Horrendous noise coming from 1010lt

[PhaZEtwO]

Just recently i upgraded from a delta 24/96 to a 1010LT because i really needed a few more I/O but the 1010LT is making a really awful squelching noise continuously since i installed it.
Every time I drag a window across the screen or do something a bit intensive the squelch becomes a lot louder and reacts to what is happening on the screen.
At first i was thinking it was just because i was running it in vista64 and they hadn't sorted the beta drivers 100% but then i checked on my other drive which is xp pro(i have 3 OS in multi boot on same machine) and i get exactly the same problem.
Another thing is the squelching sounds only start when i get into the OS but up unto that its literally silent during post screen etc.
I did a check on google and saw that a few people have had the same problem and that the symptoms point towards the audio and graphics card sharing the same IRQ. Well i checked my IRQs and the audio card is sat on IRQ20 and the Graphics card is sat on IRQ 16.
Just in case I swapped the PCI card from slot to slot to to slot to see if it made any difference, it didn't.
Now a friend of mine from Uni has been having exactly the same problem and the only thing that is similar between our machines is that we both have asus motherboards(different models). I don't know if that is the contributing factor but between us we are running out of things to try to fix this problem.
Please, any insight into why I'm getting these awful noises will be most welcome and any way to fix this problem will be very appreciated.


Since writing this I have borrowed a Terratec EWS88MT sound card and installed drivers and audio panel software onto my XP Pro drive without any problems and there is absolutely no squelching noises, buzzes or high pitched whines at all. (I couldn't install it on my Vista64 drive because the only latest drivers that I could find crashed my system with a blue screen relating to the audio driver. Im not that surprised as the drivers were pretty old) Eventually got the teratec working in vista 64 and just like in XP .. no squelching noises, buzzes or high pitched whines...
So now I'm pretty confident it is nothing to do with how my PC is set up and that the problem is directly related to the M-audio 1010lt card.
Now Im wondering what the next step is?
Could the card be part of a dodgy batch (quite possible, considering my friend is having the exact same trouble with his card and they were bought from the same place just a few months apart).
Do I send it back to dolphin music dot com and ask for a replacement or do i send it back to the manufacturers?

[AzZamat]

:mad:
I 'm having this exact same problem with my card. the noise tends to be more apparent when graphically intensive programs are running. its a strange buzzie squelching that sounds as though it is changing as the content on the screen is being veiwed.3dmark tends to instantly start the noise when ran.

i thought this could be do to with some sort of electrical interferance, and have since tried several different sheilded cables, different layouts and a new powersupply which can ground the motherboard. none of which seemed to alter the buzzie sound that is still present as ever.

since seeing phazetwos post i have checked which irq channels my gfx card and 1010lt are on.if this helps
gfx : IRQ16
1010lt: IRQ 18

I swapped the PCI card from slot to slot to to slot to see if it made any difference, it didn't.
also tried this out ,
i have tried several different drivers and they all seem to produce that same noise. any ideas out there ...... any help would be much appreciated

------------------------------------------------------------
asus-pk5
2 x corsair dominator ddr2-800
Nvidia 7600gt
M-audio delta 1010lt
250gb SATA
250gb IDE
tagan 600w psu
xp pro -daw
xp pro - general use

[PhaZEtwO]

http://forums.m-audio.com/showthread.php?t=4484

seems other people are having very similar issues too.. but with different cards
When I installed my old 24/96 I didn't get any interference. Only with the 1010lt.

[JA]

Have you tried disabling devices like your built-in sound card, Ethernet, and wireless controllers? If the noises seem to be related to movements on your screen, try lowering the hardware acceleration for your video card.

[PhaZEtwO]

Thanks for the reply JA and yes, I have tried all that you suggested. Also tried running with the nvidia drivers uninstalled as I saw mentioned somewhere. noise was still there.

[JA]

Can you try disabling speed stepping for your processors and see if that has any effect. Also check out the DPC Latency Checker (http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml) to see if you have any latency spikes.

[AzZamat]

just disabled speed stepping and the noise is presant. running dpc latency checker gave these results
(cant find the u with a tail on it)
test intervals 976 us
current latency 36 us
absolute maximum 84 us

[JA]

AxZamat, have you tried lowering the hardware acceleration for your graphics card? Have you disabled devices like your built-in audio, Ethernet, and Wireless controllers? Do you have all the chipset and BIOS updates for your motherboard?

