Hi,
I put my system together about a month ago - based around an Asus A7S333 running an AMD XP2100+ processor, with an STAudio DSP24Value soundcard - for a home studio system, and whereas I thought I'd seriously tested it out, I hadn't actually got around to creating music properly with it until last week.
I started playing the guitar, I got some pops. Fair enough, I thought, let's increase the buffer size of my audio card (Hoontech/STAduio DSP24 Value). Still more pops. Increased the buffer size again, beyond what worked on my crappy old Time PC. Still pops. By this time I was starting to get worried.
Since then I've tried every sample rate, every buffer size, I've removed the card, reinstalled it in every PCI slot, made sure it's got its own IRQ, gone back to two previous driver versions, run the card with every memory-resident program switched off (eg antivirus), made sure there are no power cables near the audio cables - and I still get a pop every now and then - by which I mean every 30 seconds or so, which basically renders the ASIO drivers unuseable cos I just can't work with having a snap or a crackle or a pop appear in the recording.
Strangely enough, the pops only occur when I'm actually recording sound - not when I just leave it so that the card records silence. Even stranger is that on a couple of occasions, after uninstalling and replacing the card, I've had it working like a beaut, full-on 96KHz, 32-bit recording without a crackle in earshot. This has been the case for, say, two or three power-ups, I think I've finally got it sorted, then suddenly it starts complaining again. Weird.
The Cubase DirectX drivers seem fine, but the latency is unusable. So I'm thinking I can use them to get a good recording, but I just can't monitor myself. I can still use the ASIO drivers for VSTis because playback is fine. So it's not a disaster, but it's not what I was after.
So, I'm very pissed off. I selected the A7S333 because its PCI bus was supposed to be excellent for audio recording. I can only come to the conclusion that it is the motherboard, because the card recorded fine in my old PC, although playback was crap. Now, the ASIO recording is crap, although it plays back fine.
Does anyone else know anything about this? I've been through some other computer music forums and it seems other people are having similar problems with SiS chipsets. Is there anything I could test that I haven't mentioned yet?
I'm going to continue with my setup for now, because at least it works with the DirectX drivers for audio recording. But if anyone can confirm that there's a known problem with the SiS chipset and audio recording, then I guess at some time in the future I'll have to rip out the A7S333 and get me another motherboard.
Thanks
Brendan
I put my system together about a month ago - based around an Asus A7S333 running an AMD XP2100+ processor, with an STAudio DSP24Value soundcard - for a home studio system, and whereas I thought I'd seriously tested it out, I hadn't actually got around to creating music properly with it until last week.
I started playing the guitar, I got some pops. Fair enough, I thought, let's increase the buffer size of my audio card (Hoontech/STAduio DSP24 Value). Still more pops. Increased the buffer size again, beyond what worked on my crappy old Time PC. Still pops. By this time I was starting to get worried.
Since then I've tried every sample rate, every buffer size, I've removed the card, reinstalled it in every PCI slot, made sure it's got its own IRQ, gone back to two previous driver versions, run the card with every memory-resident program switched off (eg antivirus), made sure there are no power cables near the audio cables - and I still get a pop every now and then - by which I mean every 30 seconds or so, which basically renders the ASIO drivers unuseable cos I just can't work with having a snap or a crackle or a pop appear in the recording.
Strangely enough, the pops only occur when I'm actually recording sound - not when I just leave it so that the card records silence. Even stranger is that on a couple of occasions, after uninstalling and replacing the card, I've had it working like a beaut, full-on 96KHz, 32-bit recording without a crackle in earshot. This has been the case for, say, two or three power-ups, I think I've finally got it sorted, then suddenly it starts complaining again. Weird.
The Cubase DirectX drivers seem fine, but the latency is unusable. So I'm thinking I can use them to get a good recording, but I just can't monitor myself. I can still use the ASIO drivers for VSTis because playback is fine. So it's not a disaster, but it's not what I was after.
So, I'm very pissed off. I selected the A7S333 because its PCI bus was supposed to be excellent for audio recording. I can only come to the conclusion that it is the motherboard, because the card recorded fine in my old PC, although playback was crap. Now, the ASIO recording is crap, although it plays back fine.
Does anyone else know anything about this? I've been through some other computer music forums and it seems other people are having similar problems with SiS chipsets. Is there anything I could test that I haven't mentioned yet?
I'm going to continue with my setup for now, because at least it works with the DirectX drivers for audio recording. But if anyone can confirm that there's a known problem with the SiS chipset and audio recording, then I guess at some time in the future I'll have to rip out the A7S333 and get me another motherboard.
Thanks
Brendan
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