Need Help in Chennai testing Card in another PC

Thad E Ginathom

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 11, 2009
Messages
6,099
Points
113
Location
Chennai
[No Longer] Need Help in Chennai testing Card in another PC

I have sound card troubles.

As my Mission NXT PC speaker system has been slowly dieing I hadn't much bothered with my expensive sound card, but decided to move back to it, in preparation for new speakers, last week.

It didn't work. It is a RME DIGI96/8 PST. It used to give me superb sound when I had my PC connected direct to the HiFi back in London, which is not physically possible here.

At first, all I got from the card was noise. I removed it, dusted it off (it was dirty) and replaced it in a different slot, reinstalling the drivers. This time I got sound, but jerky, stuttering sound. It is like it is playing the music at the right speed but jumbling it.

Side issue: I have occasional problems with the built-in sound, where it will produce a farting noise (if you'll excuse the expression) like a "stuck" CD.

Back to the RME... this is it's third computer. It's second computer was a Compaq whose motherboard failed about a year ago. It is now a Gigabyte 945GCM-S2L in the compaq case, with an Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 2.4Ghz chip.

What I need, Please...

(Apart from any other diagnostic ideas)

... is someone in the Southern end of Chennai that will test my RME card in a PCI slot on their PC
 
Last edited:
6. Which OS are you running? There are audio-specific optimisation tips for Windows XP in a hundred places on the web :)

for the benefit of all and me pls can we have some links please cranky?
as i m in process of setting up pc+ Ext Dac

also any easy to install super quick boot Linux+ Foobar ( any other audiophile music player with album art support?)
 
Before reinstalling the OS, could you confirm that you have uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers for the sound card after you had inserted in the new slot? Sometimes if you reinstall without uninstalling, I have seen problems crop up.

If this does not work out, then a windows clean sweep is what you are looking at.

Hemant - there are other excellent audio players for Linux. Exaile, Amarok etc. If you want to try Linux, try it through Live CDs/DVDs.
 
Thanks for the information so far.

OS is Win XP SP3. I have 2Gb memory, and nothing fancy running. FF is the most memory-hungry app, and it is true that Firefox can eat memory like real foxes eat chickens.

I am using VLC Player as my regular player. I used to use FooBar for audio-only, but now find it easier to use just one app for video/sound. I hate heavy stuff like MS Media Player: more show than function!

I use Total Recorder for capturing audio. This has drivers that can screw stuff up. The most recent drivers do not support the RME. It has worked, however, quite happily, for years with this card.

I changed the latency on the RME control app, with no effect.

Will try Safe mode: hadn't thought of that. Desperately want to avoid a re-installation; it was last done about a year ago for the new motherboard. Loathersome job: too many odds and ends! Before doing anything like that I'd really like to check that the sound board is physically ok. It must be six or seven years old; stuff does die.

Whilst I'll certainly check the www again, this is not an optimisation problem, is is a card that never gave problems before now failing.
 
Feeling a bit silly (Nothing New There :))

My wife tells me her son has a PC in the family; I thought they only had laptops. Will check out that avenue for a physical card check.
 
Re: Feeling a bit silly (Nothing New There :))

Your son, right? :)

Not quite that embarrassing :D.

Step son. Grown-up and independent before I married into the family!

That's why I generally refer to them as my wife's son and daughter
as even the technical term "step son and daughter" has always seemed wrong to impose on two adults.

So... no intimate knowledge of computer equipment owned!
 
Re: Feeling a bit silly (Nothing New There :))

Not quite that embarrassing :D.

Step son. Grown-up and independent before I married into the family!

That's why I generally refer to them as my wife's son and daughter
as even the technical term "step son and daughter" has always seemed wrong to impose on two adults.

So... no intimate knowledge of computer equipment owned!

I am very sorry. I did not mean to pry at all. None of my business.

I actually thought there might have been a slip of the keyboard and hence the smiley. I apologize for my rude-sounding insinuation and totally appreciate your magnanimity in clarifying - which you did not need to do.
 
Hey... no apologies needed. It's always easy to misunderstand the written word, or to forget that people do not know the background. So I joined in the joke and had a laugh at myself too. :)
 
It's give-it-another-go-time, and...

Looks like I do not have a hardware problem with the card. In fact, it looks like I only have a problem with VLC :)

VLC is my favourite media player... :(

Anyway, this is just an update, rather than being a call for help --- I'll just keep coming back to it until I find the magic something. Anyway...

Problem with VLC... echoing stuttering sound.

Progress with VLC... It now plays from file just fine. Found something on the internet to increase the cache. Problem got worse... Reduced the cache (to 0!!) problem went away! (That's INput/Codecs-->AccesModules-->File).

Then I tried streaming from net (BBC) and problem is horrible.

Will work on it. Please, no-one to break head over it... but if you do happen to know the answer... ;)
 
Could you try alternate players to see if this is a software related problem?

TheKMPlayer and SMPlayer (an MPlayer front end) suggest themselves.
 
Yes, done that...

that is how I realised that it is a software problem, and the card is almost certainly fine. I realised that it is playing fine with CoolEdit Pro, foobar, my previous favourite, and then even with Total Recorder, except it doesn't support the latest "kernel layer" (I think they call it) Total Recorder driver. Of course, it could still be a problem with interrupts or the like.

It is an old card, dating back quite a few years. I had spent the last couple of days trying to decide what ot replace it with --- but while it still lives I think I'll just add that to the speaker budget :)

So... the RME 96/8 PST lives (so far...) and I'm glad because I love it, it having been such a huge leap in quality from the previous card (which was far better from the on-board).

