is recommended in a lot of tweak articles but for me it was bad although with the .27 and .29 driver it was ok!
Chris Long
New member
Interesting info, Jim. It's funny--I disabled my two serial ports and a parallel port that weren't being used in order to "free up" the IRQs that were assigned to them. I did this on the advice of a tweak article. But I never saw those IRQs listed anywhere again! As far as I can tell, they were "disabled" right along with 3 ports. Funny how these things play out. I may try switching the Background Services back--I had changed it, too.
The idea that the AGP slot shares with the #1 PCI slot is something that is disputed, too. Some have said that it used to be that way, but is not now. I have no idea myself. I've had the card in practcally every slot, with no difference in performance, so in my case it doesn't seem to matter...
I'm still pursuing this whole thing...thatnks for the input. I had meant to ask whether there were"better" IRQs and "worse" ones. Your post seems to indicate that there might be, depending on the individuals setup. Hardly any unshared IRQs to be had, and it might not matter anyway. Sigh.
Love your signiture line--may I borrow it for a while? It seems to fit my situation...
The idea that the AGP slot shares with the #1 PCI slot is something that is disputed, too. Some have said that it used to be that way, but is not now. I have no idea myself. I've had the card in practcally every slot, with no difference in performance, so in my case it doesn't seem to matter...
I'm still pursuing this whole thing...thatnks for the input. I had meant to ask whether there were"better" IRQs and "worse" ones. Your post seems to indicate that there might be, depending on the individuals setup. Hardly any unshared IRQs to be had, and it might not matter anyway. Sigh.
Love your signiture line--may I borrow it for a while? It seems to fit my situation...
Qwerty
New member
I think the IRQ thing has changed a bit with the evolution of modern computers, the ACPI standard and sound card driver design. Besides, there are so many damn peripherals demanding an identifiable resource, that it becomes impossible to reserve a single IRQ for sound card usage.
What does seem to make a difference is trying to set up your PC so that -
a) Your DAW sound card is at a higher priority (lower IRQ#) than any other sound resources (on-board etc.)
b) The DAW sound card is at a higher priority (lower IRQ#) than your USB resources
c) The DAW sound card is at a higher priority (lower IRQ#) than your video card resources
Also, your mobo manual should have a diagram showing the IRQ allocation of the PCI slots depending upon load.
Good luck,
Q.
What does seem to make a difference is trying to set up your PC so that -
a) Your DAW sound card is at a higher priority (lower IRQ#) than any other sound resources (on-board etc.)
b) The DAW sound card is at a higher priority (lower IRQ#) than your USB resources
c) The DAW sound card is at a higher priority (lower IRQ#) than your video card resources
Also, your mobo manual should have a diagram showing the IRQ allocation of the PCI slots depending upon load.
Good luck,
Q.