New PC->ASIO Crash

thedavewalker · Post by **thedavewalker** » Sun Nov 20, 2005 2:08 pm

OK, so I got fed up of pops and crackles, and got me a 3.0 GHz Pentium D830, now I got Dual-Core heaven and all the stutters have gone.

Instead, I get total PC lock-up if i use ASIO Scope (in SX3, or Reason 3). Don't even have to play anything, just walk away, come back an hour later, PC dead (the XTC Project still working). Apart from the crashes, it's working beautifully...

Guess 1)Are there any new drivers for SCOPE that are multi-processor friendly?

Anybody's guess) Why the crashes, what's happening here?

Don't want to have to give up XTC mode!

AudioDan · Post by **AudioDan** » Sun Nov 20, 2005 3:56 pm

Speaking from about 8 months of heart-wrenching experience with a 14 DSP booster and a Dual Xeon system....NO! There are currently no multiprocessor-friendly drivers. Creamware have been known to say that they believed there is no point to using multi-processor computers with their products due to the "accelerator" nature of their gear. Hence they have not bothered to add multi-thread support into their software.
So, buy a couple of hundred of the ASB synths and you might give them enough collateral to start doing what they should have done two years ago and updating their software to make it compatible with the new trends in computers ie, OSX, Dual Processor, Hyperthreading, Dual Core.
Currently they are falling WAY behind! If you can't afford the above solution then for now you're going to have to give up XTC mode....like I and a lot of other people did.
Sorry about the bad news. I love XTC and I really hope Creamware updates soon, but I got sick of waiting and fighting and now I'm ever so happy with my UAD-1's and my TC Powercore Firewire, so I can wait for a while. Hope you can too.

Cheers,

AudioDan

thedavewalker · Post by **thedavewalker** » Thu Nov 24, 2005 2:40 am

I suppose it'll be pressing it a bit to expect too much development going on, maybe it'll take a while for them to find their feet again after going in and out of receivership a little while ago...?

Whatever, I find to my dismay that although it's waaay worse with XTCMode=1, my PC still locked up in SPF mode too. *cries* - although I do admit I was working on a really rather busy project.

If I ever figure out what's killing it, I'll post it here! Of course, if anyone beats me to it, *respect!*

[ This Message was edited by: thedavewalker on 2005-11-24 02:41 ]

thedavewalker · Post by **thedavewalker** » Thu Nov 24, 2005 1:22 pm

I managed to turn off Dual-Core by disabling ACPI APIC support in the BIOS, and configuring XP as a "Standard PC" instead
- hasn't locked up since, but instead the occasional crackles are back (perhaps due to other tasks running on the PC, no matter how trivial)

[ This Message was edited by: thedavewalker on 2005-11-24 13:22 ]

thedavewalker · Post by **thedavewalker** » Thu Nov 24, 2005 4:35 pm

Dare I say I think I've fixed it?
Dare I???

Besides being annoyed by the crashes, I was upset by the zipper noises from the Graphics card - so it moved the cards around...

...and whaddya know, been running Dual-Core XTC mode for an hour now, no crashes...!

So, anyone else with an ASUS P5WD2 Premium, take note, this is the order I got stuff in now:-

Matrox Parhelia APVe
Terratec DMX 6fire+microwavePC module
Scope
-gap-
Pulsar2

Anyone else concurr...?

[ This Message was edited by: thedavewalker on 2005-11-24 16:40 ]

thedavewalker · Post by **thedavewalker** » Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:29 pm

....well, almost fixed; I left it running all night, and when I woke up there was a "serious error has occurred" message from Cubase SX3 and a wierd machine-gun noise - the non-virtual Midi parts were still playing tho, and the machine itself was still working (I'm typing this message), so I suppose I can forgive it...

Clearly, tho much improved, more testing required...

Post by **garyb** » Thu Nov 24, 2005 10:32 pm

what are your current irqs?

thedavewalker · Post by **thedavewalker** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 10:34 am

According to Device Manager->View->Resources by Connection->IRQ, this is where we're at:-

(ISA) 0 System Timer
(ISA) 1 Standard 101/102-Keyboard
(ISA) 4 COM1
(ISA) 6 Standard floppy disk controller
(ISA) 8 RTC
(ISA) 9 ACPI
(ISA) 10 MPU-401
(ISA) 12 PS/2 Mouse
(ISA) 13 Numeric data processor
(ISA) 14 Primary IDE
(ISA) 15 Secondary IDE
(PCI) 16 PCI Express Root Port - 27DO
(PCI) 16 PCI Express Root Port - 27EO
(PCI) 16 PCI Express Root Port - 2775
(PCI) 16 Intel PRO/1000 NIC
(PCI) 16 Matrox Parhelia APVe
(PCI) 17 USB Controller - 27C9
(PCI) 18 USB Controller - 27CA
(PCI) 19 USB Controller - 27CB
(PCI) 20 USB Controller - 27C8
(PCI) 20 USB2 Controller - 27CC
(PCI) 21 DMX 6fire 24/96
(PCI) 22 Creamware Scope
(PCI) 23 Creamware Pulsar2
(PCI) 23 Serial ATA - 27C0

- see anything that makes you quivver?

Post by **Guest** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 11:21 am

Your Video card is sharing with other devices. Can you put the Video on its own IRQ?

Same thing for the CreamWare cards they should not share IRQ except with each other

Also is active sensing turned off? try to run audio without midi for few hours.

[ This Message was edited by: antar on 2005-11-25 11:37 ]

thedavewalker · Post by **thedavewalker** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 4:57 am

Alas, there's not much I can do about the IRQs - I've disabled everything I dare to on the motherboard, so what I've got left I think I'm pretty well much stuck with; that's XP for ya. If anyone has a trick up their sleeve, please let me know!

As for MIDI Active Sensing, in SFP I've connected the MIDI Monitor to see if I've got any - all quiet, so presumably it's also quiet when I've got XTC mode on too...

I'll try running the Audio engine for a while without any MIDI, but that won't be much use to me in the long run - I'm a real-time kinda guy, I like to jam along with the machines...

I'm just glad the machine isn't crashing any more, solved by swapping the slots around - how mad is that?

Post by **garyb** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 10:47 am

not mad at all. different slots share different resources. that motherboard has a sh*tload of things on it requiring irqs. how about this, do you REALLY need all those usb ports? disable two of them in the device manager, that should help and still leave plenty of usb connectivity.

you need to get the sata bus on a different irq than scope. there are lots of other things to disable if nessessary(in the device manager so easily reversed!)

[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2005-11-26 10:49 ]

thedavewalker · Post by **thedavewalker** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 4:22 am

I played with it all day yesterday without a hitch, using different plugins so I guess the Cubase SX error I got earlier was a separate matter.

Might be worth starting a new Topic: The Great Dual Core Debate?

During the time I switched off the dual-coreness on my shiny new PC, the dreaded pops and crackles came back.

All the years I've spent trying to get rid of the little sods messing about with PCI Latencies and Slot/IRQ juggling, gone overnight with Dual Core(/Hyperthreading too I'd guess).

In XTC mode.

With intBlkSize=128 !! (OK, it got shirty with me at 64, but I think I can let a whole extra ms latency slide...)

...once I got it to work at all of course.

Might actually get some music writ now.

ScofieldKid · Post by **ScofieldKid** » Sun Nov 27, 2005 6:38 pm

Dave,

Just a pointer to the thread we've been having over in Tech Talk: http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... orum=19&54

I think Shayne and I both spent enough time battling dual-core to give it a pass. I think it was worth a try, but I'm running stable at single-core. 'nuff said.