is this normal behavior with Aardvark24/96 and win xp?

[laaba]

hi there,
I was in a recording session yesterday and couldn´t get more than 7 tracks playing simultaneously without getting stuttering latency glitches and dropouts I have the buffer size to 172 and i apply the efx necessary to the tracks so i wouldn´t overload the CPU ive done all the tweaking recomended i have an intel pentium III 1.2Hz 512Ram 80 gigs hardrive and still dealing with this.One thing though: i had aux.1 and 2 sending reverb effects to a couple of tracks but is this normal? i mean if i can´t do this in real time how am i suppose to mix?
would upgrading to more proccesing power help this?
any tips would be wondeful
thank you all!

[Herman Munster]

Aardvark cards are notoriously picky about chipsets but I'd have thought the Aardvark Intel/PIII combo would've been a pretty safe bet.

First questions. Any USB devices? What's your video card? What's your sound card?

Have you tried the troubleshooting tips at Aardvark's support page? Using their latest drivers?
www.aardvarkaudio.com (http://www.aardvarkaudio.com)

A bit more info would be helpful.

Regards,
Herm

[This message has been edited by Herman Munster (edited 08-18-2003).]

[laaba]

Hi there Herm,
Yes ive done the tweaking and i have the latest 7.04 drivers.I do have 2 usb devices connected

[Robertibi1]

laaba,

What sequencer are you using? Cubase has VST Performance meter to show CPU and harddrive usage. Also, what efx's and how many are you applying to the tracks. Some efx's can be cpu hogs.

Basically it's like this;

Hard drive - audio tracks
CPU - VST's
Memory - VSTi's

The better the hardrive, i.e. cache and rpm the more audio tracks you get.

Better CPU, more VST's you can apply.

More memory, more VSTi's you can use.

Ideally, in a DAW, you want one physical drive for apps/sequencer and another physical drive for your audio files. This will increase your audio track count signicantly.

Also what OS are you using?

hope this helps,
Robert

[Herman Munster]

Laaba,
Can you be more specific about what you've tried? For example, you say you can't playback 7 tracks of audio, but is that with or without effects (a huge difference).

What's your operating system and audio program?

The brand of video card is important - what is it?

The soundcard is important - what is it?

USB devices can cause problems. Have you tried temporarily removing them?

Any number of things could be causing your problem so more info would be helpful.

Herm

[Robertibi1]

Yea, what Herm said.

Also, I've heard of problems with USB mouses and/or keyboards. If it comes down to being one of these devices, you can get a 'converter' thingy that will let you plug them into the PS2 port.

Get back to us on details, we'll figure this out.

Robert

[laaba]

Hi guys
thank you for your response i am very grateful!
Yes i have the following:

1.Pentium III Intel celeron 1200Hz 1.2 Ghz 512 RAM (Chipset VIAVT82C694T1.)
two hard drives 40 gigs each 7200rpm.
2.Aardvark 24/96 with the new drivers
3.Win XP pro edition
4.Nvdia Gforce2 MX video card
5.Cakewalk Sonar 2.2XL audio sequencer software
6.Canon usb scanner plugged in the back of the flat screen monitor
7.a microsoft usb mouse
8.a usb smart media card reader plugged into the computer
9.waves, vst etc.plugins

everything seems a bit heavy and slow when i apply efxs or convert tracks into new clipings etc. it just takes too darn long.I get lots of dropouts and its quite frustrating.I don´t understand, i use to have Win ME and less RAM and it used to work better!
cheers

[This message has been edited by laaba (edited 08-29-2003).]

[Nick Driver]

Maybe it's the Celeron-3 cpu? They still seem a bit less potent than a real P3, even if they are the 256k cache Tualtin core Celerons. (The P4-based 128k cache Celerons suck real bad, stay the heck away from them)

I'm running an Aardvark 24/96 in a 1.6a GHz Northwood P4 rig, oc'ed to 2.13 GHz and have no problems playing back 16 tracks in Sonar 2.2 XL. I'm even running a USB mouse, but that's my only USB device I have connected when mixing. I rarely run plug-ins however.... I'm one of those wierdos who actually kinda likes the sound of the Aardvark's cheesy DSP reverb and I record all my guitar and keyboard tracks already wet anyway.

[Nick Driver]

If you could upgrade your base computer to something at least like an i845 chipset mobo with 2.0 GHz Northwood P4 or better, and DDR PC2100 memory or better, and a good stout 400W or better power supply and keep the rest of your peripherals, I bet it would make a huge difference in how your DAW can handle the load. Those are last year's technology levels, and you may be able to pick up such parts dirt cheap nowadays.

