XITE-1 PC CONFIGURATION REFERENCE

[Sounddesigner]

You can try the HPET to RTC trick in your EFI/BIOS, but most likely another driver is hogging too much time in the background

I never knew of this trick. I'll keep it in mind in the future. I did disable HPET in the Device Manager.

I think the problem of runnig my Projects at the lowest latency possible is solved. I called tech support at Magic Micro to get a few ideas to try and the guy told me that some of their Audio Production customers have problems with 'Turbo Boost'. Well 'that's a blast from the past' i thought. I never considered this cause it was a problem i had with the very first generation of i7 processors and i thought Intel worked out all the kinks by now but i was wrong!

I turned off everything in the BIOS that i use to turn off in the past just now, wich was Turbo boost, C-State, Eist, etc and the problem seems to have disappeared. My last i7 4790k did not have this problem wich is part of the reason i thought it was just a first-generation problem. The more things change the more they stay the same!

Even tho i wanted the Turbo Boost wich went to 4.9 GHz, i've never been a big fan of substitute-power. Substitutes such as turbo-boost, hyperthreading, and some instruction sets are not better than the real deal wich is just a high base speed per core. I believe in just making sure the CPU has a high base speed around 4 GHz and one will be better served. Substitute-power often brings problems like i just experienced.

I don't know if i truly needed to turn off all that i did in the Bios and later i may turn some of it back on to deduce the culprits and the innocent. I just went off memory and turned off everthing i turned off with the first generation i7 920 and i'll figure out everything else later. So far so good and i am definitely doing MUCH better at 1 ms buffer now. Ultra low latency at high samplerates is a great way to test a computer system, if somethings not right you will know it quickly.

I still need further testing of this computer for a final conclusion, but so far everything is working fine. This is definitely a PC Configuration other SCOPERs should consider. Combined with XITE-1 you can easily handle the most ambitious projects. Plus it's generally better to get a system that someone else already played guinea pig and tested ...

[valis]

Disabling HPET in BIOS/EFI is the correct way, that would change the driver in Driver Manager as it switches everything to RTC (realtime clock) which is less interrupts/lower precision. Note this fix works simply reduces the number of calls that badly coded drivers make, and mostly applies to hardware from 10+ years ago. I've had no issues with Scope & HPET on my 2015 era PC, which is in contrast to the later eras of Core2 and early models of i7 (which you say you used), where HPET often caused problems with hardware from that era.

In regards to Turbo, the issue here is that you want all of your cores in the *highest* possible state as much of the time as possible. There's a few reasons why, but it generally comes down to multi-threading in audio applications loading cores in a manner that favors the faster cores. A few things can happen here:

You're loading up mostly 1 core with the high cpu usage (native/vst) plugins when you start working, and it hits a very high cpu turbo state as a result (cores are limited by TDP, the more cores in action, the lower the turbo states available are). You add more plugins and suddenly things start getting wonky, necessitating reshuffling around the process load. In this era that's usually done simply by stopping and starting the playback or recording again, but in some DAWs you may find that certain plugin chains will not be happy no matter what you do as they won't be distributed across multiple cores. This is the MOST common complaint from people (once my project get going, things fell down).

You get used to working on 1-2 cores with a specific master chain, and then late into a project load up something semi-heavy, and reduce the CPU to the lowest state for all cores turbo (instead of the 2 cores being turbo), this is most common on a 4-6 core CPU in terms of issues.

Hyperthreading is a different story, but again things have changed drastically since the early days. The main thing to understand about all current implementations is that it's a way of keeping the pipeline as active as possible so as few CPU cycles are wasted as possible. DIsabling it entirely with any machine after 2014 really shouldn't be necessary.

Disabling core parking and the low core sleep EIST states can still help Scope PCI based systems, but I don't even have to do that with my Scope box unless I'm doing a lot of complex projects. I found that simply changing power modes to high performance in Win10/11 does enough that I don't bother with BIOS fixes. I switch back to balanced when done, so that the cpu isn't at 100% (even with scope open to a default/idle project) as this reduces my power load from the wall by about 40%.

I'm not sure how much--if any--of this is necessary with Scope XITE as it's PCIe based and seems to play much better with modern systems.

