2408Mk3 Clicks-Its getting into my nerves

[PedroCruz]

Thanx Jidis for the advice, im not making ghost images as you reffer, 'cause the problems i had earlier never made me to do learn it because in the past, all i needed to do was to reinstall the windows, run the chipset update and install the PCI 424 and i was bullet proof again... now i cant get (reed, rid - dont know how to write:( )of this clicks like tuubert cant...
Im wondering if we are the only ones...
I dont know if i should suspect from my 2X 512Mb Kingstom RAM, its working perfectly with all apps.
Im really losing faith in this system
Cheers, and of course, any help is damn apreciatted...

[tuubert]

hey Pedro.

check the soldering of the female audiowire connectors on the 424pci card.
How does it look? Looks OK? no? (google for 'soldering' if you are unsure of how it should look)

Here it looks like it could be better. on port4 it seems best of the four and that port haven't given a click yet. on port2 the soldering is the worst and it clicks like hell.

I'm not touching the card with a soldering iron though, I want to keep the warranty going....

I have a session tomorrow, let's see how the brat behaves..

[PedroCruz]

All soldering is fine here... the pci card its in very good shape...
Ill wait for answer from support, they did a audio card so they might know whats going on on output3 and why is this clicks happening...
Im really frustrated right now...
Cheers[/img]

[The Sinner]

Ok i am the owner of a new PCIX 424 Card, not even a week old. It is talking to a MOTU 2408mk2.

I am getting noise in analog 5/6 bank A according to this picture in cue mix.

PS nothing is at all running on this chan 5-6.




If you wish to hear my noise here is the same MIDI phrase played through:

my 2408
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?a ... C34CB5262E

and my core audio

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?a ... BF2D4AB0D2

how do i get rid of this!? should i call MOTU support?

[PedroCruz]

I would say with the experience im having, its no used to talk with the tech support and believe me i would be happy if i was wrong...
your noise its pretty close to mine, but seems that your noise change in frequency, they sound diferent from one to another, and i get always the same noise... its always the same click... you have diferent sounding clicks... i really cant tell you much...

[The Sinner]

So ghetto fix:

Guys i just moved my audio wire cable into the third slot and they seem to have dissapeared (the clicks), whats up with that? I am still trying to get intouch with motu i just paid 300 for that card, all of them should work.

[PedroCruz]

The sinner
i tryed slot #2 and no luck.
I tryed slot #3. I left windows media players playing mp3 repeating and random, i routed the analog out 3 to Analog in3 with a jack cable, i opened a mono track in nuendo recording the in3. so if i had any click it would be recorded by Nuendo.
I left it recording for 4hours, when i arrived it looked like a Kick drum track...
so far audiowire #1 #2 and #3 its out of the equation...
but there where times in audio file that i didnt had clicks i would say for 15minutes...
ill try this method in audiowire 4 this evening...
Im really sad and pissed of with technical support...
a friend of mine got its 2408mk2 burning and they dont answer to its huge quantity of emails...

[PedroCruz]

Another try, Ive just went to my borther's home and installed the PCI424 in his home computer with Win XP Pro sp2, and the syntoms was exactly the same here... so the only possible broken piece is PCI 424...
Now ill wait for technical support answer and ill ask them if this is repairable or will it be solve if i buy a new PCI card.......
Thank everyone who helped here...
Best Regards!
Pedro Cruz

[PedroCruz]

Hello again,
Does anyone know if there is any kind of software that tests hardware?
or if there is someway to test the PCI 424?
Its kind of wierd the pci 424 installs perfectly, the motu pci audio console works great, any changes i make the PCI answer to this changes and eventhough i still have the clicks...
Ive been trying to call to the Portuguese Distributor but it seems they are on vacations...

Pedro Cruz

[sounddaddy]

I am getting them too ... i have had this card for about 1 month .... now when I play any soft synth with a MIDI pattern I get clicks .... BUT if I play a soft synth from a keyboard it's fine .... only getting clicks with sequencer.

[zywot66]

what MOTU said to me.

Thank you for writing.

Are you running Windows XP SP2? What type of FW card are you using?

Our FW interfaces under Windows are only 100% compatible on FW cards
that use a Texas Instrument or Lucent chip set.

NEC, VIA, or simply OHCI compliant are not compatible chip sets.

