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Glitchy audio recording on P5B-Deluxe

M

Mark R

Diamond Member
Whenever I try to record audio (be it from the on-board SoundMAX or from a Creative X-Fi Gamer) it occasionally glitches (very load pops and crackles). Looking at the waveform, it looks as though a few hundred samples get dropped.

It happens in all sound applications (including home written ones), and at all sample rates.

Nothing fixes it - BIOS updates, driver updates, swapping PCI slots, overclocking/underclocking, overvolting/undervolting, etc.

Has anyone else had similar problems? Any ideas what I should be checking?

RAM has already been throughly tested.

Setup: E6600, P5B-Deluxe, 8800GTX, 2GB PC6400 Ballistix, X-Fi xtremegamer
 
Can you test in Safe Mode? I like to keep an AS-LOADED image file of the OS to test for these type of bugs. If system is okay, then you have a software issue with your current setup. Use Task Manager to see if there is a relationship between these glitches and CPU load during recording.
 
Originally posted by: SerpentRoyal
Can you test in Safe Mode? I like to keep an AS-LOADED image file of the OS to test for these type of bugs. If system is okay, then you have a software issue with your current setup. Use Task Manager to see if there is a relationship between these glitches and CPU load during recording.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, in safe mode there is no audio suuport - so I can't test.

I also don't have an image for a freshly installed system - but to be fair, there isn't a lot of new software that I have installed, that should be affecting it.

On the few occasions were I do have a record of CPU usage during a glitch (the glitches are uncommon, and to reproduce them I sometimes only see 1 or 2 if left running overnight, but equally I could have 10 in 1 hour), the CPU usage has been minimal (1-2 %). Similarly, there's no excessive disk activity, swap file usage, nor exhaustion of physical memory.

I might, when I get some time, install a fresh XP and Vista on my development machine and see what happens. I think this is the only way to find out what the issue is.
 
You could image the OS, wipe the OS partition, then clean install the OS without patches. The image file will allow you to restore the OLD OS. Go to Terabyteunlimited.com and download Bootit NG. You can run BING from floppy or boot CD. BING can non-destructively partition HDD and image HDD and/or partition. The fully-functional software is good for 30 days.
 
This happens when a single device hogs one of the system busses for excessive amounts of time. Prime suspect: Storage cards on slow busses, and Creative sound cards.

Pull the X-Fi and try again with the onboard.
 
Well, it hadn't occurred to me to actually remove the X-fi. I hadn't considered it as a cause, merely it was one of the devices that might show symptoms.

Anyway, I'm now testing with the X-fi removed.

If there's one thing I've noticed, it is just how awful the on-board sound is. It's absolutely shocking how much general noise it picks up - the noise is almost as loud as my normal listening volume (and while this is EMI, this is not picked up via CD-audio cables, etc. It seems to be intrinsic to the actual analogue sound circuits). Recordings are OK though.
 
Update. Still glitching, even without the X-fi.

I'm guessing it's either a software driver/Vista audio layer problem, or possibly it's some kind of hardware problem (maybe a buggy PCI controller or something). I'll try installing XP at some point, but I haven't the time currently.
 
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