Almost forget.... Are your 40GB hard drives 7200 or 5400 rpm? The slower drives aren't known to perform so swift in a DAW.

[This message has been edited by Nick Driver (edited 08-19-2003).]

[PlayLoud]

I comprised this from a couple of posts that I made in the past (because I'm too lazy to type it all over again).

Can you please post the motherboard make and model. Even though it's a P-3, you may not be using an Intel chipset - you may have a VIA or SiS chipset. Also, please check the speed of your hard drive. As, Nick Driver said, the hard drive speed (5400 or 7200) does make a big difference.

Also, what audio program are you using? What I have noticed is that different audio programs use resources differently. Some are more processor speed hungry while others are RAM hungry. Some programs make use of a faster Front Side Bus (FSB for short) while some programs it makes no difference. So on and so forth. I don't use Cakewalk but I have a friend that does. His hard drive would always be "chattering" rather loudly while recording and/or playing projects with many tracks. So, I would call this a hard drive speed hungry program.

By the way, I have a P3 1.4GHz Celeron with an Asus TUSL2-C board (Intel 815EP chipset, not over-clocking by the way) using CoolEdit and a Delta 1010LT audio card. I can run 16 tracks of 16bit/44.1kHz audio (some are stereo tracks, so I can have as many as 22 mono tracks) with at least one time based effect (delay and/or chorus) on each channel, EQ and compression on each channel, one buss with Waves Trueverb, and one buss with Renaissance reverb. I don't get any audio glitches - all running on Win98.

I think I have an idea of what is causing your issues, but like I said before, you need to send me the motherboard and model. Also, how good are you at re-loading your OS, drivers, and other software? Essentially, what I'm asking is how much experience you have in building computers. You may have to re-build from scratch and I can tell you exactly how to do that, but it would help if you had some experience in building computers

Hope this helps.

PlayLoud

[oops]

You have the buffer size up to where it should be, however you don't say where the latency slider is set for. Go into the Sonar formums and get the 2.2 upgrade. You should now set your soundcard in Sonar to"Options,,Audio,,Advanced" and set the driver mode to asio. Now go to "Options,,Audio,General,Asio Panel,Advanced,Asio and Directx" and set the latency slider all the way up to the right. You should now have more latency when playing vsti's, but you will be able to record, and track higher track counts..
This should do the trick. You can try just keeping the awdm, which for Aardvark is the mme32 mode instead and set the latency slider up to about 90mls, this may or may not work.. The 2.2 Sonar patch with asio should work for you. Ps.. If you plan of doing some realtime midi and audio together, be sure to do so within the first 3 or 4 tracks because with that slow a machine forget it. See "Aardvark and Nforce2 Boards" in this forum. Good luck.
Don't give up. For the money this is the best sounding card out there, with all the onboard bells and whistles.. Take care

[Herman Munster]

Laaba,
I'd start with downloading this Sonar test file (from Cakewalknet.com). It'll give you a consistent point of reference. Before you make any changes play the file and note your cpu performance. Then compare it after each change/tweak you make.
http://www.cakewalknet.com/Sounds/sonartest.zip


As far as tweaks, I'd start simple. Remove all USB devices: your scanner, smart media reader, and mouse (try to borrow a PS2, or get a USB to PS2 adapter). Reboot and see if you notice any change.

One other likely source of the problem is your GForce card (especially if it's PCI):
http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/discussdetail.asp?TopicID=1977


Let us know how it goes.

Good luck,
Herm

[This message has been edited by Herman Munster (edited 08-20-2003).]

[laaba]

Hi there fellows
i beleive i have the i845 chipset
i testet the sonar test file and it works fine,the CPU is between 42 and 43.My projects shows the CPU from 12 jumping up to 74% (i don´t know if this is normal either)
Like i said i applied the effects to all tracks so i wouldn´t have to have them inserted the whole time and to relief the CPU.It got a little better once i canceled the aux 1 and 2 effects but i don´t think i should have to do this.Also when i import a wav. file the wave clip takes about a half a minute to appear although i can play it and hear it.A couple of times the audio clip looked empty although i could stil hear the music,very weird.I should also mention that i have the sonar program installed in hardrive C and all of my sonar projects are stored in D.Is this ok?
cheers

[This message has been edited by laaba (edited 08-20-2003).]

[This message has been edited by laaba (edited 08-22-2003).]