hello everybody,
i hope that someone can help me with this problem i had with this
system using a M-AUDIO AUDIOPHILE 2496 pci sound card.

MB: Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (chipset Nvidia nForce2)
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+
RAM: 1024 Mb
HD: Maxtor 120 GB SERIAL ATA
video card: ATI Radeon 9200
Integrated apu: MCP-T southbridge
audio card: M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (PCI)
OS: Windows XP with service pack 1

the card itself has no difects, because i tested it on another system
successfully, but in this system i hear frequent clicks on both
playback (through winamp, wmp, sound forge, fruity loops, cubase) and
recording. clicks are irregular, and occur every 5-10 seconds on a
16/44.1 wav file, more frequently at higher sample rates. clicks
during recording are not audible while recording takes place, but they
are on the waveshape in playback, and they appear as irregularities
5-10 samples long (analyzed with sound forge).

of course i followed every single advice i found on m-audio's file
about clicks on xp (he
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=...29 5aec1f755b),
including pci slot change and switching from ACPI to standard PC mode
for re-assigning IRQs. Of course i'm using the newest drivers for
everything (motherboard, audiophile, sata(raid controller), and i
tried also to disabilitate everything i could from the BIOS.

then i mounted on the same system an IDE hard disk with Windows 98SE
and booted the system as win98, the sata controller was "invisible" on
this configuration and so was the serial ata hard disc, but the sound
card worked properly. this leads me to exclude a conflict with the
video card or the mother board. my suspects now go to Windows XP or to
the sata/raid controller.

at this stage, i'm planning to switch to win98, though that would be
suicidal, or wait XP service pack 2 hoping that it corrects the error,
or trying to update the MB's firmware, or wait for an update for the
sata/raid controller or for the audiophile itself.

is any of you familiar with theis kind of problems, that is conflicts
between audiophile and sata controllers or windows xp on asus
maiboards? thanx in advance...

In article ,
A59 wrote:

then i mounted on the same system an IDE hard disk with Windows 98SE
and booted the system as win98, the sata controller was "invisible" on
this configuration and so was the serial ata hard disc, but the sound
card worked properly. this leads me to exclude a conflict with the
video card or the mother board.

I wouldn't be convinced of that so quickly.

First thing I'd do is lose the ATI card, and I might even
disable the onboard nvidia circuit, and use something like a
PCI card from my spares box. Something from 1997 should be
fine. OTOH, the video card probably isn't the problem, but you
certainly don't need it in there while you're troubleshooting audio!

Next, I'd forget all about SATA, but I imagine it's too late in your
case. If I couldn't afford to do SCSI RAID, I would not bother.
Irregular clicks on the recording you say? You don't hear them while
you're recording because you're using the Delta card's realtime monitor,
not the sample. I'd almost be willing to bet that the cause of your
problem is related to DMA, but this is new stuff -- I'm not even sure
you can enable/disable it like you could before.

I have been blissfully happy with the same sound card under XP, on a
shuttle XPC, which is a very similar chipset to your ASUS.

is any of you familiar with theis kind of problems, that is conflicts
between audiophile and sata controllers or windows xp on asus
maiboards? thanx in advance...

I am convinced that SATA is a work-in-progress that's been rushed to
market, and my personal strategy is to avoid it like the plague.
There's really no problem between the Delta card and XP SP1.

With the sort of buffering that goes on with your gig of RAM, you really
don't need whatever performance benefits you supposedly get from SATA.
It's actually enough memory that you can record to a ramdisk! (But if
your disk buffering works properly, that's exactly what should be
happening behind the scenes.)

james wrote:

I am convinced that SATA is a work-in-progress that's been rushed to
market

Hardly--SATA is nearly two years late according to its original release schedule.



With the sort of buffering that goes on with your gig of RAM, you really
don't need whatever performance benefits you supposedly get from SATA.

