896mk3 / WinXP / Cubase Latency

[lil bunny fufu]

I had a PreSonus FirePod that was a little dodgy so I bought a MOTU 896mk3. Its connected to my PC via 1394.

I'm noticing the common squeals, etc when I set the samples per buffer any lower than 192. I've spent the better part of 3 days rummaging through the interwebs trying to make sure I had my •••• sorted regarding BIOS, OS, and software settings and I still can't get any love below 192. I've updated every driver I can find, turned off every function or device I'm not using, etc. Anybody got any ideas?

PC is an ASUS P5WDH Deluxe (BIOS 2504, TI on-board 1394 & TI 1394 controller) / Intel E6850 processor (2x 3.0 GHz) / 2 GB DDR2 800 RAM split dual channel / 74 gig WD Raptor 10K hard drive (SATA) / NVIDIA 8400GS PCIe graphics card / WinXP Pro

[TheRealRoach]

Read this and try it:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... 14&t=31518

[lil bunny fufu]

Thanks for the reply.

I tried that, and it didn't help. The "old" driver's installed and tried SidSpeed 3 and SidSpeed 2 in the registry.

[TheRealRoach]

What is your input and output latency at your 192 buffer setting?

[lil bunny fufu]

My round trip latency is about 22 ms, recording in Cubase at 44.1 kHz / 24-bit, MOTU audio console set for 192 samples per buffer.

I measured this by plugging a 57 in to a channel on the 896 and routing it to a track and then patching the output of that track to an analog output on the 896 and then taking that analog output in to a different input routed to a second track and then recording a stick click on both.

Thanks

[TheRealRoach]

22ms is way higher than it should be. I'm on a quad 3.0ghz and I run about 3.8ms round trip latency. On my old P4800 2.8ghz system I could do 5ms.

Things to check:
- how many processes are running on idle (should be low twenties)
- Check your motu driver. The favorite seems to be 3.6.7.0, or 3.6.7.4.
- It's not entirely clear but you should be using dedicated FW card, not onboard
- did you double check all of your steps in the FIX thread?
- Have you tried reinstalling the OS from scratch and installing only the necessary audio software?

It seems that something is truncating the FW bus speed. After multiple observations in person and on this forum it seems to me that the squeals/interrupted playback happen as a result of a limited FW bandwidth.

[lil bunny fufu]

Thanks once again for your efforts to help, man.

I'm running 24 processes on idle. I went in and turned off everything I could without XP getting flaky and that didn't help.

I'm running the onboard 1394 hardware and driver, TI. I tried a PCIe 1394 card and killed the onboard stuff and that didn't help.

I did retrace my steps in the fix thread, and I'm square there.

I'm out of town, so when I get back I'll try a different driver. I loaded the one off the disc originally and swapped to the latest one from MOTU's website, but that didn't make a difference either.

I haven't tried nuking the thing and starting fresh yet, but I'm afraid I'm about to that point.

[TheRealRoach]

Everything looks ok in theory.

Just to clarify, when you select buffer settings below 192 you still hear audio, its just messed up, correct? And it gets increasingly interrupted as you selected smaller and smaller buffer settings? Also, are you running 44100 sample rate or something else? I would suggest trying different sample rates in an effort to find more clues as to whats going on.

The drivers can really make things go haywire. I currently can't install anything above 3.6.7.4 because my 896mk1's will produce "errors" when I launch my DAW making playback impossible.

If you can't pull any further clues out of the current setup then I would suggest reformatting the whole damn thing and starting fresh. Once XP is reinstalled, install your 896 driver first and use Windows Media Player to play a CD or sound file. If you still can't lower your buffer below 192 then its got to be something hardware related and frankly, I would just take it back. Get something else.