Hi,

I am having trouble recording on a dual Athlon MP 1500+ system. The
motherboard is an Asus A7M266-D . My problem is under Windows 2000
Professional. The recording application is Cool edit 2000 (trial version).

I have tried several soundcards with various results :

1) the built-in C-media 8738 chip on the motherboard.

Playback works fine with this card, but recording never gets me anything
but silence, whether I record from the microphone jack or the line in jack.

2) an SB Live Value PCI soundcard

Playback works fine with this card.
Recordings give me several very unpleasant pops every second. It doesn't
matter what sampling rate, bit rate or number of channels (stereo/mono)
I use. Most tests I have done are at CD quality - ie. 16 bits 44 kHz stereo.

3) an M-Audio delta 66 PCI soundcard .

Again, playback works fine with this card.
But all recordings have the exact same problem as the SB Live : several
very unpleasant pops every second .

I have tried disabling the audio acceleration on all audio drivers, but
it doesn't make any difference. I can never make the pops in the
recordings go away.

Note that this is all on a new installation of Win2K SP4 . My OS of
choice on this machine was always OS/2, but there is a severe lack of
good OS/2 recording applications, and there is no OS/2 driver for the
Delta 66, which is a superior card, so I added Windows 2000 to the
machine yesterday.

I have also done recordings under OS/2 Warp Server for e-business SMP,
using the digital audio application that comes with OS/2.

The results under OS/2 are respectively :

1) the built-in C-media 8738 chip on the motherboard.

Playback works fine with this card, but recording never gets me anything
but silence, whether I record from the microphone jack or the line in
jack. This is exactly the same result as under Windows.

2) an SB Live Value PCI soundcard

Playback works fine with this card.
Recordings also work great, without any pops. The quality of the sound
is surprisingly very good.

3) an M-Audio delta 66 PCI soundcard .

There is no OS/2 driver for this card, so I could not try it.

Does anyone know how to solve this recording problem under Windows 2000
Professional ? I would really like to be able to use the 24 bit / 96 kHz
that the Delta 66 offers, as well as the better editing programs.

More info on the computer :

Asus A7M266-D motherboard
Two Athlon MP 1500+ CPUs
512 MB ECC PC2100 DDR

All slots in the system are in use :
LSI Logic 21040 dual channel Ultra160 SCSI controller
3Com 905B NICC
Creative SB Live Value
M-Audio Delta 66
ATI Radeon 8500DV 64 MB AGP 4x video card
Asus PCI-USB2 USB 2.0 PCI card

Disks :
1.44 floppy drive
Seagate 15,000 rpm 36 GB Ultra160 hard drive
Toshiba SD-M1401 SCSI DVD-ROM
Microtech DPAI-SCSI-PC PCMCIA SCSI reader

Video :
Apple 22" Cinema Display (DVI)

The main source I'm trying to record is myself playing Bach on a
Schimmel grand piano, and being recorded with a set of 2 AKG C3000B
microphones connected to an M-Audio DMP3 preamp.

When recording with the Delta 66, I use balanced cables from the preamp
directly to the Delta66 breakout box (inputs 1 & 2).

When recording with the SB Live, I use unbalanced cables from the preamp
to a Yamaha 995 receiver, and the tape out of the receiver goes to the
line in of the SB Live.

To make comparisons easier (and to avoid having to go to the piano room
each time, away from the computer room), I have done some test
recordings of the first 5 seconds of a CD-audio disk of one of the Bach
Toccata on organ, using the analog unbalanced output from a Sony
consumer CD player going through my Yamaha 995 receiver.

I have posted 3 WAV files to my homepage to demonstrate the recording
problem I have :

http://www.madbrain.com/recording/sblivewin.wav . SB Live under Windows
- has pops

http://www.madbrain.com/recording/delta66win.wav . Delta 66 under
Windows - has pops

http://www.madbrain.com/recording/sbliveos2.wav . SB Live under OS/2 -
no pops

If anyone has idea how to solve this problem, please respond to the
newsgroup (Due to bot spamming, I no longer post my e-mail address in
newsgroups).

Thanks.

In article ,
says...
Hi,

I am having trouble recording on a dual Athlon MP 1500+ system. The
motherboard is an Asus A7M266-D . My problem is under Windows 2000
Professional. The recording application is Cool edit 2000 (trial version).

I have tried several soundcards with various results :

1) the built-in C-media 8738 chip on the motherboard.

Playback works fine with this card, but recording never gets me anything
but silence, whether I record from the microphone jack or the line in jack.

2) an SB Live Value PCI soundcard

Playback works fine with this card.
Recordings give me several very unpleasant pops every second. It doesn't
matter what sampling rate, bit rate or number of channels (stereo/mono)
I use. Most tests I have done are at CD quality - ie. 16 bits 44 kHz stereo.

One possibility is that another process running in the PC is stealing CPU
cycles? for most apps this doesn't matter but when recording it can cause
unwanted clicks and pops in the final recording. Assume you have
screensavers turned off, antivirus scanning processes disabled etc etc.