The primary benefits of SATA with current hard drive technology a

- Reduced airflow restrictions and lower cost due to reduced pin-count cabling.

- Standardized physical connector location a la SCA for SCSI.

- Reduced power consumption due to elimination of 5V TTL signaling.

- Support for hot swapping of drives.


There are more specifics and additional (SATA 2.0+) features) but the aforementioned are interesting enough for most of us...

A59 wrote:

MB: Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (chipset Nvidia nForce2)
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+
RAM: 1024 Mb
HD: Maxtor 120 GB SERIAL ATA
video card: ATI Radeon 9200
Integrated apu: MCP-T southbridge
audio card: M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (PCI)
OS: Windows XP with service pack 1

the card itself has no difects, because i tested it on another system
successfully, but in this system i hear frequent clicks on both
playback

If the serial ata is implemented as functionally on the PCI bus,
according to information read elsewhere it may so be in some designs,
then it is a "your'e dead", harddisk controllers on the PCI bus are bad,
harddisk controllers hanging directly off of the chipset, as the
standard IDE controller may do, are good and have better performance.
The problem could be that the SATA controller gobbles up all your PCI
bandwidth, it may even be "ill behaved" and do so for too long time.

at this stage, i'm planning to switch to win98, though that would be
suicidal, or wait XP service pack 2 hoping that it corrects the error,
or trying to update the MB's firmware, or wait for an update for the
sata/raid controller or for the audiophile itself.

None of these may help. You say that all worked with the SATA controller
disabled, it could be the bandwith gobbling issue refered to above.

is any of you familiar with theis kind of problems,

Yes. My old P2-300 can not do click free sp-dif in with a disk
controller sitting on the PCI bus, even if this controller is faster
than the controller on the mobo. Not nice as it is supposed to be
standby spare daw.

Disable SATA and - perhaps - be happy.


Kind regards

Peter Larsen



--
*******************************************
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *
*******************************************

FWIW, I had some difficulties with any of the nVidia boards with the
"deluxe" chipsets. I switched to MSI (same chipset) but without all the
deluxe features and everything worked OK. I was using an Echo Gina, but was
having difficulties similar to yours. In addition my soundcard drivers
caused boot up problems every once in a while.

CA

"A59" wrote in message
om...
hello everybody,
i hope that someone can help me with this problem i had with this
system using a M-AUDIO AUDIOPHILE 2496 pci sound card.

MB: Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe (chipset Nvidia nForce2)
CPU: Athlon XP 3000+
RAM: 1024 Mb
HD: Maxtor 120 GB SERIAL ATA
video card: ATI Radeon 9200
Integrated apu: MCP-T southbridge
audio card: M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (PCI)
OS: Windows XP with service pack 1

the card itself has no difects, because i tested it on another system
successfully, but in this system i hear frequent clicks on both
playback (through winamp, wmp, sound forge, fruity loops, cubase) and
recording. clicks are irregular, and occur every 5-10 seconds on a
16/44.1 wav file, more frequently at higher sample rates. clicks
during recording are not audible while recording takes place, but they
are on the waveshape in playback, and they appear as irregularities
5-10 samples long (analyzed with sound forge).

of course i followed every single advice i found on m-audio's file
about clicks on xp (he

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=...1e7310429 5ae
c1f755b),
including pci slot change and switching from ACPI to standard PC mode
for re-assigning IRQs. Of course i'm using the newest drivers for
everything (motherboard, audiophile, sata(raid controller), and i
tried also to disabilitate everything i could from the BIOS.

then i mounted on the same system an IDE hard disk with Windows 98SE
and booted the system as win98, the sata controller was "invisible" on
this configuration and so was the serial ata hard disc, but the sound
card worked properly. this leads me to exclude a conflict with the
video card or the mother board. my suspects now go to Windows XP or to
the sata/raid controller.

at this stage, i'm planning to switch to win98, though that would be
suicidal, or wait XP service pack 2 hoping that it corrects the error,
or trying to update the MB's firmware, or wait for an update for the
sata/raid controller or for the audiophile itself.

is any of you familiar with theis kind of problems, that is conflicts
between audiophile and sata controllers or windows xp on asus
maiboards? thanx in advance...

