Problems

[bulls hit]

So I put together my new rig - Asus P5B deluxe & Core duo. Plenty fast etc.

However I'm having uad issues with the Precision plugs.

If I mix down to a stereo track and insert the PEQ & Limiter, I can't play the project, even with NO other plugs enabled. I have to disable one of them, press play, then enable the plug. Now it plays OK and the uad meter is showing 33% - hardly overloaded. While extremely annoying, at least I have a workaround.

However it gets worse. When I bounce that stereo track containing the Precision plugs to another track, or export to a wav, I always get a dropout at some random spot in the final wav. This is a friggen nightmare.

Any clues here? Video card latency maybe or something?

I've got the final version of the Cakewalk VST adaptor. I started with the latest versions of the UAD plugs, then reverted back to V4.2 as that was semi stable in my old system. To no avail however.

Help?

 

[bulls hit]

Thought I had it fixed. Still errors on mixdown

 

[billybk1]

How many UAD-1 cards are you using? PCI or PCIe? Are you absolutely sure that there is no IRQ sharing going on? I've been seriously considering the ASUS P5B MB for my next DAW upgrade. One thing I noticed after I downloaded and read through the MB manual is that there is a lot of IRQ sharing going on. Looking at the IRQ table I saw that all but one of the (3) PCI slots are sharing IRQ's with devices right out of the box. Getting a dropout in a final rendered wave (using UAD-1 plugins) is indicative of IRQ sharing. You need to get your UAD-1's, on their on IRQ's (are even sharing with each other). The UAD-1's need uninterrupted IRQ access at all times, when they are streaming audio data back and forth.
I don't have the P5B manual in front of me, but if memory serves me right, I believe the other (2) PCI slots share with the on-board audio controller & a USB Host Cotroller. Try disabling both of these from your device manager and then re-boot. Those PCI slots should now be unshared and good to go. You may need to consult your MB manual to find which USB Host controller to disable ( I think there are like 4-8 of them).

 

[bulls hit]

I'm using just one uad pci card and no, I hadn't thougt of IRQ sharing. I was under the impression problems with that stuff was ancient history.

Thanks Billy I'll have a look at that tonight.

The P5B seems like a good board but one thing to watch for is the video card slot is very close to the first pci slot. The MCI video card I got has it's heatsink overhanging the adjacent slot, rendering it unusable

 

[bulls hit]

The uad card is in slot 2. The P5B book says this is shared with Azalia, the High Definition Audio thing from Intel. I've now disabled that in the bios. Device Mgr reports slot 2 is using IRQ 22, all on its own, not shared.
However, same problem still ocurring...

I've upped the buffers to 18ms latency so I'm pretty sure it's not a buffer thing. Done all the usual daw tweaks, turned off system restore etc.

Stumped.

 

[RWIL]

When I bounce that stereo track containing the Precision plugs to another track, or export to a wav, I always get a dropout at some random spot in the final wav. This is a friggen nightmare.

Do you export in realtime?

 

[bulls hit]

Well it's in 'batch' mode. The UI locks while the export is happening

 

[RWIL]

Well it's in 'batch' mode. The UI locks while the export is happening

It's not the same thing. Since you are working in Cakewalk, looks in the manual or .pdf where you can select to export in realtime (which mean 1 minute audio mix take 1 minute for rendering). In Cubase we have to check a checkbox to enable that feature before the export.

RW

 

[bulls hit]

OK I found that option - thanks for that, never noticed it before. It seems to work better - the exports have no glitches.

It's interesting that I didn't need to have to do this on my old P4 system.

There's still something not quite right with my setup

 

[RWIL]

It's interesting that I didn't need to have to do this on my old P4 system.

Maybe that has something to do with the audio card too. I was using an e-mu 1212m for a while and «realtime export» was the only way to go (request in e-mu's manual). I'm not sure for UAD but since, I'm keeping that way to go because no problem and I hate to find glitch in a mixdown.
Using RME since over a year, I never try however...
Another good rule is to disable all UAD Powered Plug-Ins from the Performance Meter window when you perform offline processing.

Cheers,
RW