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E-mu 0202 with Snow Leopard .. getting cpu/hd chatter?

post #1 of 10
9/12/09 at 7:55pm
Thread Starter 
So, I finally made the leap and bought a usb DAC to power my M-Audio AV40's. When music is playing (and it sounds great, btw!) and I proceed to do anything CPU intensive, I get a lot of static/chatter over the speakers. Now, I'll preface that by saying, I'm not using any overly expensive USB cable, just a decent one with the gold plugs for connecting the 0202 to the computer. I'm using a regular 1/8" -> rca cable for connecting the 0202 to the AV40's.

I'm playing 90% Apple Lossless content using Ecoute (an app that uses the iTunes database).

Any advice or help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
-def
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post #2 of 10
9/12/09 at 8:26pm
If you had a real Mac, I'd say "use the optical digital output instead". The answer is, basically, don't use USB or get a better DAC that isn't so noisy.

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post #3 of 10
9/12/09 at 9:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Currawong View Post
If you had a real Mac, I'd say "use the optical digital output instead". The answer is, basically, don't use USB or get a better DAC that isn't so noisy.
Way to be elitist about those without a proper mac and give wrong advice. The problem is not the DAC and won't be solved by a better DAC. Any USB DAC would suffer the same dropouts.

USB DACs can have dropouts if the computer or the USB bus gets too busy. That can be fixed sometimes by giving the audio a larger buffer in your media player. You can also try a different USB port, a USB port that is on a different bus or even a different physical USB card. If you have a USB keyboard or mouse or other USB device on the same bus as the USB DAC you can have those problems. I don't know how to determine which ports or on which bus on a Mac, but I do know there are utilities for the Mac to do so. Those are some basic troubleshooting steps. I don't do Mac so can't give you better or more detailed advice.
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post #4 of 10
9/12/09 at 9:34pm
..is it possible your picking up noise from Floating inputs? Recording inputs that are left enabled without a signal attached?
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post #5 of 10
9/12/09 at 10:53pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich View Post
Way to be elitist about those without a proper mac and give wrong advice. The problem is not the DAC and won't be solved by a better DAC. Any USB DAC would suffer the same dropouts.

USB DACs can have dropouts if the computer or the USB bus gets too busy. That can be fixed sometimes by giving the audio a larger buffer in your media player. You can also try a different USB port, a USB port that is on a different bus or even a different physical USB card. If you have a USB keyboard or mouse or other USB device on the same bus as the USB DAC you can have those problems. I don't know how to determine which ports or on which bus on a Mac, but I do know there are utilities for the Mac to do so. Those are some basic troubleshooting steps. I don't do Mac so can't give you better or more detailed advice.

Thanks much for this advice, i've moved it to a different bus and will try that. I'll have to figure out a way to change the ASIO buffer size as I don't have a copy of Ableton or Logic Pro and I read that you can change the buffer size there (for making a system wide output device change).
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post #6 of 10
9/13/09 at 1:37am
M-Audio has a general FAQ on troubleshooting USB audio problems. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the Mac stuff.

If you google around you should be able to find other guides. Generally sites dealing with pro-audio recording will have some info on optimizing or troubleshooting a Mac for audio recording use. Often those tips will include some info that is relevant to USB audio playback.
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post #7 of 10
9/13/09 at 8:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich View Post
M-Audio has a general FAQ on troubleshooting USB audio problems. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the Mac stuff.
...which applies to an Apple computer, not one that wasn't designed to run Mac OS X. In my experience, cheap USB audio interfaces pick up a lot of noise. More expensive ones don't. There is nothing "elitist" about chastising someone for causing themselves trouble by building a hackintosh, the consequences are simply a fact.
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post #8 of 10
9/13/09 at 9:57am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Currawong View Post
...which applies to an Apple computer, not one that wasn't designed to run Mac OS X. In my experience, cheap USB audio interfaces pick up a lot of noise. More expensive ones don't. There is nothing "elitist" about chastising someone for causing themselves trouble by building a hackintosh, the consequences are simply a fact.
There are no troubles or consequences with my hackintosh (it's been rock-solid for a couple years throughout its various hardware changes, that includes 2 other hacks that I run or have ran). My motherboard has onboard spdif. My AV40's however don't use an spdif/toslink connection, and I wanted something better than the onboard line-out. Would it make you feel any better with me stating that I've owned several "real" apple computer products (macbook pro, 12" powerbook, g4 quicksilver, IIe..).

You obviously have -zero- experience with hackintoshes and what they are/are not capable of (with regards to mimicking an apple-branded piece of hardware).

You are indeed being elitist by the simple fact that you are chalking up my issues to "oh, he's using a hackintosh, so its not a real apple product". I appreciate the other folks responses here. I had also been a fan of your posts on here currawong. They've generally been very helpful and informative. I guess if a newbie on here (me) doesn't fit into a certain criteria for your help, then you are less likely to give a response as useful as your previous ones (previous to my post, at least).

I would rather you have not responded to my post, at all. Between ROBSCIX and Ham Sandwich, I've gotten the exact answers I've needed.
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post #9 of 10
9/14/09 at 12:03pm
Not running a mac but I have also had problems with noisy output on my 0404 whenever my cd drive is active either reading or writing. any other time than that it works perfectly fine.
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post #10 of 10
9/14/09 at 3:19pm
Thread Starter 
I think I finally got everything under control. Thanks for all of the suggestions. Ended up following the post on m-audio's forums that Ham Sandwich linked, and also downloaded a demo of an app called AudioMulch and set the ASIO buffer to as high as it'd go. I had some processes going that used up 100% of 2 cores and audio still played smooth as silk.
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