M-Audio FW 410 users....

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chimp_spanner

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Hey all! *new here* :)

Okay, long story short, new laptop arrived (Acer 1501LCe) and I eagerly hooked up my FW410 and immediately ran into a truckload of problems (mainly Nuendo 2's audio engine dropping out after 1 minute of use!) which I found out today were due to incompatability with the laptops firewire chipset. So I'm using a Cardbus-to-1394 adapter (on loan) and all seems to be perfect...

well...almost!

Latency, I'm happy with. I'm liking what I'm hearing quality wise, BUT....there's this annoying little dropout that rears its ugly head every once and a while. I have no background apps. I've disable the on-board audio and 1394 port. I've tried disabling LAN (in case anything's snooping the ports) but it still happens at random times. It's nothing totally major, but it's the only thing wrong with my system; once I resolve this it will be perfect!!! But yeah it's annoying. If it were just a pop or a click, I could handle it. But it's like a mini gap in the audio. Playing audio files in Media Player, it even happens then and it screws the timing up a little.

Any suggestions? I've already done stuff like set windows to focus on backgrouns tasks, yadayada. Any new ideas would be super :)

- Paul
 
Hey Paul - Funny that you posted here. A while back I stumbled onto your stuff on the soundclick website and I've been listening to it ever since. You are one talented dude. Hopefully you will post some of your tunes on this site for other people to check out. :)

As for your firewire issues I guess I'll try some of the obvious, like do you have the latest microsoft patches installed, the latest drivers for the 410 ?

I use a FW device myself (Tascam FW-1884) and once I took my recording PC off of the internet and removed anti virus checking, every thing worked fine for me.

Sorry I cant be more help. I just wanted to chime in and tell you how much I dig your tunes ! :D

Dave
 
Wow, small world/net ;)

Cheers a bunch! I trust you have heard the latest song; Clarity In Chaos? It's my personal fav up at the moment, but I'm working on topping it! Hehe.

Well as I said I've tried running the machine off the LAN (I connect to the net through our home network, not directly) but it seemed to make no difference. The only way I can describe it is it's the sort of pause you'd get in audio if you added or removed an audio input/output while the song was playing, or launched/closed an application while the audio was playing. I have a sneaking suspicion it's something the laptop is doing "behind the scenes" as I was able to recreate these clicks (but more frequent) when I used SpeedswitchXP to fix the processor at 1.8Ghz. That gave me the same sort of dropouts. My dad said it could be some sort of ongoing thermal calibration that's going on (fan starting/stopping?). I'm gunna get to the bottom of this!

*puts on determined face*
 
Yup I've heard it. It is my favourite that you've posted so far. But really they are all good..

Anyway I'm assuming that you are running WinXP ?

Here is a link to a website for optimizing Winxp for audio. Maybe some of these tricks will help.

Cheers !

http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php
 
What IRQ is the FW device showing on. I picked up a program called "Power Strip" and it alowed me to change the IRQ latency (how long one device can be in total control of the PCI bus before giving it up) and that helped a ton with my FW410. I'm running off my desktop so I don't know if it applies to laptops or not. But it would be worth a shot. There is a thread in the Cakewalk section about snap, crackel and dropouts that might give you some more insight.
-k
 
Um, the Cardus device itself is on IRQ 17, as is the actual 1394 "device". Other than that, nothing else is using 17. Power Strip? I have a program called Power Strip but its just gor display adapters. Do you have a link to the software you are using? :)
 
Maybe it's due to your OS, apps & audio all sharing the same drive.

Maybe you could try an external firewire drive for your audio
 
The power strip program looks like its just for display adapters, but if you bring up the main window where is says the adapter name at the top in large letters look to the right of it and there are upand down arrows, you can use them to switch between devices.
-k
 
chimp_spanner said:
Hey all! *new here* :)
Any suggestions? I've already done stuff like set windows to focus on backgrouns tasks, yadayada. Any new ideas would be super :)
Click to expand...
Wrong. You should set the priority to programs, not background tasks.
And as vestas said: Are you running anti-virus software? If so, disable it.
I assume you use the power supply to power the 410 and not using bus powering?
 
