Audiophile 192 cracks and pops (and so on..)

[nomentero]

Hi all.

Well, i've been trying to solve this issue for 4 weeks now. I Followed all faqs (here), read all forums, and tried almost everything (except maybe sell my soul to the devil). The fact is: Audiophile 192 doesn't work on my new computer.

I just have 2 PCI slots, so the solution of changing the slot didn't resolve anything. I tried deactivating all the other devices, wich made no good, really. I've reinstalled Win XP like 15 times, even without ACPI several times. PCI card is isolated in its own IRQ and that just doesn't work. Hell, XP is not meant to work without ACPI, so my point is: if this card is compatible with XP, it SHOULD work OK with any XP correctly installed.

If there's not a new idea or solution about this issue, i'm just gonna sell my Audiophile 192. Bute the fact is I don't want to do it! I love my Audiophile, just I love it MORE when it works. I just can't thing of a better device for the price, really.

My specs:
Mainboard : Gigabyte EP45T-DS3R
Chipset : Intel P45
Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2400 MHz
Physical Memory : 2048 MB (1 x 2048 DDR3-SDRAM )
Video Card : ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
DVD-Rom Drive : HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8163B
DVD-Rom Drive : _NEC DVD_RW ND-3520AW
DVD-Rom Drive : IF6111J ZVV444R SCSI CdRom Device
Network Card : Atheros Communications Inc AR5005G 802.11abg
Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional 5.01.2600 Service Pack 3
DirectX : Version 9.0c (octubre 2008)

Latests drivers for sp3 Installed. (Tried also SP2 drivers on sp2 system, by the way).

Thanks!

[Yfoiler]

Sounds like you've got a really tough problem there and I'm no expert on this but I thought I'd at least throw in my 2 cents on "pops and clicks"... I would think that since your card DOES work that all the PC settings are correct. I think you might be having sample rate issues. I did. I had to give up a little latency on recording as a trade off for no pops and clicks. I am running a Delta 1010LT on Vista 64 with an AMD quad core CPU with 8 gigs of RAM and 10,000 RPM Raptor drives. You'd think this hot setup would be fast enough...right? Well, in my M-Audio control panel I had to go from 128 samples all the way up to 512 samples before the clicks went away. I could get away with 256 samples, but every now and then I'd think I heard a little pop. So, I just deal with the latency issues as best I can. So in closing, I'd play around with the settings in your DAW more (experiment at different record sample rates and bit rates), and in your Driver control panel too, and see if that helps. If not, sorry, I have nothing else to offer... Good luck!

[nomentero]

Hi, Yfoiler.

Thanks for your 2 cents! Sadly, that was the first thing I tried. I mean, even windows sounds are broken, and that's reaaaaally a problem!

Thanks again, anyways! ;)

[Paul]

I've just downloaded and read the manual to your motherboard. There are a lot of clocking (overclocking) features on this motherboard. Is everything at its default setting or are you overclocking the processor and memory? Adjustments made to the system timing can affect the performance of your Delta card. Try going into the BIOS and disabling the CPU Enhanced Halt. Many "power saving" features on a motherboard can also affect the performance of the Delta card. Also, go into the BIOS and disable the CPU EIST Function. It affects the system timing and as I already said, anything that affects system timing will affect the performance of the Delta card. Again in the BIOS, disable every "Integrated Peripheral" that you are not immediately using. This will reduce the possibility of resource conflicts and enhance the overall performance of your computer. Since you are on Windows XP, you can disable the HPET feature because it only applies to Windows Vista. Your BIOS also allows you to assign the IRQ of the PCI slots (I love this feature). The higher numbers get the higher priority in processing, so I would advise assigning it to the highest number that does not conflict with any other known device (like a hard drive). So here are some more advanced troubleshooting tips. Let me know how it works out.

[nomentero]

Well, Paul. Thanks a LOT!

What I have done:

- Disabled the BIOS options as you said. That improve some points acording to "DPC Latency Cheker" on my 'ACPI-enabled' partition... but still funny pops.

- Disabled energy system-Overclocking aplication. That really made the trick. Still some high latency acording DPC Latency Checker (around 1500/2000). this seems to be the top i'm going to get from my 'ACPI-enabled' XP.

let's move on to the 'non-ACPI' XP partition.

-'Reinstall' windows with 'monoprocessor MPS' HAL. This is because plain 'Standard PC' just doesn't work right on my system; the audiophile Asio doesn' work (don't really know why), and you cannot do anything with it.

-Uninstall all the Gygabyte soft (easytune, energy saver..).

-Voila! All working nicely. (except for the processor gone wild all the time, well, i can live with that..)

Thanks again Paul for the suggestion. You gave me the idea that maybe OC and energy dinamic managment was part of the problem, and so it is.

Here some advice for people with this sort of issue: uninstall ALL the mainboard software (not drivers), check out your BIOS energy managment options, deactivate devices you don't use (better on the BIOS), and if still doesn't work, move on to a non ACPI HAL installation.

Oh, and use this lil program, wich is really useful:
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

cya!

[Paul]

I'm glad I could help. :D

[el.Fakir]

Hello there, a short experience feedback regarding cracks'n pops on a Vista x64 box, Audiophile 24/96 card (5.10.0.5069 beta drivers), Gigabyte EX58-UD5 mobo, i7 965 cpu.

Issue was fixed after disabling from the BIOS advanced CPU features page, the "C3/C6/C7 state support" option.


If it could help... ;)