Well I have an old Via KT133a based board which definitely does not have SATA or anything advanced like that. It's a SDRAM-board with normal IDE.

I know that pci bus is a problem in many cases but pci latency is supposed to fix that if the problem is there. I tried lowering my graphics card and both network cards to a low latency and upping emu to a higher one.. and tried different configurations and latencies but didn't help really.

I've seen some people complaining about this issue in here and also the productionforums.. of course the total number of people is huge but people who know what they are doing with their computers (like me) and have tried everything within reason. I'm not going to do _everything_ since it's unreasonable but I've done just about everything (I'm not going to reinstall my windows or anything like that) I found out that could fix this.

My conclusion is that the problem must have some connection to the emu-drivers or some compatability problem with certain directsound components in windows and emu drivers whatever. It's just so "not coincidence" that the ASIO is rock solid but wave output is unstable under heavy activity.

Winamp was a mystery too.. even with no other computer activity directsound/wave outputs cut out quite quickly. Now that I use asio it hasn't cut out even once. Well I don't have the time or the need or the motivation to do the really extensive testing required (testing _everything_), but I sure as hell expect that from the EMU driver team.

I don't have a special need to play ut2004 at the moment so I can live with it nicely until we get a new driver (probably next month, according to emu-driver guy). If that doesn't fix it I'm going to route my integrated soundcard through emu or buy sb live 24bit for that purpose.

Well your system is a little better than I thought it would be. Except for the SDRAM though. I had an Athlon motherboard w/ sdram on it and couldn't use it because it slowed everything else down. What do you get for pci latency on the 6800? I get 248, which is a hog, with mine and knocked it down to 128. You've got some good components but would it be feasable to get another motherboard? I see a reference from another post about an Nforce2 motherboard w/soundstorm. Those are great for games and you could find one pretty cheap I'll bet.

Also: What programs are resident or running in the system tray? (not background services though) Do you have a lot of icons for Winamp, winzip, aol, Quicktime, etc. ?

I do have quite a bit of background programs, but none of them spike the cpu in any way, or use a lot of memory for that matter. I have mirc, irssi, firewall (kerio 2.1.5), refreshlock, serv-u, tvtool, logitech itouch, netlimiter, daemon-tools, taskmanager, rivatuner, strokeit, samurize, boinc, winamp. That's the usual configuration.

Although when playing heavy games like UT I disable samurize and boinc since those 2 use cpu.

The sound seems to cut mostly in moments when the game spikes.. stutters for a fraction of a second and then the sound cuts off at the same time. Sometimes it just snaps off without any stutter, but usually it snaps during brief stutter. That implies that the emu driver or pci bus just doesn't handle cpu spikes very well. I'd go for emu driver/directsound issue since I really tried pci latencies.

There is something I haven't tested though.. that is PCI-bus-related bios settings. I have all settings tweaked according to www.rojakpot.com bios guide but could one of those pci settings have bad effect? I'd think not but you never know And I'm done with testing for now.. maybe some day when I've had some break. Testing is really time-consuming and it's also very disappointing if the testing doesn't help.

My videocard does have 248 latency even now (since I have the default on now) but when I tested it I tried 128, 64 and 32 for the videocard and the networkcards also (those were 128 originally) and tried 64 128 and even 200 for the emu card which has a default of 32.. nothing changed anything. I did manage to get crackling and all kinds of distorted sound out of the emu with certain pci latency configurations but nothing did anything regarding sound cutoff.

So these Emus are supposed to be Pro or semi-Pro cards?

I'll tell ya, pros don't put up with crap like this... they have work to get done. I won't get an Emu until they get the drivers right, because as a music listener I won't put up with it either.

Very glad I've held off so far (& sorry to hear about your troubles)...

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Pros don't play games. Quite simply, the best solution is to have some other sound card (or integrated sound) alongside the E-MU 0404. The thing just isn't designed for games. Use that SB Live! Games don't have high quality sound.

Sound cutoff doesn't seem to happen for me when there's high CPU usage... but I may be wrong. It might've happened once or twice. By the way, for $100, it's well worth the hassle of discovering games and it don't mix well.

It isn't a definite thing for everyone, I have had zero problems playing any games with my 1212m, no cutouts, nothing.

Asmo, what is your setup? Have you played any games that swap/stutter a lot with the settings you play them with? My UT2004 stutters and swaps a lot when playing 32 player onslaught. On the other hand, light games like quake2 mod and starcraft do not cut sound, those games also work perfectly on my comp. My 512 megs of memory isn't really enough to play 32 player onslaught.. otherwise the fps is fine. My setup is xp2700+ & gf6800le & 512 sdram.

