Crackling - Please Help (ASUS / RME / AMD X2 / XP)

[Spacewalker]

hi!
we run a new A8N-SLI Premium Board here as audio workstation (new install).

Setup:
- AMD 64 X2 4400+
- Win XP
- GForce PCI-X Graphics Card
- 2GB OCZ Ram
- SATA & IDE Disks (Sys on IDE, 2*SATA RAPTORs for audio / no RAID)
- latest drivers installed
everything we dont need is BIOS disabled (Parallel port, Marvel LAN, onboard audio)

Problem:
we have 3 PCI cards installed (2*RME Hammerfall for audio I/O, 1*UAD DSP Card).

Now, we get clicks on audio when using all pci cards (even with LOW cpu usage!). I narrowed down the problem: some of my audio card is sharing the IRQ with the graphics adapter, which is strongly not recommended.

any ideas of what I can do? can I change IRQ settings somehow?

hint: trying to install (or modify - tried both) Win XP from ACPI to MPS (multi processor machine without ACPI) didnt work since windows wont boot at all (not even safe mode)

 

[csl]

i'd also try disabling the sata first and seeing if that helps. both of my drivers are sata and when using kontakt or a few wavs i get clicks on playback now and then (not on render though, thankfully).

 

[zlatan]

I have pretty much the same system ...
only pci slot I use is for the UAD-1 but still get cracklin and gaps ...
I tried to install that interrupt filter which didnt work for me....
Let me know if you found out something...
I try to run the UAD on another system with fx teleport ...but that's
sloooooooowwww...

 

[Spacewalker]

Filter

Hi Zlatan,

what interrupt filter? tell me

 

[Spacewalker]

i'd also try disabling the sata first and seeing if that helps. both of my drivers are sata and when using kontakt or a few wavs i get clicks on playback now and then (not on render though, thankfully).

I hope thats not the problem since my 2 audio disks (the raptors) are SATA disks. I need the SATA since all other 4 devices are used already

 

[csl]

obviously, but why not try it and see. at least your IDE drive is your system drive so you *can* try it. just disable the sata chip in the bios and play back some wavs in whatever host you're using.

if that does turn out to cure your problem then you'll have to decide if it's a big enough problem to warrant switching your drives back to ide.

all my drives are sata so i can't even try it.

 

[Jake68]

From my experience you are gonna have real problems getting that board to work.

I would consider selling the board on ebay and going for a Via or ULi AGP-PCI Chipset.

 

[EOMAK]

hi ,i have same motherboard and 4800x2 cpu .My system screams projects 2.7ms record and play back and while playing along with track at 24/48 specs. are.Asus prem. motherboard,4800x2@ 2.8Ghz water cooled,2 7800gtx's vidoes card,Three 74g Raptor harddrives in raid 0 lost 5% cpu in raid0 but a big increase from a 65% cpu project down to 44% useage with the raid0.,1 Uad-1,1 delta66 sound card.windows xp,Sonor 5,project5.

 

[Spacewalker]

Hi EOMAK,

very interesting. Since I´ve been struggeling for days now without success, can you help me and tell me some more facts about your system? I`d really like to know:

1. what PCI slot is your UAD card in?
2. what PCI slot is your graphics card in?
3. what BIOS version do you have?
4. what drivers do you install? did you install the nvidia IDE drivers?
5. can you tell me the interrupt (IRQ) resources of your system? particulary PCI/Graphics.

I would greatly appreciate your help. Thanks a lot!

 

[EOMAK]

hi, i wrote a big reply but it didn't go threw took to long to write so here something sort.My system is the same as yours expect the video cards.I built my system for hardcore gaming but do music for hobby.Everything is on auto in Bios for pci and video setup.Chipset,Cpu,Video cards are waterd cooled.I only hve 2 pci slots because one of the videocards waterblocks takes up 1.I think my setup works is because its extemly over clocked even the nvidia chipset is very overclocked-no worries temp. stays under 40c with 2 180mm fans very quitet opertaing

• Asus A8N-SLI Premium/AMD4800X2@2.8Ghz/Three 10k 74gRaptors in raid 0 noticed big performace cpu drop in projects with setup ,also tested with raid 5 and no raid ./OZC 2g Copper PlattedDDR400@488/One UAD-1 Ultra Pak/One detla66 soundcard/midiman 1x1usb/Sonar5/Project5v2/Windows Xp home edition sp2/Two Nvidia 7800 gtx video cards in SLI mode/lastest drivers.

