[Tekker]

I've been trying to solve this issue on a couple recording forums, and unfortunately, the consensus was basically to just get a new card. But I know there are a few computer gurus here, so before throwing in the towel and replacing it I'd like to get their opinions on this issue.

My Aardvark Q10 does not work with my new-ish computer running SP2 or SP3. It does work with SP1, but I don't want to use that online since it is not up to date. Aardvark is out of business and the only driver they released was for SP1. However, the Q10 worked just fine on my old computer with SP2 and some users on the Aardvark yahoo group said it worked fine with SP2 and SP3, so I'm not sure why it won't work on my computer.

The problem I'm having is popping/stuttering during playback on full projects (multiple tracks and effects). These same projects played perfectly when I tried it with SP1, no problems at all and there was even a fairly low CPU and disk usage.

I was having problem with popping while zooming or scrolling while playback was going even with just one track playing and I also did some test recording and got popping in that as well. Both these problems were fixed by lowering the graphics accelerator down one notch. So there is something funky going on with my system. But even reducing it down all the way does not fix the problem in a full project.

Computer specs:
Processor: Amd Athlon
X2 5200+ Dual-Core
Mobo: ASUS M2V-MX SE Socket AM2 VIA K8M890
Memory: 2GB Corsair RAM
Power Supply: 550watt Power Supply
OS: Windows XP SP2
Sound card: Aardvark Q10 - driver 7.13
Recording Software: Samplitude v10.1

Things I've tried thus far:
* Increased the buffers on the Q10 and in Samplitude.
* Tested different drivers (ASIO, MME, and WDM)
* Moved the Q10 to another PCI slot (this computer only has two PCI slots).
* Played with the Trackspeed settings in Samplitude and even disabled it altogether.
* Disabled the on board sound, network adapter, com port, and printer port.
* Disabled system sounds.
* Checked the logfiles to see if there were warnings or errors after booting up. There weren't any.
* Ran DPC Latencycheck while zooming with playback going in Samplitude and the max was 50us. It said my machine should be able to handle real-time streaming without dropouts.
* Tested it with another Windows XP installation (tried both SP2 and SP3) on another partition which has nothing on it but Samplitude and my Aardvark Q10 driver.
* Tested it with XP SP1 on the other partition and it worked. (So far this has been the only thing to get good results in a full project.)
* Tested with another hard drive for the operating system drive.
* Someone on another forum mentioned disabling AMD's Cool 'n Quiet feature (said it was worse than Intel's Speedstep, which has been known to cause the issues I'm having).... Which sounded promising, but it was already disabled in the BIOS.
* I've also tried playing my guitar through the Q10 using VST monitoring in Samplitude to hear my VST effects in real time and it works flawlessly. So it can handle realtime intput/output, it just can't playback full projects.
* I tested the same projects with the onboard sound instead of the Q10 and the onboard sound works perfectly.


I think that's everything that has been tried so far. If anyone has any other ideas on things to try to help solve this issue, I would really appreciate it!!

Thanks,
-tkr

[X4StringDrive]

Hi Tkr, this won't help figure out why, but can you export the Aardvarks driver out of sp1 and load it into your new set-up or at least double check that sp2 or 3 has recognized it in your driver file....and as if that didn't tell you enough, you now know I'm no guru....best of luck with it!

[carol m]

Clearly I wouldn't have a clue, but I wish you well in your search for a solution. If anyone can solve it, I'm sure you are the guy to do it - with maybe a little help from your techy friends.

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by X4StringDrive

Hi Tkr, this won't help figure out why, but can you export the Aardvarks driver out of sp1 and load it into your new set-up or at least double check that sp2 or 3 has recognized it in your driver file....and as if that didn't tell you enough, you now know I'm no guru....best of luck with it!

The driver does load in SP2 and SP3 because sound does come out of the sound card, it just pops and stutters a LOT.

Originally Posted by carol m

Clearly I wouldn't have a clue, but I wish you well in your search for a solution. If anyone can solve it, I'm sure you are the guy to do it - with maybe a little help from your techy friends.

Thanks Carol. The kinds of problems where something is wrong with the computer itself are out of my knowledge base as I'm not much of a computer tech. I know know enough be able to do what I'm told to do most of the time without breaking something.... But I'm not very good at troubleshooting these type of problems.

-tkr

[knight46]

Tekker,
These kinds of problems are sometimes the most difficult to pin down, but that is not to say they can't be found.
If I read correctly, the Q10 worked on an older computer with SP2 and others say it works with SP2 and SP3. But now it will not work with your new puter using SP2.
If I were having this problem I would list the spec's and settings for the old puter with SP2 where Q10 worked and this puter where it doesn't work and see if I could find an abnormality.
You might want to set the old puter to Default spec's and see if that works and then set the new one to Default...kind of a start both from ground "0".
Hope this helps a little...