And I do really mean that ut2004 32-player onslaught is VERY heavy.. with the same setup I can run doom3 and halflife2 with much less stutter. Half-life2 stutters slightly, doom3 doesn't at all. I haven't tried those games with emu and I won't.. since I uninstalled and forgot both a long time ago.

Anyways, my theory is that the emu drivers or something just can't take heavy stutter / lag in games. That doesn't explain why winamp cuts ds/wave sound even without any other activity and winamp does not stutter anything itself.

What about fast writes Sabbe? Some games you have to disable fast writes in the BIOS if games stutter. It's a graphics thing though but I can tell you it made a difference with my 6800. I play the DC mod of BF1942 on the computer with the Audigy 2, 6800, Athlon 64, yada yada. When I first upgraded the video card I started getting stutters and thought it was the A2. I saw in a forum people talking about the 6800 having a glitch with certain games so disabling fast writes helps. If your BIOS doesn't have a setting you can change it in Rivatuner, which I see you use. Maybe you already tried this though. It kinda pissed me off that this $350 video card would need something disabled, and especially since the game was like buttuh w/ my Ati 9600. So now I run 1280 x 1024 w/ 2x or 4xaa and it never goes below 100 fps.

And just so we don't get too far from the purpose of this forum......I play games with my Sennheisers...

I haven't tried disabling that, since stuttering is not an issue in ut2004 unless it's a huge-number-of-players game. It doesn't stutter at all until the game reaches enough players at the same time. Other people have said the same thing, 512 memory just isn't enough for ut2004 heavy gaming. It's playable though even with a lot of players.. the main stutter comes in the beginning of the game when everything is loading up. The stutter is random hiccups in heavy situations after that.. and during those hiccups the sound usually cuts out.

Although the sound usually cuts out once even before I get to the game, while loading that is. One time it cut out when I was in the menu, before joining the game.

I could try disabling fast writes but I'd presume that the game would stutter somehow all the time, not only in huge games where my memory is being raped (thus causing an issue). Maybe I'll try it anyway when I'm motivated to test anything again, so thanks.

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I'm runnin a 2400+ with 1GB pc2100, ati 9800 pro.

I have not had to do any special tweaks for my 1212m, bios settings are normal etc. I have had no probs with any game i've played from half-life2/counter strike source, to world of warcraft etc, I've played lots of games and not one has given me any stuttering or anything.

Even when games suffer slowdown from video rendering performance, my sound does not stutter. If your winamp is cutting out, then there is something wrong somewhere.

have you checked out the forums at www.productionforums.com ?

Sure.. I've read posts there and also posted my own thread but that forum is very inactive compared to this one. What I did find out was that this same problem is relatively common.. directsound apps cut sound. I have cutoff in every directsound app if I produce enough lag for my computer.

For example, I tested quake2 mod with 2 torrents open.. that was like cutoff in no time. Without torrents I don't get any cutoff ever. UT2004 32-player onslaught however doesn't need "help".. cuts off on it's own due to the lag.

That winamp issue is weird.. many other people have it too. Winamp cuts off without any special lag with DS/wave. With asio it's rock solid. I can't make ASIO winamp cut off even if I play ut2004 and have torrents on at the same time.

I think that your 1GB ram has protected your computer somewhat from these issues. With 1GB ram there probably is 0 stutter always (in current games). I don't know though, it is a strange thing anyways.

Oh my. I was right. The reason is, and has always been, stutter. Changing pci latencies or anything for that matter doesn't help. The solution is to lower your settings in the game if it can't be run stutter-free.

What I did is, I lowered my ut2004 texture detail from "highest" to "normal" which made possible a stutter-free game with 512MB ram even in the largest games. And if there is no stutter = there is no cutoff. It doesn't matter apparently if the fps goes low.. it can go low but there can't be any stutter.

Stutter can happen when there's not enough memory to process stuff and the game starts to make small pauses while it writes to virtual memory and clears memory for valid stuff etc. Also if the background programs have major HD-activity that can cause stutter too.. for example running a few torrents on the background and then playing a game. It's guaranteed stutter and also cutoff.

I haven't really tested my findings yet, but I did manage to play for 30 minutes straight, 32-player onslaught. Then I didn't want to play anymore but it didn't cut sound once. I will probably play more in the coming days but this is definitely VERY promising! It seems that I don't have to enable any other soundcards after all.