Hey there! Nup, no anti virus software, and I'm using the power supply that came with the 410 (don't think my laptop supports bus power).

I was gunna post and say the program priority thing worked, but the clicks are still there......admittedly less frequent, so that's a start. I might try for one more re-install and just put the 410 on before anything else, and then build the rest of the system around it so it gets its own way with regards to resources and suchlike.

But yeah, it seems to have helped a little. Still irritating though. Heck, it could just be down to a driver issue. Maybe the next major driver update will sort things once and for all.
 
A fresh install is probably the best thing to try. I would use the tweaks first then install the 410 and go from there just as you said.

Good luck Chimp !
 
Hey, have you tried recording with your 410 since making the changes. After I did the "Power Strip" thing and some playing around I've found that I still get a few cracks on play back (almost like a bad headphone wire) but when I record there aren't any. I tried recording with mine after the changes and then I played it back through the internal card just for the hell of it, and low and behold not rice crispies (snap, crackle, and pop)
Keep me informed if you come up with anything else. I still trying to tune my 410 as well.
-k
 
Hey! Okay, I did two damn reinstalls last night. The first, I tweaked everything as per the instructions on..well, numerous XP teaking sites. Put all my other drivers on, then realised I meant to put the 410 on first but I thought, stuff it (I had imaged the system with no drivers, so I figured I coudl try it both ways). Sure enough, the dropout made itself known after bout 1-3 minutes.

So, restored the driverless image...

Put 410 on before ANYTHING, left all other drivers off, just played a wav file through Media Player, and sure enough, 1-3 minutes in, dropout.

I'm going nuts trying to trace this thing down :( I'm beggining to think its either a driver flaw (in which case why isn't every 410 user experiencing the same thing) or, some issue in XP regarding sustained transfer of data across 1394, which has to be patched or fixed (I've heard talk of a hotfix? 819111 or something like that??? Can't seem to find it anywhere...)

I dunno, its just really starting to irritate me now. I can use my system as it is, yes. But it's just waiting for the next dropout to happen. :(

The first person to help me gets a lifetime supply of chocolate. Or beer. Whichever they prefer.

**Oh and I tried the power strip thing. It gave me information on my Texas Instruments 1394 controller, but wouldnt let me change any of its properties, but thanks anyway!
 
There is a hotfix available called Q819111. Try using the Windows update functions and check under non critical updates once it produces a list of updates for you. You want to make sure you have SP1a installed also.

I tried searching the microsoft site for the update and cant find it, so I'm guessing it might only show up when you use the update function.
 
A new development...........

Used onboard AC97 audio as the default playback device, and ya know what.....still got a dropout! If I play a file just in say..Media player, almost 2:30 on the dot everytime, I get a dropout. If I scan back and play the same portion othe file again, no dropout (so I know its not in the file basically). But this means that this is something the laptop is doing, and is nothing to do with my soundcard....which in a way is good.

Although my soundcard didnt cost 800 quid.

So maybe its not good.

Any suggestions as to what my laptop might be doing? Speed stepping? (I've tried speedswitch XP...seemed to make the problem worse). Could the fan turning on and off cause this?

Hmmm.

Intawesting, vewwwwy intawesting...
 
Hey...I still wouldn't rule out the M-Audio drivers. I purchased a USB M-Audio Duo...and had horrible problems with the XP drivers. Check out my thread:

https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=120825

The only thing I would say is...make sure it is either the sound card or laptop before trying to remedy the problem. Since it appears to be a relatively frequent occurrence. I would hook up the 410 to another computer and see if you get the same results.

BTW...there is a review in that link...where the guy mentions the problem I was having and said it was caused by speedstep...so I DL'd the speedswitchXP applet...but it didn't help for shit.
 
Oh, dear god, is this annoying!!!

I'm having the exact same problem with my fw 410, only it happens about every minute for me (I've timed it out...it varies between 1:00 exactly and 1:03). This is my 4th reinstallation.

HELP!
 
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