[zlobby]

I just got an emu 0404 USB.  I am running windows 7 64 bit, using fubar with ASIO4all.  I do have some general pops and clicks that i cant seem to get rid of, but it really gets bad when im web browsing and scrolling with my mouse (NOT WIRELESS).  I have read through the other threads, and have not yet found a solution.  I was experiencing something similar with my firebox and changing to a dedicated firewire card helped.  Aside from having to get a USB PCI card (would that help)  any ideas how to fix this?

 

[estreeter]

Welcome to hell.
 
I have had similar issues with F2K and my HRT Streamer II, and the forums at Computer Audiophile have a mountain of discussion on the possible causes (generally speaking) but it wasn't until I got mpd running on a barebones Linux distro (voyage Linux) that I was able to get flawless playback from my DAC.
 
We are talking :
 
- command line only - no GUI
- nothing plugged into my netbook
- running on battery
- only the bare minimum of processes running, CPU barely idling over and memory usage around half of the 2GB I have on the Asus.
 
Ironically, I believe that headphone users are far more likely to notice the kind of artefacts that I have experienced with the Streamer and Win7 - not exactly pops but tiny 'skips' of the kind you occasionally get with a CD, and often coinciding with disk activity in Resource Monitor. With a speaker system, assuming that you weren't listening critically, I suspect that many of these small skips would be glossed over, but I admit that I dont have high end speakers to confirm that. Those with good IEMs would really find it insufferable, and I assume that there is a solution somewhere in the buffering/caching settings for players like Foobar.
 
estreeter

 

[MrKazador]

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
I had the same problem with my chaintech av710. Ran DPC Checker and was getting red spikes which was causing pops and crackles. I began to safely disable certain hardware in device manager and the problem was my capture card. I installed the latest drivers for it and my pops and crackles went away.

 

[zlobby]

Quote:

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
I had the same problem with my chaintech av710. Ran DPC Checker and was getting red spikes which was causing pops and crackles. I began to safely disable certain hardware in device manager and the problem was my capture card. I installed the latest drivers for it and my pops and crackles went away.

I tried this to no avail.  I might end up buying a PCI USB adapter.  If it doesnt work, i can just return it...   

 

[Nagasaki_Kid]

I had the same problem with vista 64 bit. Try right clicking volume icon on system try and open recording devices and muting all input devices. leave recording device window open (unmute and remute if it acts up again)

 

[Mr. B]

I had this same problem.  I think I fixed it by disabling Intel "SpeedStep" in the BIOS settings.

 

[jiiteepee]

Couple possible culprits comes into mind :
 
- asio4all isn't needed for E-MU USB interface (if you must use asio4all then set the asio driver latency buffer > 1024)
- wi-fi controller(s) needs to be disabled
- if you have PS/2 type mouse, decrease the mouse report rate value
- check if the USB mouse (or GPU) shares IRQ/USB port with the E-MU USB (if it does, move the other device into another USB port end check again...)
 
USB audio interfaces are very sensitive for high priority (background) processes so try to find if there're these running in your system.
 
jiitee

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Try plugging the EMU into a different USB port.  It is possible that your mouse and your USB DAC are both on the same USB bus.  The ports on the front of a computer are often on the same USB hub which means they're on the same USB bus.  The USB ports on the back of the computer are more likely to be on separate buses.  So experiment with moving the mouse and USB DAC to different ports and see what happens.
 
There's utilities that can enumerate the USB ports and tell you what is plugged in if devices are sharing the same bus.  I'd have to dig though my archive of utilities to find them.  They tend to be rather "geek" and not meant for people who don't want to look at things like hexadecimal numbers.
 
Buying a separate PCI card for USB just for the DAC is one way to guarantee that the DAC gets its own USB resources.

 

[zlobby]

This thing is just giving me a huge headache.  For some reason my usb 2.0 ports are now reading as 1.1, and I can get sound to work with fubar2000, but not with youtube or VLC video.... 

 

[zlobby]

I have no clue if this fixed it, but I had a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) laying around, and i plugged my emu, computer, and related audio components into it.  I no longer get the pops.  Could this have fixed it, or is it just coincidence?  I was also messing around with buffer size, usb drivers, and other stuff at the same time.  

 

[Ham Sandwich]

If you are able to isolate it to the UPS fixing the problem then I'd be suspicious that the power supply in the computer isn't very happy.  Maybe it's underpowered for the load or maybe it's giving you some clues that it's about to fail.  Run a utility that can monitor the power supply voltages and see if one of the voltages is fluctuating and dipping down lower than it should while you run some benchmark type programs that can stress the video and other components in the computer.

 

[edwardchh]

I have exactly the same drop-out issue with my PCI sound card (ASUS Xonar D1)
when using foobar (ASIO output)
 
AMP: G&W T-2.6F
Headphones: Denon AH-D2000
 
 
 

1. What is DPC latency?​

“If any kernel-mode device driver in your Windows system is implemented improperly and causes excessive latencies of Deferred Procedure Calls (DPCs) then probably drop-outs will occur when you use real-time audio or video streaming applications” –http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml​

 

[edwardchh]

My sound card is Asus Xonar D1,
 
I was able to work around this issue my changing
10ms to 80ms
24 bit to 32 bit.
 
In Foobar => Preference => Output => ASIO Virtual Drivers => Configure

 

[Ham Sandwich]

If you're doing ASIO you can also increase the amount of buffering your ASIO driver does as well.  Open the ASIO driver settings in control panel or wherever your ASIO driver has its settings pages.  This is different than setting the amount of buffering in Foobar (or whatever audio player you're using).  The ASIO driver can buffer and so can Foobar.  Take advantage of both.
 
For audio playback you can set the number of samples the driver buffers to as high as it will allow.  More buffering is better for playback.  Makes it easier for the driver and less likely for a glitch.

 

[zlobby]

im ready to throw this thing out the window.  It seemed to be working okay for a little while, but lately it has just been popping and clicking a whole lot, even if im not doing other tasks on the computer.  I even bought a dedicated USB PCI card today, which had no effect on the unit.