crackles in audio playback (video card problem?) :SOLVED!

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sun Sep 29, 2002 2:34 pm

Ok, I need some help here. I just upgraded to Windows XP and everything works fine, except that I have lots of crackles in Cubase audio playback which weren't there before. It's almost certainly a video problem as you can hear that the crackles appear more intense when you do things like switch from Cubase to Scope window, or a open a dialog box. My videocard is and ATI Rage Fury/128 (AGP 32Mb), and I tried both the driver that comes with XP and the new XP driver from ATI's website, both give the same results. I have my display on 1024x768 16 bit, also tried 24 bit, no solution. Video hardware accelaration is set to full
Scope latency is at 13ms, and I'm using all the latest versions.

I also did all the major tweaks for XP performance. (disabling all the background stuff, setting the HD dma correctly etc..)

What am I missing?

_________________

[ This Message was edited by: King of Snake on 2002-09-29 15:34 ]

[ This Message was edited by: King of Snake on 2002-09-29 15:39 ]

[ This Message was edited by: King of Snake on 2002-09-30 12:10 ]

alfonso · Post by **alfonso** » Sun Sep 29, 2002 3:18 pm

hi king of snake,

there are so many things to know....
i think that somebody like subhuman or... maybe i....,( if i notice something comparable to my system , my knowledge is very far from the level of subhuman's),could help you, but a complete description of your system (hw and sw) would help aa lot...
for now i don't know where to point...

ciao.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sun Sep 29, 2002 3:32 pm

yeah sorry about that, totally slipped my mind:

P3 1 Ghz, 256 Mb RAM
ASUS CUSL2-C mobo
Maxtor 7200 rpm HD
Windows XP professional
ATI Rage Fury

...running Scope Fusion 3.1 c and Cubase 5 r2. (amongst others)

Some more testing revealed that no crackles seem to be present when looking at the SFP screen but when I switch to Cubase it get's bad. Especially when I open up the NI Battery window which has lots of flashing cells, ie. graphically intensive stuff going on. The vst performance meter is only half full. I really don't think this is a performance issue as it all worked perfectly under 98, and I don't think XP is that much more resource intensive when all background stuff has been deactivated. But then again, what do I know about it?

It must be something obvious, it always is!

alfonso · Post by **alfonso** » Sun Sep 29, 2002 5:06 pm

well,
these things come to my mind:

1) are you using cubase 5.0 r2 or 5.1 pb2?
if you are using 5.0 r2, that is the most buggy version ever made, it was retired by steinberg after few days.
i'd suggest to upgrade to the 5.1 version

2)one hd is not recommendable with daws, you should have a separate one for audio recording, and if you say that "why with 98 is good....etc.", read next point.

3)if 256M of ram is not so bad (the minimum imo) with w98, its absolutely a headache generator for an XP daw. XP consumes a lot more ram. and the less ram you have, the more your system will use a memory swapfile on hd.

and now you can understand why the combination of having only one hd and too little ram can destroy your audio files access, generating clics and crackles.

if the swapfile is on the same hd in wich you are writing-reading audio, any access to it will easily cause what you hear, and well,
also graphics can be involved.

so i would suggest:

1) double ram

2) double hard disk

3) cubase 5.1

and ASAP!!!

then i would still try to use w98, unless you are forced (SX..etc.)

i hope it will help you (i'm sure

)

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Sun Sep 29, 2002 5:10 pm

King of Snake, you said you upgraded to XP. I hope you formatted and did a new install instead of upgrading the existing W98. Cos that suxx real bad if you expect some stability and endurance.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sun Sep 29, 2002 5:25 pm

Actually I have two HD's but one is very old and just used for backup stuff.
I have the main one split into c: and d: drives, with the first partition for Windows and the second for audio (and other stuff).
I'll try setting the swapfile to the other HD then, maybe that helps. How big should it be anyway?

Or maybe install windows on the old HD instead of a seperate partition on the first HD. Would that be better?

Cubase is actually 5.1r1, I was mistaken, so that should be allright.

And yes, the XP install was on a clean formatted drive.

And I really would like to stay on XP, 'cause I plan to upgrade to Cubase SX soon, and well, it seems very stable to me.