Project5v2 demo song Taboo-running 2.7Ms, peek cpu usage 70% lowest 38% at 24bit/48 in raid 0.No raid setup with 2 storage setup runs at 10Ms,peek cpu useage 95% lowest 50% at 24bit/48.

 

[Spacewalker]

Setup

Hi EOMAK,

thanks for the reply. Our setups really look very much alike. And I also have my setup extremly overclocked. The system itself runs solid as a rock @ 2.8 GHz (with a 4400+!), HT ~ @ 1.011GHz! Benchmarks are great. The OCZ really is a good choice RAM.

Everything is fine until I have UAD plugs running. And thats my problem.

Project5v2 demo song Taboo-running 2.7Ms, peek cpu usage 70% lowest 38% at 24bit/48 in raid 0.No raid setup with 2 storage setup runs at 10Ms,peek cpu useage 95% lowest 50% at 24bit/48

So, what was your setup for the lowest CPU useage with the raptors? RAID? And, even with a non-raid setup, do you have them connected to the RAID port (the black ones) or to the standard nvidia SATA ports?

Is there any chance you can give me your BIOS version and tell me your IRQ assignments for the PCI cards?

thanks a lot!

 

[Blank Frank]

Same Problem

This won't be any help, but I have a similar setup and I too get crackling when I use the UAD plugins, most annoying! Let us know if you find a cure.

 

[Spacewalker]

about to solve

After more than one week struggeling, trying and tweaking with a variety of setups, this is what we came up with so far:
The AMD64 X2 itself doesnt seem to be the problem, it actually comes down to the board and chipset. This is what we´ve figured out:

1. ASUS A8N-Premium, nForce4 chipset: not working
2. Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939, nForce3 chipset: not working
3. ASUS A8V, via K8T800 PRO chipset: currently working!!

After reading tons of forum post and really trying everything you could think of, we found out it doesn make sense if you have an incompatible board. Some people have made good experiences with the nForce3 chipset, but for our testing board it did not work either. The overall problem is PCI / Latency performance.

I guess if one has only one PCI card in use (lets say the UAD), there will be a quite good chance to get a nForce3 board to work, since you can switch slots any try. In our setup case, having 3 slots in use for low latency applications (1*UAD & 2*Hammerfalls for I/O), there seems to be no chance. Its a hardware issue.

To be honest, I first tried to avoid the VIA chipset board due to past experiences with VIA chipsets. But this one seems to be a good shot. Also, this current setup showed that mainboard design is not only a matter of components used. The next time I install a board, I will definetly not only go by specs (like the chipset) but rather by user experiences with specific boards and similyr hardware setups. As shown, you can have one nForce3 board working perfect while another nForce3 board will crackle all time.

Notes (also forums collected opinions I found):
- avoid VIA K8T890 chipset
- definetly avoid nForce4

The sad point: the nForce4 chipset tested with the ASUS A8N-SLI really outperformed all other boards we´ve tested concerning RAM speed, HT speed and even the speed you feel when working with Windows. Solid as a rock.

-----------------------------------------------------
Some notes on the A8V we currently have:
seems to be a nice board, outperformes the Gigabyte we´ve tested before. We only had big time trouble updating the BIOS, which you NEED to do. While doing a BIOS update with the included ASUS tool, the erase process worked but it failed to program the new BIOS (we´ve tried 2.21). After that, you cant run the BIOS update tool again since it wont find a ASUS BIOS. And yes, the bios chip is actually empty. Workarround:

1. go to ASUS and download some newer BIOS (2.19 right now), copy to a disk and name it A8VB.ROM (I dont have the board here, so I´m not sure about the name. It must be the same as the xxxB.ROM file on the ASUS CD)
2. insert the disk
3. BIOS will be updated

in case something goes wrong again, you can press ALT+F2 as soon as you see the first things on the screen in order to force a BIOS update at any time, even with a working BIOS.

The problem in our case was that with older BIOS versions, the board won´t recognize the X2 Dual Core processor and the system halts before you can even enter BIOS setup.
-----------------------------------------------------

Hope the helps somehow!
Good luck guys

 

[Blank Frank]

Fixed the dreaded crackles!!

I can't find the original post again, but try this.
Go to Start menu, then Run, type in Regedit, then OK, then go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then go to SOFTWARE, then go to Universl Audio, then Powered Plugins, then UAD HypTopo, then in the right hand window double click on DmaTurbo, then change the value from 1 to 0, click OK then close up all the windows and restart the computer.
This worked for me!