Lean Drivers for mixing???

[charleyman2]

Hi!
I've got a problem with the drivers of the motu... they consume an awful lot of CPU, and the
meter of the asio is very restless, even when not playing audio... and tried everyhing
with larger buffers, excluding in & outputs etc...

So... I discovered when I use the internal soundcard (macbook) there is more power left
for my plugins, and the asio stays more in rest... but the sound of course brrrr...

Next... I consider buying a small extra soundcard (esi 2 in 2 out looks quite good)
with a light asio-driver just for when I'm mixing, to have more power...

Or next too and easier if applicable... Is there a light asio for my motu (828) which I could choose when mixing?
Just 2 out for mixing use...?
Or do you think we could persuade motu to write one??? (they are poor in responding to problems...)
And... Will it be usefull???

Any one the same trouble?
Opinions anyone on this case?

[DJ Synchro]

Exactly the same problems here. MOTU won't answer my technote. I also have poor ASIO performance with my 24IO. Even with no playback the ASIO meter in Cubase 5 is bouncing like crazy.
I have a AMD Athlon X2 4600+ Dualcore CPU with 4GB of RAM and even the smallest Cubase project is not playable with a ASIO buffer of 512 and lower. It drives me crazy and making me think of buying a new PC or a new audio interface... I thought the support of Terratec was horrible, but MOTU support is just as bad!

[TheRealRoach]

download DPC latency checker:

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Run it while running your cubase session that is giving you problems. The readout should be somewhere between 20 microseconds and 100 microseconds.

[DJ Synchro]

I know, been there, done that. DPC Latency checker is giving readouts on my system which are going thrue the roof while running Cubase AND while just, well, doing nothing. Haven't found what is causing this yet... But I know there must be something wrong...

download DPC latency checker:

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Run it while running your cubase session that is giving you problems. The readout should be somewhere between 20 microseconds and 100 microseconds.

[TheRealRoach]

That would be the first thing to resolve. When I have come across this the problem it was resolved by the disabling wireless networking card in one case, and changing video card drivers in another.

You audio interfaces will not function properly if your PCI bus is bogged down by some hardware or software in the system. Real-time audio requires a stable and high bandwidth available on your PCI bus.

[charleyman2]

Hi again, Charley here.

Today bought 4 gig (instead of 2)... Macbook under windows only sees 3 gig, macOS sees 4.
Problem the same, very restless asio and stuttering audio.
Also bought Infrasonic Amon (small soundcard) to try out, and for good playback on the road.
However, problem still arises! So not only Motu the problem...

Also got respons from Motu! They can not guarantee stable functioning under bootcamp!
Their drivers do not support such a set up...
That could make sense in my case, but some of you work in XP-stand-alone on a PC and have the same trouble...

BTW under macOS same problem...

Keep you posted!
Charley

[TheRealRoach]

Charley did you read the above posts about DPC latency checker?

Run it as instructed above and report what happens.

[DJ Synchro]

That would be the first thing to resolve. When I have come across this the problem it was resolved by the disabling wireless networking card in one case, and changing video card drivers in another.

You audio interfaces will not function properly if your PCI bus is bogged down by some hardware or software in the system. Real-time audio requires a stable and high bandwidth available on your PCI bus.

Your right. I tried almost everything. I even swapped video cards, but this didn't solve the problem. I tried disabling all hardware except the sound card, no luck. The funny thing is though, when I reduce the screen resolution, the performance suddenly increased. So, it could be a video card thing, but I'm not entirely sure yet...

[TheRealRoach]

DJ,

It could also be a software thing as well since software can incorrectly instruct hardware to access the PCI bus much more than it needs too.

I would suggest uninstalling software that isn't vital for your audio system, especially items that run in the background (thing like automatic updaters, antivirus, etc).

In the long-term you may want to consider reformatting the whole thing and setting up your system as a dual-boot, if you haven't already.

[DJ Synchro]

DJ,

It could also be a software thing as well since software can incorrectly instruct hardware to access the PCI bus much more than it needs too.

I would suggest uninstalling software that isn't vital for your audio system, especially items that run in the background (thing like automatic updaters, antivirus, etc).

In the long-term you may want to consider reformatting the whole thing and setting up your system as a dual-boot, if you haven't already.