[astroman]

Even if I‘m not planning to leave my old P4mobile, this is valuable information.
Thank you, Valis.

[Sounddesigner]

Very indepth and informative Valis, especially on Turbo Boost!

My philosophy with Services on your computer is 'turn them off if their not truly needed'. Anything running takes up resources and may increase dpc-latency. At high Samplerates ones machine needs to be lean and mean.

I do leave hyperthreading activated cause i've seen significant benifits from it in terms of larger projects with many Effects and Instruments, but with a single instrument or Effect that is EXTREMELY hungry this does not benifit you, only high clock speeds can save you.

The main problem i had with the first-generation i7 was that it just was not fast enough. The first i7 ran at 2.66 GHz and its speed was cut in half since i ran at 96khz. There was many demmanding Synths and Effects that my computer just could'nt handle cause they required more clock speed of a single core. When it comes to core-killers such as synths and effects that require a bigger and more powerfull core no substitute-power will remedy this. When i came accross core-killers nothing was there to help, not Turbo boost, not more cores, not more virtual-cores/hyperthreading. My only solution i had was to upgrade to a faster i7 wich ran at a greater speed of 4 GHz.

More cores and virtual-cores do help in regards to larger projects with many plugins so i do welcome them, but for single threaded software VSTs that are VERY demmanding only raw juggernaught clock speed will help, especially in my situation of high samplerates and low-latency.

I know your aware of all this already, i'm just trying to explain my personal prefences and why i'm so fixated on high clock speeds.

Since the 12th generation of Core CPUs intel has been using a hybrid Architecture of P-Cores and E-Cores. While i welcome this i still would prefer that all the Cores on my new 10-Core ALL ran at 3.7 GHz. Instead only the 6 P-Cores run at the full 3.7 GHz, the 4 E-Cores only run at 2.8 GHz. I understand that E-Cores are efficient cores that handle background tasks and lite duty processing to free up Performance-Cores to focus soley on the most demmanding tasks making them essentially faster. Do we really need 4 E-cores? Why not just 2? Must E-Cores run only at 2.7ghz, why not at 3.7ghz like the P-Cores? I prefer ALL of my Cores to run at 3.7 GHz. This smells like another Substitute wich usually are'nt as good as the real deal.

I'm no fool tho, i know we must get the most of whatever tools are available whether flawed or not just like the Audio Engineers of the past. Ultimately i welcome whatever power intel can get to us no matter if substitute or genuine, i just don't care for too much substitutes as they reduce CPU Clock speeds in favore of more cores and other substitutes. Especially since many of us have had insufficient clock speed problems.

I mostly have praises for intel and think overall they did a great job. I also blame mainly Microsoft for many of the problems i had.

I do agree with you hyperthreading is overall very usefull and IMO one of the better substitutes, i'm just saying there are situations i ran into that only higher clock speeds per core could solve.


EDITED

[valis]

Yes, for people who do mixing of mostly pre-recorded audio and thus a lot of (less cpu intensive than VSTi) insert effects, more cores may be better than faster cores. For people who prefer high end virtual instruments that do advanced synthesis (uHe for instance) algorithms and lots of circuit modelling, high speed cores is best. In the consumer realm the market is laid out so that as you go up in cost you go up in cores, so there's not much to consider there, but in the 'workstation' and 'HEDT' market where you have Xeons and Threadrippers, this means that a lesser core count SKU with higher clockspeed may be better for some workflows, and worse for others.

Looking at Cinebench and Gaming benchmarks in reviews tells audio users nothing.

[circlingkailas]

Hi everyone - Checking in 3 years after my last post. I am still using my original PowerPulsar on a XP Carillon PC, and my XITE is still sitting in its box. Looks like everyone is still mainly doing IT rather than making music. Does anyone out there have a single go-to PC or laptop that is a turn-key solution running the XITE and Scope? Or another way of asking, is anyone in the market for a brand new, carefully packaged XITE?

I would be using it if there was a straightforward answer to what PC desktop or laptop to match it with. Including, ideally, a way to link up the XITE with a Mac.

Thanks!

[valis]

I just built an XITE box. We also have a for sale forum, and I started a thread to encourage PCI users to consider migrating to XITE.

