Running two interfaces, and running into issues

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JohnFolts716

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Hello, first post on this thread, ever. Hopefully will start coming here more often when running into the endless amounts of issues I run into using windows software.

Anyways, I have Alesis usb studio monitors, that also have a built in interface, as well as an m audio fast track. Basic entry level crap Im sure you know the drill,
I run asio4all as my sound driver. But yeah, I want to use the studio monitors interface to run my sound, and use the fast track to run my inputs/monitoring( 1/4 running from fast track out to studio monitor out) to not only save the amount of cables but to lighten the processing load on both devices, since Im totally bypassing my soundcard. To me it sounds better than having one machine have to account for both. Basically, monitors handling all sound going out, fast track handling everything going in. It was working fine on my old system(shitty frankenstein xp os from the dark ages) for the most part besides the pre mentioned attributes, but since moving it onto my new machine i run into cpu usage issues and it crashes occasionally. Is it the asio driver? Is this even a good and not redundantly useless idea? If it is actually a solid idea, what can I do to alleviate this?
Thank you for your input in advance, and sorry for the swearing if this is one of those more uptight forums. I mean it in no form of disrespect.
 
for better clarity, specifically, the asio driver crashes. the green triangle in the bottom right representing it, turns into a red square, letting me know it has crashed.
 
With true ASIO drivers you can't run two interfaces at once. ASIO is limited to a single device at a time.

ASIO4ALL is a useful bit of software, but it's not a true ASIO driver. Instead, it takes MME devices and makes them look like ASIO to your DAW. My suspicion (obviously only a guess) is that, in the transfer to the new machine, one of the device drivers got set to a true ASIO version which is fighting with the ASIO4ALL controlled device. That's the first thing I'd check--you haven't given details of your DAW or OS so you'll have to work out where and how to check this.

In the longer term though, trying to use two devices that weren't specifically designed to work together is asking for trouble anyway. Besides ASIO/Driver issues, the two devices will also be running on their own internal word clock sync sources. It doesn't take a very high percentage of error before there will be drift. I can't get my mind around what effect drift would have on a speaker (when most people try to use two interfaces it's to get more inputs) but instinct is that it wouldn't be good.

Anyway, if it was me, I'd use the proper ASIO interfaces for the M Audio (downloadable) then use an analogue output from the M Audio to drive your speakers.
 
Im at a bit of a loss, Im not too familiar with the deeper workings of the hardware, Im about as familiar with it as plugging it in and setting up the drivers, and have not much of an idea of what youre talking about, so I still have a few questions. Forgive me if my terminology is loose.

on the transfer to the new computer, nothing was brought over save the software(which i reinstalled practically all of it)
I am not famliar with the clock aspect, I understand that theres latency for input and output, and I dont believe Ive ever had an issue even now with playback being late or anything like that. Maybe the crashing is from the clocks going out of sync? I did it before no problem at all, it might be driver issues with windows 7, as i chose xp before because I read alot about people having more driver issues with windows 7 and the constant updating and constant obsoleteness of stuff like that, so before i had updated drivers to a point and stopped updating alltogether. May or may not be a good idea, but it worked for me before with xp. I chose to use asio for all instead of thee m audio drivers, 1 because it just plain ran better(less processing power needed for some reason)
It may not actually work like this, but if my interface is running the sound, I presume id have better performance if the load was distributed over two devices like that? Or is one interface more than enough and the processing power actuallly falls on my ram and drivers? I will try what you said as soon as I find my analog cord. I figured it would also produce better sound quality than having the output go from an analog end to a 32" stereo jack on the back of my monitors.
 
Well, I'll try to explain.

When you moved everything to Windows 7, the OS may have detected that one or both of your devices has true ASIO drivers available. If so, you may be running one device on ASIO4ALL and one on a true ASIO driver--and since ASIO can't have more than one device hence your crashing.

Just to correct one thing: ASIO4ALL is NOT a proper ASIO driver. It's main purpose is to allow devices that only have MME (the basic Windows multimedia drivers) to appear as an ASIO device on your DAW. That's why you were able to run two devices previously--they were operating as MME and ASIO4ALL is spoofing your DAW to think they're in ASIO.

I'm not sure where you've heard M Audio drivers have problems--but if you prowl the net enough you can find complaints about almost anything. I guess this is natural since happy people don't post support queries. However, I can say that I have 2 M Audio interface devices and the drivers for them have been rock steady from XP through Vista to Win 7. They're also real ASIO as opposed to the ASIO4ALL bodge.

As for my comment about word clock, every audio device has a built in clock that controls its operation. If you think about it, audio interfaces have to take a sample every 1/44,100th of a second (or 1/48,000th or whatever). The clock determines the timing of those samples. However, like any clock, the timing isn't perfect and, with two devices each doing their own thing, trouble can occur. That said, I don't think this is the cause of your crashes. Especially as one device is just a pair of speakers, it's hard to guess how the problems would manifest themselves...maybe drifting latency through the speakers or something.

Running two sets of drivers will increase the load on your processor--probably not by a huge amount but increase nonetheless.

By the way, I'm curious about your comment assuming there will be 3 M Audio drivers? There should be a single ASIO driver allocated to your version of Windows.

Sound quality? Your sound is going through a Digital to Analogue converter whether it's in the M Audio or the speakers themselves. A length of decent cable will make no difference at all to the sound quality. As an aside, the last studios (TV) I designed had runs of up to 80 or 90 metres (say 280 feet) with no discernible losses or differences. Your short run from the M Audio to your speakers shouldn't mean anything.

Anyhow, that's my take. Trying to run two devices is just adding complications and room for problems.
 
thank you for your input. Though its mostly still rocket science to me I will try what you said. Now that Im on windows 7 maybe I wont have as much trouble with the fast track drivers as I did before.
 
Yup, you have to IGNORE the built-in soundcard.
Run everything through the fasttrack.

ASIO = 1 device at 1 time.

The 40-cent onboard soundcard is for gaming, plug the monitors into the fasttrack.
 
It gets worse than that. It appears his monitors have their own inbuilt interface and are plugged into the computer via a second USB port.
 
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