It was going to be audio-engine A2. My mind is being changed towards the M-Audio AV40.

A comparison of reviews suggests that the A2s probably sound better, but the AV40s can be relied upon to sound pretty excellent. I'm sold on three practical issues: front volume control, front headphone socket and front aux input.

Will check price in Chennai, but going to Singapore in Feb...
 
Yes, done that...

that is how I realised that it is a software problem, and the card is almost certainly fine. I realised that it is playing fine with CoolEdit Pro, foobar, my previous favourite, and then even with Total Recorder, except it doesn't support the latest "kernel layer" (I think they call it) Total Recorder driver. Of course, it could still be a problem with interrupts or the like.

It is an old card, dating back quite a few years. I had spent the last couple of days trying to decide what ot replace it with --- but while it still lives I think I'll just add that to the speaker budget :)

So... the RME 96/8 PST lives (so far...) and I'm glad because I love it, it having been such a huge leap in quality from the previous card (which was far better from the on-board).

It was going to be audio-engine A2. My mind is being changed towards the M-Audio AV40.

A comparison of reviews suggests that the A2s probably sound better, but the AV40s can be relied upon to sound pretty excellent. I'm sold on three practical issues: front volume control, front headphone socket and front aux input.

Will check price in Chennai, but going to Singapore in Feb...

Thad, any way you can update the drivers for your RME card?
 
Yep, already running the latest.

The card is obsolete. It was, I think, already out of production when I bought it, hence a bargain price. There will not be any more upgrades from RME.

Worth every penny, too: If I threw it away today it would still have been money well spent. It's been over five years!
 
Developments.

Anyone heard of DPC Latency? Well, it seems I have a lot of it, and the one thing it is very very bad for is sound processing.

If you want to check out yours, here's the tool: DPC Latency Checker . Mine is red off the screen: solid red, red, red :sad:

If you want to investigate further, MS have a tool called RATT.

It looks like the worst villain among my drivers is atapi.sys.

This led me to discover that, although my drives are all SATA, what is actually going on is IDE emulation, and to change this after installation (Win XP) is a bit of a nightmare of finding the right drivers and faffing around.
 
You're not supposed to talk about such things on the forum, Blasto takes great offense at any reference to DPC latency.

Just kidding :)

It's not always that a red bar will lead to a click - but it could. Once you find the driver (mine turned out to be a wireless network device, it's impossible to do audio and networking together), it's best to reinstall Windows or change the device (in your case, that would be the motherboard)...

Also, in Win7 it is impossible to get the super-low latency figures possible in WinXP. I've given up trying, so my media PCs still run WinXP (~20uS latency) and the gaming and browsing PCs run Win7 (~300-500uS latency).

Chalk one more down for XP! Hurray! :)
 
It looks like the worst villain among my drivers is atapi.sys.

This led me to discover that, although my drives are all SATA, what is actually going on is IDE emulation, and to change this after installation (Win XP) is a bit of a nightmare of finding the right drivers and faffing around.

I did that some 2 years back. If you switch to SATA AHCI mode XP will not boot. Because XP does not support AHCI mode out of the box.

Here is a helpful link for switching to ahci

change XP to use AHCI disk mode rather than IDE - Windows XP Support

HTH
 
it's best to reinstall Windows or change the device (in your case, that would be the motherboard)...
:sad: --- but I had been thinking along those lines too. But to what? There seems to be a lot of this DPC Latency about, according to the all-knowing internet, but I haven't seen any recommendations for dead-cert-ok motherboards. Any ideas? Intel Core Duo, DDR2 --- If I'm not going to change everything.

I had a plan to install a small SSD drive for booting from. I'm going to do that, install fresh Windows on it, and see what clean install brings me. If there is no improvement, then I still have my existing-disk-install untouched. I'd have an image of that anyway.

I'm confused about XP supporting native SATA. Mostly, the info is that it does not (without additional drivers at install time) but what about SP3? Added to which, I can't seem to locate, or be sure of, the correct drivers to match:

Intel 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 family) Serial ATA Storage Controller 27CO

which is the intimidating string from the devices list.
 
Very interesting. I guess that I'd better put Intel at the top of my list then.

Another complication is that my copy of WinXP is OEM --- and is already authorised on its second motherboard. I don't really want to go to Win-7. I guess I can still buy a retail copy of XP somewhere if I have to.
 
Very interesting. I guess that I'd better put Intel at the top of my list then.

Another complication is that my copy of WinXP is OEM --- and is already authorised on its second motherboard. I don't really want to go to Win-7. I guess I can still buy a retail copy of XP somewhere if I have to.

Thad

What do you mean by authorized? If you have a cd installer, just install it first and buy a software license at your convenience. :) Unless you want to stay strictly legal from the first millisec you use the new XP :)

I think you can only purchase a XP downgrade license with Win7 now.


You need to unzip the Intel sata ahci driver and copy it in a location and do a driver update or something. No need for a fresh copy of XP. I just installed Windows 7 yesterday and boy it is really neat compared to XP!! Do try it !! XP is clearly out of date and old fashioned in comparison.

I am a Ubuntu user mind you, just installed on a 2nd hdd to check it out and copy fonts etc ... (oh please let my open-source reputation not suffer for posting this!! :() I promise not to use it too often .. :)

Cheers
 
Wharfedale Linton Heritage Speakers in Red Mahogany finish at a Special Offer Price. BUY now before the price increase.
Back
Top