To connect XITE to a Mac, you'll want to link the XITE and Mac via ADAT, analog i/o and MIDI as with the PCI cards. I prefer RME soundcards still for latency+stability++matrix routing options, but you have lots of options on Mac to choose from. For the XITE's native software, you can install RTPMidi (free for Windows users, connects to AudioMIDI setup's network driver on Mac) to handle MIDI, and route through the XITE as needed. Note the XITE has the same limitations for 64bit ASIO support as the PCI cards, so I use a legacy version of Bidule (0.667 if I recall--I can look that up if neede) to host native software.

Options abound!

[garyb]

the XITE is not as sensitive to the motherboard as XP days PCI cards. there are an extremely few number of PCs that will make trouble. aslmost everything works, so there is no definitive list because it isn't needed.

[spacef]

Hi all, sorry to invade this thread. back on PC configuration. I found that AMD is much cheaper, and peiople say it is very stable.
It seems a lot of people here chose intel, but is AMD ok for xite (it seems ok for everything else).

I am looking at AMD Ryzen™ 7 5700X3D + ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING WI-FI II ... I save 150 euros compared to an i7 12700K+Gygabyte UD AX.

Or point me to a thread about AMD and i'll post my final config here (I should buy this month)...

Thanks a lot !

[valis]

I'm running the Asus ROG-STRIX-B550-F with a 5950X here. The GPU I have (RTX3090) causes huge DPC spikes, as did a mid-grade AMD gaming GPU before it. I recommend you get a Quadro for the drivers so you have less audio issues, you can get them used and they will still have years of support as they're business/workstation cards.

Other than that, this machine has run great.

[spacef]

.sounds a bit like a show stopper for an audio PC
I have a 12+ y-old cpu and a gtx 960 gfx card, audio drop out happen mainly because of cpu/cache size, and it is the reason why I need to upgrade (due to more and more limited power when using recent plugins)... I will not be able to get a new gfx card right now. I have read that Nvidia said it solved the DPC spike issues but I don't know if it applies to my gfx card.
I guess i will stick to intel for the moment ? happy to hear xite have no issue with whatever cpu brand.
So the huge cache on the AMD doesn't serve any audio purpose ? (you have 75MB Cache and the 5700x3d has 96...) :-/

[valis]

It's the GPU, same DPC latency issue we all know and love. This machine isn't my primary DAW, but it never happens with DAW open, only with GPU hungry apps. Changing PCI latency setting manually or hacking the drivers (like on guru3d.com or whatever the notebookblabla.com site is) to change the setting both work just fine, just loses 2-3% fps in games at most.

Using the Studio drivers from Nvidia also usually works, but you'd need a 10 series or higher card still for those.

[spacef]

After many check I think that I can confirm that AMD looks better for audio track count but the interesting models were too expensive for this budget. May be it will be for next PC I've just ordered the 12700K and will report once installed (2 weeks from now I think).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV3KkmX6Mb4 he gets double track/plugin count with an AMD than intel before choking the pc ...

[valis]

Thankful they were at the point where track counts are not as much of a concerns they once were

[Sounddesigner]

The i7 12700k is a wise choice and i doubt you'll regret it. I actuallu like it better than the newer i7 14700k because the 12700k runs at a faster base speed then the newer wich are all of the same Socket and family. The 12th generation wich is the i7 12700k have a good balance of speed and cores while the newer 14th generation apart from Turbo-boost seem to focus more on cores.

I'm sure you'll get as high of a Track count as your heart desire and with its speed can run the super-synths of the Native world with no problem as a individual core can generally handle their extreme sophistication. I have the 12600k wich is of the same 12th generation and i doubt i'll ever need more power than it has. Your 12700k is even better than the 12600k as it has 8 P-Cores wich is more. If i worked at 44khz samplerate i likely would've chosen the 12700k as well, but high samplerates makes me desparate for the very small speed increase of 12600k. With the 12700k's 12-Cores and 8 of them at 3.6GHz VERY few people will run into any limitations with it.

[spacef]

Thanks Sounddesigner... can't wait to set it up... got everything but the CPU which should arrive next week.
I will post the specs once scope/daw etc are installed and working...