Well, even on a clean formatted system, performance still is poor. But there is a substantial difference between Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. On Windows Vista, performance is the worst, with dropouts and very high latency's. On XP it's a little bit better but on Windows 7, strangely enough, the performance is the best of all. I'm even wondering now if it may just be the processor not having enough processing power for everything. It's a AMD Athlon X2 4600+ @ 2,4Ghz. It's an older model CPU so it could just be that. However, with a ASIO buffer setting of 256 I should be able to run a couple of audio channels and some plugs without any problems right...? But that's not the case. With the ASIO buffer setting of 256 (512 even) I get cracks and stutters all over the place and the ASIO meter in Cubase bounces back and forth between 30 and 80% like crazy... Not as it should be, that's for shure.
I'm considering upgrading my system soon, so that will tell me if the problems were hardware related or not.

[TheRealRoach]

You should be able to do a great deal better with your machine. To give you an idea... My old single-processor 1.73ghz Pentium M laptop could record 16 channels of 24 bit/44.1k audio while software monitoring all channels and playing back to a headphone mix all at 128 buffer size (approx 9ms round trip latency). Your system should be able to slay that.

Something is hogging your PCI bus big time, and it is likely hardware-based if you have problems on a fresh install. The first thing I would do is swap out your video card for a very simple, bare-bones video card. I would also research various motherboard BIOS versions and give some different versions a try.

It's no surprise that Vista is the poorest performer of them all. I've never been impressed at all with it.

[joefix413]

I have to agree with the last post, I run a 2.6 p4 ht , xp pro sp 2 with a 2408 mk 3 and can run 25 to 30 tracks with a fair amout of processing before my machine says uncle... please look at your pci bus resources, is your video card pci???

[DJ Synchro]

I have to agree with the last post, I run a 2.6 p4 ht , xp pro sp 2 with a 2408 mk 3 and can run 25 to 30 tracks with a fair amout of processing before my machine says uncle... please look at your pci bus resources, is your video card pci???

My videocard is a Asus ATI HD2400 Pro PCI-e card.
I'm considering buying a nVidia card. Maybe the card is causing the problems...?

[TheRealRoach]

I would stay the hell away from NVidia Cards. Mine gives me endless headaches and their driver reliability/predicatbility is on par with MOTU's.

Check this out before you buy a different card:
When you boot your system go into you OS startup options (the place where you would select safe mode etc...) and try loading in VGA mode. OR, uninstall your video card drivers. After either of these your screen will run at a very low resolution as graphics card acceleration will be off/disabled/uninstalled. Try opening your session and see how the system performs. Aside from bad graphics playback, I would be willing to bet that your system will run great. If this is the case then it is definitely a video card/video driver issue. If you are still having the same issues as mentioned in previous posts, then it is something else...

[DJ Synchro]

I would stay the hell away from NVidia Cards. Mine gives me endless headaches and their driver reliability/predicatbility is on par with MOTU's.

Check this out before you buy a different card:
When you boot your system go into you OS startup options (the place where you would select safe mode etc...) and try loading in VGA mode. OR, uninstall your video card drivers. After either of these your screen will run at a very low resolution as graphics card acceleration will be off/disabled/uninstalled. Try opening your session and see how the system performs. Aside from bad graphics playback, I would be willing to bet that your system will run great. If this is the case then it is definitely a video card/video driver issue. If you are still having the same issues as mentioned in previous posts, then it is something else...

Thanks for trying to help me . I disabled/uninstalled the videocard driver, but that doesn't solve anything! The CPU meter in Cubase still is bouncing back and forth like crazy. I even lowered the screen resolution to 800x600... No solution either... To give you an idea; The project I open is a project with around 15 audio tracks @ 44Khz, 24bit, 5 VSTi plugins and some reverb and delay plugs. When I put the ASIO buffer to 256, playback is horrible with constant dropouts and cracks and pops all over the place. The ASIO meter in Cubase then is stuttering around 80 % (!) Only when I put the buffer to 1024, the playback is somewhat better. Crazy situation don't you think? With my configuration I would expect flawless performance too, but there is no way I can achieve this. I tried about everything, but no luck. When I run DPC latency checker, high peaks in latency occur every minute. When I do a fresh Windows install with some OS tweaks, there is no difference! I'm on the point of throwing my Pc out of the window and buy a new system... I'm so fed up with this!