Disable SATA and - perhaps - be happy.

of course i can't disable sata because, man, it's my hard disc!
i'm sure it's a problem of the sata controller and its driver, because
also on m-audio site they say they can give problems.

the raid controller is PROMISE PDC20378
the driver is SILICON IMAGE 1.0.0.40 (SIL 3112)
all the rest is known: NVIDIA nForce2 chipset on ASUS A7N8X-E deluxe
mainboard.

i'm asking myself if there is another driver, apart from the silicon
image, that goes with my chipset and raid controller???

In article ,
Kurt Albershardt wrote:

james wrote:

I am convinced that SATA is a work-in-progress that's been rushed to
market

Hardly--SATA is nearly two years late according to its original release schedule.

All the more motivation to get it out the door and into the hands of
consumers, whether it's ready for market or not!

The primary benefits of SATA with current hard drive technology a

If it's causing distortion with your audio signal, that's a big black
"X" over any presumed benefit.

If the storage system isn't the problem, that's fine. I'm quite happy
with ATAPI and low-cost drives, and in my opinion, any improvement on it
would need to be solid state, or at least, silent.

In article ,
Peter Larsen wrote:

Yes. My old P2-300 can not do click free sp-dif in with a disk
controller sitting on the PCI bus, even if this controller is faster
than the controller on the mobo. Not nice as it is supposed to be
standby spare daw.

I've got a P2-400 dedicated to a Layla-20. It's happy recording all 8
channels. The disk is some old Fujitsu scsi on some variety of Adaptec
2940 controller. This is a task that none of my later machines has been
able to perform. Haven't tried my shuttle xpc on it, mostly because it
has only the single pci slot.

A59 wrote:

Disable SATA and - perhaps - be happy.

of course i can't disable sata because, man, it's
my hard disc!

Understood. But it may still be the cheapest way to a working system to
get another harddisk for that new-built critter. Mostly it is harddiskS
btw. - at least whenever you want a computer to be fast. All things
equal, and they most certainly aren't, it can be up to 4 times faster to
have two disks - or sets of spindles to be exact - instead of one, with
some software the recommendation is to have three disks if possible.

i'm sure it's a problem of the sata controller and its driver, because
also on m-audio site they say they can give problems.

Well, that makes it "official" - doesn't it?

i'm asking myself if there is another driver, apart from
the silicon image, that goes with my chipset and raid
controller???

Hardly probable. A SATA card is about DKK 300 over here, which means
that you should be able to find one at USD 29.95 and put it - and the
SATA disk - in your officeputer.

Realistically it is not uncommon to have such "occasions for learning"
when building or configuring a DAW. Allowing at least USD 100 for
"surprises" can be very wise when making a budget for such a
contraption.

With my P2-300 I had the strangest of problems with my preferred audio
software distorting on long tones, very audible on a clarinet, hardly at
all audible on things like cymbals, and with the duration of files input
via sp-dif being too short by a few seconds.

It was never fully understood - support for the software in question
said: tell us what it is if you find out - but probabilities ended up
being about whether the NIC cable was connected.

It was first when putting a very fast IBM disk back into the machine
that I had removed that it dawned that the problem probably was that
"harddisks always burst" and this disks bursts were so fast that they
saturated the bus on the mobo. The disk spent a good deal of its life on
the shelf and died an untimely death when I happened to bend a pin in
its connector, or rather when the bent and then straightened pin broke.
Kinda sad, 'cause it was amazingly fast, almost beyond specs, on ATA 33
and it hadn't seen all that many hours of operation.


Kind regards

Peter Larsen


--
*******************************************
* My site is at: http://www.muyiovatki.dk *
*******************************************