PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

valis wrote: Start > Ctrl Panels > System > Advanced tab > click "settings" under the Performance Area > go to the Advanced tab in Performance Options, under processor scheduling set it to Adjust for best performance of: "Background Services"

right, i always use that one too



Matej

just for a try - disconnect your lan and usb-devices.
I have had pops and glitches with ableton 7 as well, they disappeared when my network-harddisc died

You may also check the combination of ULLI settings of SCOPE and the buffer settings of Ableton. Try to adjust the buffer settings at the control panel of Ableton.

Neb

was just reading on net about bios optimization and found some suggestions about clicks and pops with audio :

here:

BIOS Setttings

APIC Function

Common Options : Enabled, Disabled

Quick Review

This BIOS feature is used to enable or disable the motherboard's APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller). The APIC provides multiprocessor support, more IRQs and faster interrupt handling.
However, it is only supported by newer operating systems like Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Older operating systems like DOS or Windows 95/98 do not support this feature.
It is recommended that you enable this feature if you are using a newer operating system like Windows XP. Disable it only if you are using an older operating system like DOS or Windows 95/98.
In addition, if you notice clicks and pops when you are listening to music or working with audio files, try disabling this BIOS feature. Some PCI audio cards work better with APIC disabled.
Please note that if you have earlier installed Windows XP with ACPI enabled in the BIOS, Windows XP will no longer boot up if ACPI is disabled in the BIOS. You will need to reinstall Windows XP.
When you load the Windows XP installation routine, the following message will appear on screen :
Press F6 if you have to install a third-party SCSI or RAID driver.
At this point, press the F5 key (not F6!). You can also press the F7 key to immediately load the Standard PC HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) during the installation process.
If you press the F5 key, you will be given a choice of selecting the computer type. Select Standard PC. Using the Standard PC HAL, in conjunction with a single IRQ for the sound card, can improve its performance.


and another link here:

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=sup ... f04c4dc0d2







However, personally, i always install winxp in Standard PC mode and have nice results, ofcourse there are many other things to check out, this is just one of them....


best,

matej

You might consider trying ACPI (APIC enabled) in the future, we've come a long way with computers and I personally haven't seen a machine in my studio in years that needed ACPI disabled. There's actually a fair amount of functionality in modern chipsets being limited without the APIC controller now too...

Also an interesting note that in Vista & Win7, due to the requests of many network managers, changing the HAL (to Standard PC for instance) is a DRAMATICALLY easier affair. This was done so that system administrators could use the same install package for multiple configurations on the client desktops they're deploying, and it means that under those OS's when you change the HAL all you need to do is reboot (there's no rescanning of all system devices & the mess it may create.)

Hi All,

I tried the "Adjust for best performance of Background Services" setting, no improvement.
The Priority of Live in the task manager is already "Normal", not high.

How can I check what my ACPI settings are? My machine is a dual P4 running at 3.4Ghz, with 3GB of RAM. Windows XP 2, SP 2.

@Nebukadneser: What buffer settings are you referring to? I've tried all the different ULLI options in SCOPE Settings and all suffer the problem. The bugger size in Ableton is greyed out as I'm using ASIO drivers.

@luigicampala: I have a PCI ethernet card and a MOTU Express XT, Logic webcam and Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse connected by USB. All of those bar the webcam I kinda need What can I do to actually verify that any of these are causing the problem? (and no, "unplug them and see" is not verification)

@irrelevance: already tried the DSP latency checker, as I said in my posting on it above, everything seemed fine according to that. All green lines, no problems

So, any ideas? Anything silly like ram shortage due to other software that could be causing it?

P4 era...is hyperthreading enabled? Scope is known to be rather finicky alongside it, especially with a lot of midi passing through the Scope drivers. Active sensing is enough to send it into bsod on some machines...

And that era of PC may very well perform better with ACPI disabled (Standard PC), the procedure is well documented here and you just want to make sure you do a backup of your boot partition before that can be restored from CDR or etc. Core2 era & beyond I see little need for disabling ACPI, hyperthreading with modern nehelem & beyond is currently being investigated on forums everywhere...

The problem happens with no midi.

How would I check the hyperthreading setup of my PC?

FWIW, I seem to have improved things a lot by setting the priority of Ableton to "real time" in the task manager...

cjw1378 wrote: How would I check the hyperthreading setup of my PC?

you should know that by which processor you have, for example, i have Pentium 4 2.8 HT, so hyperthreading is possible,
then you can enable or disable it in BIOS.

Me personal i have it disabled , cause of better system stability between Scope and Cubase, also, i use always Standard PC mode,
it works much better with my 3 cards , no crashes or anything similar, i can work whole day without problems.

You can also check in BIOS for PCI latency, if too low , may cause sound glitches or similar, i use 64 or 96 PCI latency timer,

That's my experience with my mobo and audio setup,
for some works, some will say opposite, but after many years, i figure out , it's very important which mobo you have, not just which chipset ,
but also which company,

In my case, i have 2 mobo's, the same chipset (intel 875), almost the same characteristics, one is Asus and another Abit,
whit Asus i had just problems after problems, blue screenes, cubase freezes and so on, maybe one of my Pulsar XTC causes trouble there, not sure,
anyway, i tried then Abit mobo, and problems gonne away, all 3 cards working perfectly , already few years now,
i still have that Asus mobo (internet computer) with Luna II installed and with single card system works well.



best,

Matej

Yes, I have my Scope cards in an earlier P4-era Xeon machine which has cpu's equivalent to Northwood P4's. I can run ACPI without any issues, and even find the machine works better for it (probably due to the mixed 64bit/66mhz PCI bus and 32bit PCI bus among other things.)

However while these Xeons allow HT to be enabled even though Northwoods don't (it was too 'early' in HT's implementation for mainstream P4's to have it available yet) I keep HyperThreading disabled as that era of HT is just an extra set of Integer/pointer registers and it just seems to cause issue (although minor for me.)

valis wrote:However while these Xeons allow HT to be enabled even though Northwoods don't

didn't know (or let's say: remember) there were northwoods without ht. I always thought willamette was abandoned much later, but in fact the northwood already started with FSB400 and 1.6GHz...
all my northwoods do have ht (I'm even sitting right in front of one just now), but intel seems to have it implemented much later than I though...

kylie wrote:

valis wrote:However while these Xeons allow HT to be enabled even though Northwoods don't

didn't know (or let's say: remember) there were northwoods without ht. I always thought willamette was abandoned much later, but in fact the northwood already started with FSB400 and 1.6GHz...
all my northwoods do have ht (I'm even sitting right in front of one just now), but intel seems to have it implemented much later than I though...

The very first steppings didn't have it enabled iirc (my Xeons are technically Prestonia cores and came out a month before Northwood was even shipping in volume.) I actually don't recall whether it was a 'hard' or bios disabling of the HT functionality, it could have been the latter. I would have to dig back to reviews from that era....

at least it must have been present in the 533MHz FSB models already, because the 3.something GHz was the first to have HT enabled. I do think the additional logic was all present, and intel decided at some point to set the correct flag, maybe to push the top-of-the-line processor some more when it hit the market.
when FSB went 800MHz HT was default, iirc...

Yep, that's correct. Northwood started at 400mhz.