[spacef]

Hi all !
New PC installed, and Scope/Xite running. Still have a lot to setup in relation to admin rights and the old win10 key I had doesn't work anymore so I have ordered a new one (OEM, cheap).

Anyway, so far so good, issues do not seem to be related to OS or Scope (quick description below).

New stuff:

• CPU: intel 12700 K
  MB: Gigabyte UD AX z790
  Ram: Crucial , 2*16 GB (32 total) DDR5 Pro Udimm kit 6000 Mt/s 36-38-38-80
  CPU Fan: Thermalright Phantom SPirit
  OS HD: Crucial P3 Plus Pci 4.0 NVMe M2 SSD 1 To
  SATA Expansion card: pci 4x for 6 drives.
  OS : windows 10 pro
  Scope: v 5.1 (that's because i need SDK 5 for maintaing old devices, as it was difficult with SDK 7 under win 7. I will evaluate later if scope/sdk 7 works better on win10 (too bad driver 5 and 7 are mutually exclusive,having one of them required to desinstall the other if I remeber well).

From the old PC:
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 / Asus
PSU: Corsair RM 750 W
Several SSD Sata 3 and Hard drives (not all are connected)


To improve:
The motherboard has 2 * 8 pins 24 v for ATX power. I am currently running with 1 only, and ordered a second cable as I could not find the spare in my many bags of many cables. So far there is no instability of any kind. I guess 1*8pins is enough. It is said that the system could be more stable with 2.

Issues that made me stay up late at night:
- Scope driver installation ran into the "ERROR: InstallDriver returned -2" so I had to go through the process of "disable driver integrity checks" (solution here: viewtopic.php?p=319209&hilit=ERROR%3A+I ... ed#p319209)
- Asio not (yet) recognized by studio one v4, but works perfectly with Reaper. With Studio One, I currently need to run "windows audio" with Scope Wave as output and a webcam audio microphone as input, otherwise windows audio does not work (studio one finds a samplerate problem... but I think the problem is studio one... strange i never had this issue on win 7 ).

Still got issues that I guess will be resolved once windows 10 is activated and my admin status confirmed (i think I am admin as I see in the settings, but may be win10 awaits activation to give it full access?)
eg: old reaper folder of project not seen in win Explorer (I can see it in Tree size personal, so it is there).

Still need to install old hard drive and SSD, Scope SDK, spacef disks, many plugins etc....

But I think that it works very fine, the only problem is Studio One v4 (was already sometimes problematic under win7). I hope I won't have to replug the old OS and bounce stuff to export everything into reaper....

Will post more if I encounter serious issues and/or when all issues are resolved (waiting for a win 10 activation key now)

[valis]

Current versions of DAWs (like Studio1) are likely worth the upgrade over such an old version, though I realize it's onerous once you've spent a mint on hardware. Christmas is coming, maybe you can be your own Santa.

[spacef]

I don't know, an even older version (v3) is running on my windows 10 laptop... it is possible that v4 all is not perfectly set and unadapted to this hardware ? In any case, studio one v4 is quite buggy and slow (even on win7, lots of crashes, rescan all plugins each time, looses history etc). Will see if they have a v7 demo. I have the upgrade price (149e) and I think it will not change soon. may upgrade next month, or may be try the monthly subscription and get rid of it after a little while. it is on the list anyway.

[spacef]

Studio One v4 ASIO works fine with Scope 7
installing plugins, dsp files, etc can begin

I repeat the setup for clarity

CPU: intel 12700 K
MB: Gigabyte UD AX z790
Ram: Crucial , 2*16 GB (32 total) DDR5 Pro Udimm kit 6000 Mt/s 36-38-38-80
CPU Fan: Thermalright Phantom Spirit
OS HD: Crucial P3 Plus Pci 4.0 NVMe M2 SSD 1 To
SATA Expansion card: pci 4x for 6 additional drives (GLOTRENDS SA3026).
OS : windows 10 pro
Scope and SDK: v7

From the previous PC
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 / Asus
PSU: Corsair RM 750 W
Several SSD Sata 3 and Hard drives
Studio One v4, Reaper, ...