audio dropouts with 2496 and cubase4

[bantam]

hi all,
i have done a search on dropouts and have followed a few instructions but still getting loss of audio (and MIDI) every 30 secs or so.

using media player is fine but when bouncing down / playing arrangements with a few tracks in c4 i get a dropouts every 20-25 secs

i've tried running dpclat.exe and it shows there is a lot of PCI DPC latency (1000+)

the latest driver that was released early july makes it worse (am running the prevous one to that - 5.10.0.5065)

have been told it might be an IRQ conflict but really not sure how to address it. does anyone have any simple suggestions to try first please?
failing that i'll delve into chipsets and BIOS etc

thanks in advance

[JA]

Have you tried moving the Delta card to a different PCI slot? Usually the different slots are assigned different IRQ's. Do you have any other PCI cards/devices installed?

[bantam]

hi, changed the slot and had same problem (if not slightly worse)
dont have any other pci slots in use.
any further suggestions please?

[JA]

What OS are you running? Are you using the M-Audio Delta ASIO driver in Cubase?

[bantam]

vista 32 and using m-audio asio on 256 buffer (but still stutters on higher buffer)

im thinking it more of a hardware issue?

any other problems been noted with this device that it might be?

[JA]

What IRQ is the Delta card on? Are there any other devices sharing the same IRQ? Are there any other PCI slots you haven't tried?

[bantam]

how do i find out about the IRQ again please? i did it before but cant remember how i got to the screen sorry! :o

[JA]

Press Start-R to open the Run Dialog box and type "msinfo32", click hardware resources>IRQ's.

[bantam]

sharing IRQ 21 with 'intel ICH9 usb universal host controller - 2938'

what do you suggest i do please?

[JA]

If the DPC Latency checker is reporting 1000+ on the PCI bus, that's going to be what's causing the drop outs. I'd suggest disabling resource intensive devices that aren't essential for use while recording. Devices like your modem, Ethernet, Wireless, and built-in sound card can be disabled and may help improve performance. Any of these devices can easily be re-enabled when you need to use them.

Their website states "After you disabled a single device, carefully watch DPC Latency Checker. When excessive latency values disappear you found the responsible device driver. If there are still exceptional large DPC latencies try the next device. Look here for more information:

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml