At the end of my rope,,,

[zed]

You might want to upgrade your OS. I remember having a lot of pops and clicks within DP on my audio. It all went away when I upgraded to Snow Leopard. Other things went wrong, but that problem went away. It is a slightly different issue, but it is still related to how the audio system handles audio. It could be that a new OS will eliminate your issue.

Also, I recommend that you create signature in your profile which includes all the system and hardware information that you put in your first post. If I hadn't remembered that you posted that and scrolled up on the previous page, I would have had no idea that you are running Tiger on a MacPro.

[Frodo]

Your reply puzzles me, Frodo. Firewire speed is measured in MHz? I've just checked in System Profiler under Firewire and my bus speed is listed as "Up to 800 Mb/sec."

My Mac Pro also had the Model Identifier "MacPro1,1" with "Bus speed: 1.33 GHz."

Am I misunderstanding this? Or do you know something I don't know? Which wouldn't be too hard, admittedly.

Kind regards.

I can't completely address your SP readout, but I do find it interesting that your bus speed is marked as 1.33 Ghz. That would be exactly one half of Apple's 2.66 (or so) Ghz speeds it's touting for later model firewire buss speeds, as the firewire buss is running along a PCIe internal spec.

However-- 1.33 and 1.66 were popularly published buss speeds for the PCIx card slot speeds on later model MacPros.

Now-- PCIe is not restricted to the card slots on towers. There *are* internal PCIe busses, and the latest machines use PCIe busses internally for its firewire data.

Darn. It used to be that developer.apple.com used to post graphical schematics of its machines, including those which depicted the newer firewire busses run internally @ 2.66Ghz, aka: PCIe buss speeds.

I'm still looking.

[okcrounders]

You might want to upgrade your OS. I remember having a lot of pops and clicks within DP on my audio. It all went away when I upgraded to Snow Leopard. Other things went wrong, but that problem went away. It is a slightly different issue, but it is still related to how the audio system handles audio. It could be that a new OS will eliminate your issue.

Also, I recommend that you create signature in your profile which includes all the system and hardware information that you put in your first post. If I hadn't remembered that you posted that and scrolled up on the previous page, I would have had no idea that you are running Tiger on a MacPro.

You're right Zed, I should have created a profile earlier.

[James Steele]

4. Replaced audiowire cable

With what? One little bit of trivia is that you sometimes can't just use a standard FireWire cable as a replacement for an Audiowire cable. If you do, the end of the cable that goes into the PCI-424 card doesn't always seat deeply enough. You need to shave off a little bit of the molded plastic around the metal part of the connector because it is longer on the audiowire cable.

I don't know if it has anything to do your issue or not. One user was having his interfaces not appear on occasion and it turned out this was the problem... he was using a regular Firewire cable. He shaved back some of the plastic so the metal part of the connecter that connected to the PCI-424 card seated more deep into the socket on the card and that fixed it.

[newrigel]

You could just try the 10.4.11 combo update on Apples site. Sounds like your Audio interfaces. I know it sounds a bit odd but have you just tried the stock audio out to see if it is the audio interfaces? Could be worth a try then you can pin it down to them and put your focus on those instead of the HD's etc. etc. Could just be an update that didn't take and a reinstall and refresh of the OS could get rid of the corruption.

[okcrounders]

4. Replaced audiowire cable

With what? One little bit of trivia is that you sometimes can't just use a standard FireWire cable as a replacement for an Audiowire cable. If you do, the end of the cable that goes into the PCI-424 card doesn't always seat deeply enough. You need to shave off a little bit of the molded plastic around the metal part of the connector because it is longer on the audiowire cable.

I don't know if it has anything to do your issue or not. One user was having his interfaces not appear on occasion and it turned out this was the problem... he was using a regular Firewire cable. He shaved back some of the plastic so the metal part of the connecter that connected to the PCI-424 card seated more deep into the socket on the card and that fixed it.

I replaced it with another Audiowire cable.

[newrigel]

Did it work?

[okcrounders]

Did it work?

No. What I meant was when I replaced the Audiowire a few months ago, I replaced it with another Audiowire.

[newrigel]

Have you tried using the mac audio? At least you'll find out that it's not the box but your interfaces.

[Bowman]

To the best of my memory, here is a rough list of the things I've done:

1. Updated latest PCI 424 drivers
2. Updated from DP5 to 5.13 (at the behest of the MOTU tech guys)
3. Reseated my PCI 424 card in different PCIe slots
4. Replaced audiowire cable
5. Adjusted buffers and work priority
6. Reinstalled PCI 424 drivers
7. Replaced PCI 424 Card
8. Turned Airport off
9. Disconnected the machine from the internet
10. Repaired disc permissions
11. Downloaded idefrag and defragged my hard drive
12. Replaced my 2408
13. Tried James' Cuemix test
14. Offloaded itunes library to an external drive.
15. Put in more RAM, with more on the way.