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by knight46

If I read correctly, the Q10 worked on an older computer with SP2 and others say it works with SP2 and SP3. But now it will not work with your new puter using SP2.

Correct, it also doesn't work with SP3 on my new computer, which I tested on my other partition.

If I were having this problem I would list the spec's and settings for the old puter with SP2 where Q10 worked and this puter where it doesn't work and see if I could find an abnormality.

Here are the old computer specs:

Processor: AMD Athlon XP2800+ Barton
Motherboard: Asus A7N8XE Deluxe Socket A Motherboard
Memory: (2) Corsair VS1GB300C3 ValueSelect 1GB DDR SDRAM
Video Card: Rage Fury Pro/Xpert 2000 Pro
Sound Card: Aardvark Q10 and Mobo's Onboard Sound
Power Supply: Herolchi Electronic Co. HEC-300AR-T 300W
OS: XP Pro SP2


And by "settings", you're referring to BIOS settings, correct? If so, it may be hard to compare the two because they both have very different BIOS layouts. I can give it a try though and see if anything obvious stands out. Do you want me to list everything?

-tkr

[fly135]

Just a thought... Check your System Properties, Advanced, Performance, Settings, Advanced. There is a setting to optimize scheduling. Try switching it to "Background Services" or vice versa and see if it has any affect.

Also check the Windows Task Manager and make sure that you have 150,000 Kbytes of memory or more available under Performance, Physical Memory, so that you are paging memory too frequently.

[knight46]

Those are some excellent suggestions Fly. Tekker those are the types of settings that I was refering to above. Usually the BIOS doesn't have a great effect on this type of problem.
Also what is the video card in your new computer?

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by fly135

Just a thought... Check your System Properties, Advanced, Performance, Settings, Advanced. There is a setting to optimize scheduling. Try switching it to "Background Services" or vice versa and see if it has any affect.

Just tried it and I still got the same result.

I also tried changing the second option to adjust for best performance of system cache, just to see if it made any difference and it didn't.

Also check the Windows Task Manager and make sure that you have 150,000 Kbytes of memory or more available under Performance, Physical Memory, so that you are paging memory too frequently.

While Samplitude is playing (and stuttering) I still have over 860,000 kB available. After stopping playback it goes up to over 1,130,000 kB.

-tkr

[knight46]

Tekker,
Take a look at your Task List while Samplitude is playing to see if there is some other program or application interfering. It sounds like you have sufficient memory available, Samplitude is using about 25% when playing, but something is using CPU and interfering. Seems that everything I can find relates to Sample Rate, so if you have played with the Sample Rate, something else may be stealing your CPU usage.

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by knight46

Tekker,
Take a look at your Task List while Samplitude is playing to see if there is some other program or application interfering.

When I press play, it takes a long time before it starts playing and during this time Samp takes up about about 90%+ of the CPU. Once it starts playing it drops down to about 70%-80%. It is a larger project with several effects, but it should play just fine. It does play when I use the onboard sound instead of the Q10 and it played when I tested it on SP1 with the Q10.

No other programs are taking any CPU while Samplitude is running.

I have also tested it on another installation of XP (I tried both SP2 and SP3) which had nothing but my motherboard drivers, Samplitude, and my Q10 driver. No other programs were installed (no antivirus, or anything) and it still did the same thing.

Seems that everything I can find relates to Sample Rate, so if you have played with the Sample Rate, something else may be stealing your CPU usage.

All of my projects are at 44.1kHz. I haven't done any sample rate changes.

-tkr

[knight46]

Darn Tekker, this is a son-of-a-gun. Let me talk to a friend of mine tonight (Super Geek) and see if he has any suggestions. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.
One other thing you might check:
Under Sounds and Audio/Audio/Sounds Playback/Advanced Audio Properties/Performance/Audio Playback Settings
Check out the two sliders...maybe???

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by knight46

Darn Tekker, this is a son-of-a-gun. Let me talk to a friend of mine tonight (Super Geek) and see if he has any suggestions.

Thanks, that would be great. I like super geeks!

One other thing you might check:
Under Sounds and Audio/Audio/Sounds Playback/Advanced Audio Properties/Performance/Audio Playback Settings
Check out the two sliders...maybe???

The Q10 doesn't have any advanced options. The button is grayed out.

-tkr

[OldG]

Have you used the latest Motherboard and Graphics drivers? worth checking the HD(s) set to DMA - basically make sure every component is seated well set to work and using the latest drivers...

If you are still stuggling,how about a clean install of an audio optimized stripped down XP? (with sp3 integrated)
You can D/L it here at the Reaper forum... just use your XP serial to install

I run it on an old Athlon XP200 and it flies!( only using 170 mb memory to run) well worth a try, I reckon..

[OldG]

Oh, check the IRQ of the Aardvark - if it's sharing recourses with the Vid card (I'm betting they are both on 13 with a bunch of others), this could be your problem.

Googe should get you a solution fairly easiy ( I'm short on time now, or I would for ya )