There are also issues with SP2's 1394 driver. MOTU recommends using SP1.

if you go on unicornnation there's a topic called All motu firewire
users using xp sp 2 or something... first it says the sp 2 1394 driver
is flawed and it reduces bandwidth from 400 Mbps to 100 Mbps.... so
there is a little applet to reinstall the sp 1 driver on the microsoft
site and also there is another link to just get the driver and do it
yourself.... it also says that DEP must be shut off by going into the
c:\boot.ini file and changing the last line from "/NoExecuteBlahblah"
to "/Execute"... this has made a WORLD difference...... no more pops
squeaks that aren't a result of pushing the computer too hard (this was
happening before and i know what not to do to avoid it...)

where i found this in unicornation:
http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtopic.php?
t=4810&highlight=firewire

and the microslop applet:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222/en-us



Check to see if you have a shared IRQ number with the onboard Sound
card and FW card. Disable the onboard sound card within the BIOS. IRQ
settings or Power management can be the cause of high pitch output and
stuttering.

Disable Wireless Internet networking.

Make sure the graphics card and FW card run on their own IRQ (disable
unused USB2 nodes).


Battery Polling:
Some PC machines will have an issue where the FW bus has been
interrupted. This is usually due to the ACPI. On windows you can't fix
this ACPI, but in many cases work around it. On some laptops this is
due to Battery polling. Try disabling the battery driver in device
manager. This will fix the high pitch output ( only an issue in SP2),
but leaves you with your PC that switches off when the battery runs out
rather than gracefully shutting down.


Regards,
Garrick Sanderson
MOTU Tech Support

[Jidis]

what MOTU said to me.
Our FW interfaces under Windows are only 100% compatible on FW cards
that use a Texas Instrument or Lucent chip set.

... and I thought I had a screwed up sense of humor

<edit> Sorry, just saw Zywot's got an 896. I thought they told him that about a "424" problem (not that no one there would)

[arth]

what MOTU said to me.

[....]
it also says that DEP must be shut off by going into the
c:\boot.ini file and changing the last line from "/NoExecuteBlahblah"
to "/Execute"... this has made a WORLD difference...... no more pops
squeaks that aren't a result of pushing the computer too hard (this was
happening before and i know what not to do to avoid it...)
[...]
Regards,
Garrick Sanderson
MOTU Tech Support

What /noexecute=... in boot.ini does is to allow systems with a newer CPU that has Data Execute Protection to turn it on -- by default only for programs which want to use DEP. For those machines, it stops bugs and malicious programs from executing code that's in data segments, at no performance penalty. In other words, it is a Good Thing. (For CPUs without DEP, i.e. any CPU older than a year or so, it does nothing, so whether you leave it or not doesn't matter.)

Changing to /execute=..., like this tech person recommends, means you create a parameter called execute. As noexecute then doesn't exist, it will use the default value, /noexecute=OptIn, and NOT disable it like this tech person obviously thought. To disable it, use /noexecute=AlwaysOff

(What the new /execute parameter will do is a deprecated alias for /PAE, which turns off physical address extension. This means that you can't use more than 4 GB RAM or more, and can't use DEP either.)

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352 for more details on the /noexecute= parameter and values.

What's worth noting is that if MOTU's drivers won't work with /noexecute=AlwaysOn or =OptOut in boot.ini, it's because of bugs or design flaws in the drivers, where code in protected memory is executed. If it can't work with PAE, it's because it incorrectly assumes that there's a flat memory model. While I don't expect MOTU to admit to buggy programming, I would expect them to at least give correct advice, like adding the software that doesn't work with DEP to an exclusion list, or turn off PAE with /NoPAE and advise that this also will disable 4 GB RAM and DEP.

[PedroCruz]

Ive just disable Hyper Threading and I let nuendo recording my out3 as i did before in other experiments and i didnt had any click at all in a period of 6HOURS!!!

Ive always had HT disable since i bought this computer, cause at the time neither Steinberg products neither PCI 424 drivers supported HT yet, and i cant remember since when i have the HT enabled, but i remember i enabled HT to see if it worth once in theory Nuendo 3 and the new MOTU drivers support HT, and even steinberg recommends HT...
so i enabled it to see if there were any improvements, and at the time i might not have clicks and left it enable...
Its not confirmed that this is the problem, but and really had improvements...
I guess that HT might cause clock problems once your CPU is divided in 2... i dont know... i know it got better

tuubert, i dont know if you can disable a processor in G5, try to work with a single processor to see if you have improvements...
I still find hard to be this the problem, because when i tested in my PCI424 in my brother computer (which is an AMD Semptron) the computer dont have any kind of HT and the clicks were there like they were here... (but the computer is really slow, 100Mhz RAM speed bla bla bla i hope this counts)

I hope it is solved...

[PedroCruz]

arth, isnt your speech all related to FireWire cards like 828, 896, Traveler???
thats what i suppose...
This is a PCI424 products Post...
Thanks for your help anyway!
Best Regards
Pedro Cruz