[ This Message was edited by: King of Snake on 2002-09-29 18:27 ]

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Sun Sep 29, 2002 6:11 pm

well putting the swapfile on the other disk did nothing. The diagnostic performance meter didn't show any swapfile activity either.

dbmac · Post by **dbmac** » Sun Sep 29, 2002 6:51 pm

I cured "crackly" audio by setting priorities in WinXP - I run SFP at low priority and Cubase at high priority.
I'm using CubaseSX, so this might not apply to you, but maybe worth trying. I set the priorities manually after the programs are running (ctrl+shift+esc to open task manager, right click the exe you want to change)

/dave

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 2:53 am

I'm thinking this might also be an irq problem.

IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsost Natural PS/2 Keyboard OK
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2) OK
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM3) OK
IRQ 5 Intel(r) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2442 OK
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System OK
IRQ 9 Creamware Pulsar OK
IRQ 9 Creamware DSP-Board OK
IRQ 9 Dynalink ISDN_PCI(W) ISDNDevice-00 OK
IRQ 9 VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 9 Intel(r) 82801BA/BAM USB Universal Host Controller - 2444 OK
IRQ 10 Intel(R) 82801BA/BAM SMBus Controller - 2443 OK
IRQ 11 Rage Fury OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 14 Primary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE Channel OK

It seem my CW cards a happily trying to share irq's with half the rest of my system! including USB, Firewire card and ISDN card. Shouldn't all PCI slots get a seperate irq? Can I set this manually or do I have to do something about this ACPI mode thing?

I know someone is going to say I shouldn't have firewire and ISDN etc in my audio machnie, but unfortunately I can only afford one computer. Adn it did work before without problems, although I don't know how the irq's were distributed then.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 3:20 am

Ok, some more experimeting:

I disabled USB and COM ports (not using those anyway) in BIOS, freeing up a bunch of irq, so now CW cards are only sharing with ACPI. Seems to be little change for the sound though. Maybe the ACPI is a problem? I don't even know what it is!

btw. Crackles only seem to happen when: I use the menu's in Cubase, I set Cubase to "follow song" and the screen moves, I switch from one app window to another, I click on a cell in Battery. It really happens only when something graphical is happening, which again leads me to suspect the videocard as the troublemaker.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 3:24 am

DbMac, I don't see this "priority" setting you are referring to, where is it? When I right click I only get " switch to, end task, go to process etc.."

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 4:16 am

You click on Applications, try Processes instead

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 4:47 am

thanks

But alas, it did not help to remove the problem

alfonso · Post by **alfonso** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 5:58 am

yes, acpi is a problem.

have a deep insight in subhumans tips&tricks
thread "optimizing 2000-xp...."

i spent a week to have a good system, and there are so many things that i can't recall them by mind....

ciao.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 6:30 am

Actually reading that post it says ACPI is not a problem under windows XP, only in Windows 2000. I did all the other tweaks.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 7:42 am

Ok, reinstalled XP with "standard pc" instead of ACPI, makes no difference either. DAMN!!!!

So....I go get more RAM then?

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 7:56 am

If you use small projects qua dsp/cpu/busses, you should not need more. If you keep them small for testing, you could even disable virtual memory.

I had a project w 16 XTC synths, 128 channels in total (quite empty though), 8 VSTi, no samplers. It took about 250MB. Total RAM used about 300MB. So I think you'd be safe on excluding RAM or Virtual memory as a problem. Try it...

How about MIDI? Are you using it and how?

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 8:13 am

You say you have done all the tweaks but i'll ask anyway.
Have you changed the priority from "programs" to "background tasks"?
It sounds as you have'nt.

I can't check were you do it as my PC died on me a couple of weeks ago.
But it is somewhere in the control panel/ something??/advanced/advanced
i think.

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 10:48 am

Why would I want to change to priority to background tasks? It sounds like the opposite I would want to do.

What benefits will this give?

King of Snake · Post by **King of Snake** » Mon Sep 30, 2002 10:53 am

On 2002-09-30 08:56, at0mic wrote:
If you use small projects qua dsp/cpu/busses, you should not need more. If you keep them small for testing, you could even disable virtual memory.

I had a project w 16 XTC synths, 128 channels in total (quite empty though), 8 VSTi, no samplers. It took about 250MB. Total RAM used about 300MB. So I think you'd be safe on excluding RAM or Virtual memory as a problem. Try it...

How about MIDI? Are you using it and how?

My projects are really small, audio-wise. One stereo plus about 8 mono channels from Battery, plus maybe one or two regular stereo audio tracks, all the rest is midi (to Pulsar synths and Nord Rack). So I really don't think this would eat up much RAM. But I don't know how much is already taken by XP.