[AzZamat]

all bios and chipset drivers are up to date. hardware acceleration is set to lowest. have even tried an old ati card that was knocking about aswell, still produces the same sounds. wireless controllers and ethernet have been disabled as has on board sound. are there any other diagnostics i can run to give u a better idea?.

[PhaZEtwO]

All my drivers(graphics, bios, chipset etc) are up to date.
Ive disabled the speedstep and relative cpu stepping options in bios. Removed all additional physical hardware installed, disabled ALL unnecessary devices in device manager. Turned off anything in the house, such as wireless router/ xbox that could be transmitting the interference. In addition to that I have locked the pci-express frequency to 100mhz, locked the pci to 33.3mhz because I thought if there was any fluctuation in either of these it maybe causing the interference and graphics related squelches. Ran the PC without any graphics drivers installed, ran in safe mode/VGA compatibility mode. All with the same result. The results from the the DPC latency check showed current latency at 18 to 26us with an absolute maximum @ 49us from a single spike but never went anywhere near the green threshold of 500us.
I think between me and azza (hes a mate of mine) we have covered just about everything in eliminating or finding the cause of the noises. I know how important it is to diagnose initially the PC setup in order to eliminate any discrepancies within the system but I'm seriously running out of things to try. Also it just seems a bit odd that Ive tried two other sound cards, a Teratec EWS88MT and the m-audio 24/96 with no problems, If it wasnt for the fact that I really needed more I/O id be more than happy to stick with the 24/96.
Is it time to send the 1010lt card back?

[JA]

Have you guys been able to test the cards on different systems? PhaZEtwO, the 24/96 and 1010lt use the same driver; so if the 24/96 works, the problem could either be a resource issue (the 1010lt is going to demand more system resources for its additional i/o); or the problem could be the 1010lt itself. If the card behaves the same in another system, I would recommend exchanging with the dealer since you just got it.

[tenvolt]

I've had similar problems and I think from what I've read, any IRQ over 12 or 14 isn't a "real" IRQ, it's your OS or motherboard pulling tricks and creating virtual IRQ's, so your devices could still be on the same physical IRQ. I'm not sure what the solution is, possibly turning off Plug and Play in the BIOS so that you can control the IRQ's manually, and like people have suggested, in the BIOS disabling anything you are not using e.g. serial ports, parallel ports, PS/2 connectors, onboard modems, network cards, onboard sound, etc. may free up some additional IRQ's which might get rid of the conflict. Definitely sounds like video and audio are fighting for bus time.

[PhaZEtwO]

In my bios it allows me to disable PnP O/S so I did that, then I removed the m-audio card rebooted so that IRQ was clear. Then restarted and in the IRQ settings I set all the IRQs to reserved except for 1, rebooted, closed down, put back the M-audio card and restarted the PC. then redid the process with just the 2nd IRQ, 3rd etc.. no joy Also no matter which PCI slot i put the audio card in it never shows on an IRQ less than 19 and as you say any IRQ over 15 is virtual and shared. I checked in Everest Ultimate to get a better picture of what IRQs are being used for and they go right up to 190 including the virtuals. No matter what I do I cant get the audio card to sit on a non shared(exclusive) IRQ number. Even when I tried what I mentioned above.
Ive waded through page after page relating to IRQ problems but now im wondering if its the pci/pci-e architecture of the Asus Commando board rather than the sound card. Seems a few pro DAW workstation builders tend to steer clear of Asus boards for what ever reason.

[JA]

Do you have RAID enabled? If so, can you disable that and test the card in different slots?

[PhaZEtwO]

No JA, Im using SATA in enhanced mode and not raided. I can try removing the HDDs and just leave one O/S see if that makes a difference. I have been a bit reluctant to do that because last time I did it, i got the HAL and missing NTkernel errors because I put them back in a different order to how they were originally and now im very paranoid of losing data if I do something like that again, something that is irreversible. Its all backed up but its the entire rigmarole of getting everything back to how im used to, especially on my DAW drive.
Like I say, Im starting to lean towards the idea that it might be some kind of conflict with the Asus Commando architecture but the fact azza'a board is a totally different model suggests maybe otherwise. Ive had various issues with PCs in the past and quite often its something quite simple that is overlooked or an incorrect setting somewhere along the line thats taken someone else to point out.
Id just like to say, thanks for your persistence with this JA, ANY suggestions you put are noted and tried.

