[Ph34rful]

I for the life of me can not get rid of the distortion I am hearing.
It comes and goes. Mostly as pops and clicks.
I can not discern any pattern.
I have tried everything I can think of.

Sometimes during the middle of a song audio output will simply stop. If I hit play again it resumes like it had been paused. (But it hadn't)

It doesn't matter what audio player I use. Foobar, Winamp, WMP. Or what method of output. Waveout, ASIO, Kernal Streaming.

At first I thought the Emu simply didn't get along with my onboard audio. Because once I disabled it the problem seemed to go away. However, it had simply been lessened.

It also effects playback over other devices. If I am playing audio over onboard audio it also has clicks and pops. (I have also tried a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz with the same results)

When I had the RME Digi Pad before I had absolutely zero problems. Even in conjuction with 2 other audio cards. So I must believe that this issue has to deal explicity with the Emu.

I have tried switching PCI slots. I have tried reinstalling drivers. I have reformatted my computer. I have done everything I can think of.

I am beginning to contemplate returning the Emu and going back to the RME. Even though the Emu does sound quite a bit better when it is working free of distortion.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Edwood]

The driver and interface are my biggest complaints of the E-MU's. Hopefully someone will come out with a hacked driver that bypasses the kmixer entirely. <hint hint, anyone?>

-Ed

 

[Edwood]

Do the distortions, pops, and clicks happen in the same part of the songs all the time, or is it random?

Are the pops and clicks the same volume regardless of what you have the music levels at? or does it scale in volume as you turn the volume up and down?

More details about your setup, please. Foobar version, E-MU driver version, ASIO driver version, what type of source files (FLAC, Monkeys, MP3, WAV?)

-Ed

 

[Ph34rful]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edwood Do the distortions, pops, and clicks happen in the same part of the songs all the time, or is it random? Are the pops and clicks the same volume regardless of what you have the music levels at? or does it scale in volume as you turn the volume up and down? More details about your setup, please. Foobar version, E-MU driver version, ASIO driver version, what type of source files (FLAC, Monkeys, MP3, WAV?) -Ed

It is random. The pops and clicks scale in volume. Latest version of Foobar. (Though not isolated only to Foobar)
ASIO I am not sure about. (But this problem isn't isolated to ASIO) Source also seems to be irrelvant. Same thing occurs with FLAC, MP3, WAV, CD.

Oh there are also no IRQ sharing conflicts. The Emu has it's own.

 

[10068]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edwood Hopefully someone will come out with a hacked driver that bypasses the kmixer entirely.

I thought ASIO did bypass kmixer...

What speed is your computer, and are you upsampling? I've noticed that on the really high levels of CPU usage, for some reason the lag caused by all that CPU usage puts crap into the signal path.

Your results are very, very interesting, though:

On my RME, I never got ASIO to work flawlessly. I always had lots of crap in the signal path. Skips, popping, crackles, etc. This is with all sorts of software, hardware, and other changes, including sacrificing virgins to the elephant god.

Which is wierd, because EVERYONE else besides me uses ASIO w/ the RME just fine.

You seem to be having the same problem with your E-MU, except it's more widespread than just ASIO output.

And IME the output of the E-MU was perfect and less system-intensive than the RME's output.

Odd.

Maybe some people are just unlucky.. ?

PS: Do you have the cable between the two cards securely fastened?

PPS: What OS are you running, and have you ever had other Creative cards installed? (although if you've done a format I guess that's not an issue...)

Oh, and what type of Session are you running in PatchMixDSP?

I think for best results you have to send the signal to the physical output jack instead of letting windows' code handle it. Send a PM to Lan, ask him about it, he can probably explain it better than I.

And what kind of cabling do you have coming out the back of your card? I doubt it's the culprit, but it can't hurt to check. Maybe a cable's lose, frayed, is dirty, etc. Or perhaps you're outputting Balanced but your amp doesn't support that. *shrug* Just brainstorming

 

[10068]

Awesome sig, btw. I would add a good quote to mine.. but i've already got a sig that's too big

 

[Ph34rful]

I am running a P4 @ 2.26ghz. With Windows XP SP1.
I am not using any oversampling. (Though I have tried it with the same results)
I am using Headphile BlackCoral ICs. (I also used a cheap pair laying around to verify just in case)
I have also not had any other Creative cards in my system.

Edit: I am using the defualt session in Patchmix. I have also tried various others with the same effect.

Perhaps my card is defective? But I don't think that would cause the types of problems I am experiencing.

 

[10068]

Sounds like my mystery problem with ASIO not working on the RME...

 

[Asmo]

You could try a fresh install of windows XP.

Did you install windows XP with ACPI ? (by default XP uses ACPI, some people solve issues by re-installing xp without ACPI by choosing 'standard PC' during install by holding F5 during the first stages of install).

Also, check bios settings for PCI timings and ACPI options, more detail about your hardware would be required to help troubleshoot it.

Good luck, I know these things can be a real pain, you could also just try getting the card replaced before giving up hope on it.

 

[Ph34rful]

Yes I have tried a fresh install of XP.
Yes I also have ACPI enabled.
Normally disabling it only helps in situations where devices are sharing IRQs.
But I may give it a try.

Other hardware includes:
Antec 480 watt PSU
Abit BD7 Raid II Motherboard
Radeon 9800 Pro GFxCard
1gb Corsair Ram
Various optical and hard drives.

 

[djooky]

have you tried to set winXp optimized for background services?

 

[Ph34rful]

I believe I am getting closer to the problem.
It would seem to have something to do with "PCI Latency"
I so far haven't been able to get rid of the problem. But I have been able to affect it to varying degrees using the program "Powerstrip"
(It allows you to change the latencys of individual devices)
For some reason I think this has a lot to do with my Highpoint RAID controller... Is anyone running RAID in combination with their Emu?

http://entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm

If anyone could download and install Powerstip and tell me what their latencies are? Especially if they are running RAID. I would be most appreciative.

Here is the webpage that helped lead me towards this thinking...
http://www.geocities.com/phileosopho...cilatency.html

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Ph34rful, your last post is indicative of a similar problem I had with the M-Audio Revo, I got pops whenever my SCSI card accessed the drive. I found that by increasing the latency of the Revo, and decreasing that of the SCSI card, I got the problem to go away to the point where it was unnoticeable, but not gone. The only way I was able to completely get rid of it was by going from a VIA KT133A motherboard to an Nvidia NForce2 board.

 

[Ph34rful]

I have discovered the problem!
It is indeed my Highpoint RAID controller. (Built onto my motherboard not a seperate PCI card)
After disabling the controller and switching my drive to a regular IDE port I have absolutely no problems! (Incredible!)
And while I am glad to have finally figured out the problem. I am also irritated. Because I need the RAID controller to make use of all my hard drives. And also because I never had this problem with any other sound cards. (M-Audio Revo, RME PAD, Santa Cruz)

I wonder if a PCI RAID card would have the same problem?

 

[cadobhuk]

Why cant u hook all the harddrives up the ordinary way?