That being the case, and in light of everything else that has been posted here, it may be time to reinstall everything: new hard drive, operating system, the latest drivers, your usual software. Take your time and test everything thoroughly as you do it. The long way round, maybe, but considering how long this has been going on, it might be the only solution left. And hard drives are relatively cheap these days.

[zed]

That being the case, and in light of everything else that has been posted here, it may be time to reinstall everything: new hard drive, operating system, the latest drivers, your usual software. Take your time and test everything thoroughly as you do it. The long way round, maybe, but considering how long this has been going on, it might be the only solution left. And hard drives are relatively cheap these days.

It may be that you are right... but that was not my experience.

When I got my new MacPro, I spent days setting it up, installing everything from scratch, testing as I went along, being careful as hell. And when I finally got to the point of trying to do some work, I had the worse audio pops and clicks ever. I couldn't make an audio edit without there being a pop at the joint, whether the waveforms were misaligned or not. And a bunch of other things had me troubleshooting for months.

All I'm saying is that no matter how careful you are and determined to do everything right so that you will have a clean and healthy setup, your problems may not disappear--but they could. This stuff is supposed to work without so much trouble, so it is more likely that there is one little thing that is messing everything else up... and something that may very well be there even if you install everything from scratch.

One thing you didn't mention, okcrounders, is anything to do with your electricity. Do you have any electrical issues in your studio area? I have something weird going on with mine, and it does cause weird noises in my system, especially noticeable when using headphones. I am considering the purchase of an electrical conditioner to see if that eliminates any of my audio issues.

[Bowman]

All I'm saying is that no matter how careful you are and determined to do everything right so that you will have a clean and healthy setup, your problems may not disappear--but they could. This stuff is supposed to work without so much trouble, so it is more likely that there is one little thing that is messing everything else up... and something that may very well be there even if you install everything from scratch.

Good point and I acknowlege that that my suggestion is of the last resort variety. Over the years my preference has been to spend the time working out a problem, since that way I learn about my gear. But there are limits.

My sig includes a Carillon, shipped with GigaStudio 2 installed, which I figured was a good way to avoid problems. I bought the machine partially because the company prided itself on its service. They even had a slogan: "We thrive on service," or something like that. What I didn't know was that Carillon USA was close to bankrupt, their product had become iffy and service had become a joke. The darn thing crashed every time the wind changed directions or if a neighbour sneezed. Carillon USA was next to useless; Carillon UK didn't want to know. After many frustrating months of poking around, learning a lot more than I ever wanted to know about PCs, I discovered that the problem was a bad sector on one of the hard drives, something which didn't immediately show up on whatever diagnostic tool I was using at the time. Yes, it was instructive; it was also a Royal (Vice-Regal? Governor-Generalish?) PITA.

okcrounders has had this problem for several months. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to rebuild and see if the problem doesn't disappear. But I could be wrong. I often am!

Bowman.

[zed]

But I could be wrong. I often am!

You and me both.

Wouldn't it be nice if everything just worked the way it was supposed to!

[okcrounders]

That being the case, and in light of everything else that has been posted here, it may be time to reinstall everything: new hard drive, operating system, the latest drivers, your usual software. Take your time and test everything thoroughly as you do it. The long way round, maybe, but considering how long this has been going on, it might be the only solution left. And hard drives are relatively cheap these days.

It may be that you are right... but that was not my experience.

When I got my new MacPro, I spent days setting it up, installing everything from scratch, testing as I went along, being careful as hell. And when I finally got to the point of trying to do some work, I had the worse audio pops and clicks ever. I couldn't make an audio edit without there being a pop at the joint, whether the waveforms were misaligned or not. And a bunch of other things had me troubleshooting for months.

All I'm saying is that no matter how careful you are and determined to do everything right so that you will have a clean and healthy setup, your problems may not disappear--but they could. This stuff is supposed to work without so much trouble, so it is more likely that there is one little thing that is messing everything else up... and something that may very well be there even if you install everything from scratch.

One thing you didn't mention, okcrounders, is anything to do with your electricity. Do you have any electrical issues in your studio area? I have something weird going on with mine, and it does cause weird noises in my system, especially noticeable when using headphones. I am considering the purchase of an electrical conditioner to see if that eliminates any of my audio issues.

I have no known electricity issues in the studio (that doesn't mean there aren't any, just that I'm not aware of them if there are any). I think I'm going to try a reinstall before determining whether or not I am going to drop money on a power conditioner (at this point, I don't see the harm).

[Bowman]

Please let us know how it turns out.

All fingers and toes crossed,

Bowman.