[JA]

You mention this was a recent purchase; are you with the return period with your retailer to exchange for a new unit?

[PhaZEtwO]

Not sure if it is relevent but In vista64 I ran the hardware test that determines what score you get for the vista experience and when it ran through the directX tests the noises became a LOT more apparent. There isnt an option to reduce or disable direct x acceleration in the vista dxdiag so i jumped onto windows xp and tried the dxdiag from there. when i ran the dxdiag in winXP it only did a few of the tests and then reported that my soundcard has no hardware buffers so couldnt continue. Am I right in thinking the M-audio 1010lt DOES have hardware buffers and should be showing up in the dxdiag tests? The result was : Your soundcard does not support hardware buffering, sounds will only playback from software buffers,

In addition to that, Ive just booted my pc with no graphics card installed in the machine. Remembering the post and boot times I got into xp and vista blind and still the noises are there so that can rule out its something to do with pci-express I guess.

[PhaZEtwO]

Can anyone confirm that the m-audio 1010lt does have hardware buffers or not?

[JA]

I'm pretty sure it supports hardware buffers. I don't know if that's limited to ASIO operation and maybe that's why you received the error with the dxdiag test. I've sent an e-mail to find out more info; I'll let you know.

[JA]

The Delta 1010lt (and all other Delta cards) does indeed support hardware buffering. Our driver doesn't expose specific DirectX support so the dxdiag uses a Microsoft intermediate driver. This driver doesn't have direct access to the hardware buffers which is why you get that error.

[PhaZEtwO]

Finally resolved the issue.. wasn't anything to do with the PC or soundcard directly. was a ground loop problem.

[Obsolet]

Hi and thanks for posting your solution / the cause of the noise..
I belive that it is not directly an issue with the Delta101LT but I can also confirm that I started to notice this strange graphic card related noises when I upgraded from a Delta 2496 to a Delta 1010LT. I think the 2496 was in whatsoever way better shielded or groundlifted?? But why I don't believe it is related to the soundcard only or M-Audio in general is the fact that I also have that noise with my other PC where I use the internal AC97 on board soundcard (same mixing console / loudspeaker / PC monitor).
The groundlift issue is very interesting and I liked to know how you resolved it? Since I am not an electronic technician I have only limited knowledge about such things in general. Thanks!

Obsolet

[Paul]

Don't lift the ground on your computer. Check out some ground-loop troubleshooting (http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.faq&ID=12cfebbf1c694ee8664859cfd004577c)suggestions.

[PhaZEtwO]

All I did was to replace both my multi-plugs extensions, then did a bit of re-arranging of my equipment plugs, seemed if I had My 2 flat screens on a separate multi-plug extension on the same double wall socket the noise wasn't as intrusive. Someone suggested to temporarily remove all the audio cables from my sound card and just leave the connection to the monitor speakers and then temporarily remove the ground from my monitors to check if it was 100% a ground-loop problem. When I did that there was absolutely no noise coming from the monitors, even when I turned the gain right up on the back of the monitors (something I couldnt do before as it became unbearable). Anyway, I replaced the grounds back on my monitors and the noises just havnt come back. Theres no awful squelches, high pitches whines etc and (fingers crossed) It hasnt come back yet either. So not 100% sure what fixed it but by some kind of fluke, it has.
I am now very tempted to invest in one of these http://www.jensen-transformers.com/ci2rr.html
Think it will be a sound(no pun) Investment.

Thanks for all the suggestions.. taught me a bit along the way, which is always good.

[Paul]

Thanks for the detailed description of your troubleshooting. :D

[Obsolet]

Don't lift the ground on your computer. Check out some ground-loop troubleshooting (http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.faq&ID=12cfebbf1c694ee8664859cfd004577c)suggestions.

Hi Paul!
I will of course not remove the ground or whatsoever :-) But thank you very much for the link. I will have a closer look to the topic and perhaps my brother could help me since he is an e-technician. Therefore it would be helpful to have the document in german, is it available @ m-audio?

Thank you very much PhaZEtwO for posting your detailed way to lo-noise :-)
First thing I should also do it check all powerplugs, cables etc. an replug them in other combinations.

Regards
Obsolet