[bobeau]

Guys,

Yesterday I installed an EMU 0404 on my work computer, which is a 2.5 year old Compaq W6000 workstation, sporting dual 2.2 Xeons.

Sounded great for the first minute or two, then suddenly static and the song stopped. Tried again and again, the song would always stop within a few minutes. Tried Foobar2k, WinAmp, iTunes - all the same. Tried all 3 PCI slots on the computer reinstalling the driver each time. No dice.

Called EMU tech support... after about a half hour we figured this much - the card requires PCI 2.1 compatibility in a dual processor setup, my machine most likely has PCI 3.0 (can't verify this with documentation on Compaq/HP site) which isn't backwards compatable. One solution might be to adjust timing of PCI devices or deactivate a processor. Eh, screw that, being a work machine and all.

So anyway I put it in a junker PIII box I had laying around before leaving work. Didn't install drivers or test it out, so I _suppose_ it still hasn't been verified if the card's defective or not.

But EMU said this is a known issue... so has anyone around these parts encountered this before? Also with Foobar2k (should start a separate thread for this), is there a way to have it remotely control another PC? I'd rather control my newly annointed music PC from my main machine without using a switcher or having some PC Anywhere-like app running all the time.

Thanks for your patronage.

 

[Asmo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobeau Guys, Yesterday I installed an EMU 0404 on my work computer, which is a 2.5 year old Compaq W6000 workstation, sporting dual 2.2 Xeons. Sounded great for the first minute or two, then suddenly static and the song stopped. Tried again and again, the song would always stop within a few minutes. Tried Foobar2k, WinAmp, iTunes - all the same. Tried all 3 PCI slots on the computer reinstalling the driver each time. No dice. Called EMU tech support... after about a half hour we figured this much - the card requires PCI 2.1 compatibility in a dual processor setup, my machine most likely has PCI 3.0 (can't verify this with documentation on Compaq/HP site) which isn't backwards compatable. One solution might be to adjust timing of PCI devices or deactivate a processor. Eh, screw that, being a work machine and all. So anyway I put it in a junker PIII box I had laying around before leaving work. Didn't install drivers or test it out, so I _suppose_ it still hasn't been verified if the card's defective or not. But EMU said this is a known issue... so has anyone around these parts encountered this before? Also with Foobar2k (should start a separate thread for this), is there a way to have it remotely control another PC? I'd rather control my newly annointed music PC from my main machine without using a switcher or having some PC Anywhere-like app running all the time. Thanks for your patronage.

I wouldn't recommend using a "junker PIII" for a hi-fi setup.

You want quality & clean power supply, quiet fans, quiet fast hard drives, cd-roms with good DAE capabilities, etc. All of these contribute signifigantly to the quality.

Other than that, sorry I can't answer the other questions.

 

[MinotaurUK]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobeau Called EMU tech support... after about a half hour we figured this much - the card requires PCI 2.1 compatibility in a dual processor setup, my machine most likely has PCI 3.0

I don't have the EMU card, but I do have a couple of Dual Xeons around the place (one is a pair of 1.8Ghz chips on an Iwill DH800 board, the other - machine I'm currently using - is a pair of 2.4Ghz chips o/c to 3.2Ghz on an Asus NCCH-DL).

If your Xeon is anything like these, you'll have some standard PCI slots and some PCI-X slots. The PCI-X are backward compatible to PCI2.2, the ordinary PCI slots are PCI2.1. I've never heard of any Xeon boards running PCI3.0 slots at all (that's not to say there aren't any, but I have built a fair number of these systems and haven't encountered them yet). Adjusting the PCI latency in the BIOS may well help you - I have mine at 64 cycles if that's any help.

You might also want to try posting on the 2cpu.com forums - it's by far the best reference point for anything dual processor in my opinion.

FWIW, if it was a known issue, yet not publicized on the EMU website, then I'd suggest you should be able to send the card back to 'em and get a full refund. I can confirm that the AudioTrak Prodigy 7.1lt works fine in the dual xeon sitting next to me, in either PCI or PCI-X slots.

 

[bobeau]

Asmo,

Guess this is an upper-mid-fi setup. Thanks for the suggestions, is sound quality is not to par I know where to look (it sounded fantastic on my workstation though).

MinotaurUK,

Thanks for the info. Most of this was relayed from tech support, as I mentioned I couldn't verify if it was 3.0, the tech could have that confused with PCI X (all of this is very new stuff to me... as a software engineer I should be ashamed

)

My bios setup doesn't have any settings available for PCI latency, but I understand there are 3rd party utilities which will allow you to tweak this. I will check that site out, thanks a bunch.

 

[bobeau]

An Update -

Played around with latencies for the card... everything was set to 64 by default. Maxed out at 248, no difference. Played around with every setting in the bios, set everything so the EMU had its own IRQ, no difference. Most annoying thing though is sometimes it would go nearly 10 minutes which led me to a few "aha, it's fixed!". No such luck.

The PIII beater's working out all-right, signal seems just as clean as my workstation, fan even quieter. Been listening over an hour now with no blips. Still have yet to receive my amp (Portaphile V2) so it can only get better from here. My Ety ER4P are thin but passable, very lovely detail though.

 

[sgrossklass]

Looks like the EMU's drivers aren't SMP validated. Sound card drivers can be a PITA on multi-processor rigs, people over at 2cpu.com fought with Creative (Live! etc.) drivers for years (they seem to be sufficiently MP friendly by now), for example. From the sound cards I've had in here, only an old AD1816 based ISA beast has been completely trouble free (but also similarly rich in features). For the AudioPCI 64V I had to find a driver that does not cause a BSOD after a while of background MIDI playback. I used to have an occasional BSOD with the DMX XFire 1024, but I think I got that worked out somehow. The Aureon hasn't shown any MP related glitches so far.

Stephan