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Help With ASIO (Edirol UA-1EX)

post #1 of 8
10/14/06 at 5:00am
Thread Starter 
EDIT: the following explains the situation and a few settings I played around with. What would also be appreciated is if anyone who has an Edirol UA-1EX and uses it with ASIO to please just post up your "ideal" settings, which have resulted in the optimum output/performance. Thanks!

Hi all. Just took delivery of my Edirol UA-1EX, and I must say installation was a breeze and music was playing within 3 minutes (didn't even need to restart)

However I am having a bit of trouble. I left the Advanced Mode switch on (came switched on by default). Manual describes this as setting the unit to use the audio driver made specifically for the UA-1EX, whereas having it off uses the "OS provided driver". From other sources I read I believe that this switch sets it to work in 24-bit mode as opposed to 16-bit.

I am having this problem: when advanced mode is OFF, the unit works great, other than a few pops and clicks every once in a while. Is there any way to get rid of these?

With advanced mode ON however, the music plays, but there are a lot of pops and clicks, and also the music alternates between playing at regular speed, and going very sloooooooowly. I do not know why or how to get rid of this. I have tried tweaking the settings in the Edirol UA-1EX entry in control panel by setting Audio Buffer Size to MAX (or should it be lower?); I left "Use ASIO Direct Monitor" to ticked as per default, and "Use smaller ASIO buffer size" unticked, as per default. I have also tried setting foobar buffer settings very low (500) and very high (4200).

Any ideas?? Two things I want to fix really:
1. getting it to work in non-advanced mode (16-bit) without ANY pops/click
2. getting it to work in advanced mode (24-bit) with pops/clicks and playing at normal speed.

Cheers,
X

PS. the machine is pretty fast: AMD A64 3000+, 1GB RAM, 2xSATA HDDs etc.
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post #2 of 8
10/14/06 at 7:28am
Thread Starter 
Oh and one more thing: please let me know if there are other setting and/or tweaks and/or plugins you have used to get optimal sound. For example I came across some threads where they use something like the PPHS plugin to resample foobar output to 96kHz and set the jumpers on the Edirol to run at 24/96.

X
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post #3 of 8
10/14/06 at 4:08pm
The UA-1ex does seem computationally intensive. I usually turn the buffer up if I run 24-96. However, I find that running at 24-44.1 actually works better for the dac-in-the-box that I have (or at least it sounds the same and without lag times). I use 16-44.1 for the dac-ah. I would just recommend trying 24-44.1 and see if you can hear a difference with your dac.

good luck.
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post #4 of 8
10/14/06 at 4:40pm
Thread Starter 
Hi there. Thanks for the info. I have actually been playing around quite a lot with it. At the moment I have it at 24-bit @ 48kHz and it seems to be ok, better than 96kHz I find. However I do get the occasional pop and click. Nowhere near as bad as before, but you do hear it every 30-40 seconds which I'd really like to eliminate. In case it helps here is a full breakdown of the settings:

- Edirol in control panel: buffer size almost all the way to the right (max), one step from max; small ASIO buffer off and direct monitoring on
- Edirol unit itself: advanced mode on and direct monitoring on auto
- Foobar: ASIO for foobar 0.9.x; buffer length set to 1500ms
- Resampler: using the PPHS resampler in foobar, set to 48kHz Ultra Mode

Cheers,
X
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post #5 of 8
10/14/06 at 7:07pm
I use the foobar secret rabbit code resampler (SRC), which I have heard is supposed to be better than the one that comes in the standard installation. The web sites for SRC are posted in the how to make foobar usable thread.

You can also try using direct stream (instead of ASIO) and let the card do the resampling. Leave the advance driver on and switch set at 96. I would also turn direct monitoring off if possible since that it is used for recording rather than playback.
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post #6 of 8
10/14/06 at 7:35pm
This is my 2 cents, but anyways here I go:

I use M-Audio Transit, and I also use ASIO and Foobar.

When I try to listen to music, I get lots of pops and clicks that annoys me greatly.

The solution I came to, is when I listen to music thru M-Audio Transit,

(in your case, Edirol) I go to my computer's control panel, go to Sound & Audio devices, and then change the default device to whatever that IS NOT M-Audio Transit.

That means, in my case, I set the default device to the on-board soundcard.

If I do that, and then use Foobar or Itunes with Foobar Passthru to listen to music via ASIO, it works like magic!

See if the same applies for your case...
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post #7 of 8
10/15/06 at 11:11am
Thread Starter 
Hi there. Thanks for the tip....but I tried it without luck

I have tried thus far with leaving both onboard sound and Edirol enabled but onboard as default; both enabled but Edirol default; and with onboard disabled. The latter seems to be best (less pops/clicks) but still does not eliminate them by any means. What I also tried was kernel streaming. Not good at all - ASIO has both less pops and clicks; and it sounder superior IMO.

Sticking to ASIO for now. It is not too bad; with foobar buffer set at 2500ms and Edirol buffer set to 1 notch before max. But if anyone has any other tips on how to totally eliminate them please let me know.

Cheers,
X

PS. I also connected the Edirol to a USB port which is part of a pair of ports which was unused, so it is doesn't share it. I also set it not to allow the PC to manage power in order to save power.
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post #8 of 8
10/15/06 at 3:18pm
I had the exact same problem with the UA-1EX I bought recently, and tried various optimisation changes, like the ones listed here:

http://www.audioforums.com/resources...imization.html
and here:
http://www.tascamgiga.com/pdf/optimizing-xp-and-2k.pdf

For example, setting the page file to a fixed size (same size as actual RAM in my case), favouring background services, disabling onboard sound and firewire in BIOS, using DMA, accessing music from a local NTFS drive rather than a USB drive, disbling write caching and indexing services on hard drives.

I would try these tweaks first if I were you. Sadly, for me, none of this was entirely successful but your PC is quite a bit more powerful (mine is an athlonXP 2400+ with 512MB RAM) so you never know. However, I have since found what for me is a better solution. Try this if you like:

1) Uninstall Foobar2000
2) Install the latest version of Mediamonkey here: http://www.mediamonkey.com/download.htm
3) Get the latest kernel streaming plug in here: http://www.stevemonks.com/ksplugin/ (mediamonkey uses winamp plugins)

This kernel streaming plugin features configurable input and output buffers, and a handy buffer status monitor to show you how it is performing. Playing around with this, I have managed to pretty much eliminate clicks and pops from my UA-1EX output now and the results sound good. Next, I am going to try a resampling plugin from here: http://www.hqsoftproc.upcnet.ro/

The Edirol is currently switched to advanced mode, and 44.1K input rate. Driver is the latest one I could find (1.0.1). Settings are max buffer on Edirol, with both checkboxes unchecked.

Hope this helps,

Q
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