[JeffL]

Hey all,

I am having a strange problem here with my Sonica. It has always been an issue that I haven't resolved myself, so I was wondering if anyone had any insight into the matter.

My Sonica works fine off the USB 1.1 port on my laptop and the USB 2 port on my desktop. There is no stuttering. I am using the 1205 drivers. If I unplug the laptop from AC power, I get stuttering, as if I set the buffer size too small in Foobar for kernel streaming. It is better or worse depending on how I set the upsampling, but never goes away. It is very annoying, and has caused trouble in the past in pro-audio environments (DJing, etc).

What I am thinking is that this is either a USB problem, or a power supply problem of some sort.

Any thoughts are appreciated

 

[lan]

If you switch to battery power, your computer may also switch to a slower speed. You might just not have enough CPU power to do all that you want. You mention DJing, those audio programs maybe processing intensive and along with higher CPU usage with USB, it may be fighting for resources.

 

[JeffL]

Yes, its very possible that the CPU is switching speed. However the system is pre-Speedstep, and I have "Minimal Power Management" selected as the power mode, and no fix.

Using a powered USB hub doesn't help either.

CPU usage on battery and AC is 50% with 24/96 upsampling in foobar. Note that the static/stuttering gets worse as I lower the upsample rate. 16/44.1 is unlistenable, because there is so much static, yet CPU usage is less than 10%.

I think this may be a chipset issue....

Would buying a seperate USB 2 PC Card help?

Edit: System Specs:

IBM 600x
Win XP Pro
320MB RAM
P3 500

 

[lan]

I thought some models of 600x had speedstep. I guess it depends which one you have.

It could be a USB / chipset issue. You could try some USB PCMCIA cards to see if they help.