Dropout problems

Hi guys, I'm having problems with audio dropouts that no one can figure out, so I'm turning to you guys for help/suggestions. I've been dealing with Ryan at Cakewalk Support and as good as he is, he can't figure it out either. Here's the low down: I'm getting the dropout message not only while trying to record (one track at a time), as well as when I play black. I also get the audio dropout just while monitoring, transport not even running. I seems to be better with my ASIO latency set to max, but will still do. What's even more frustrating is that sometimes it will go all day without doing it, then the next time I fire it up it takes 20 seconds before it starts doing it again. Ryan thinks it might be some sort of IRQ conflict, but who knows. He had me download a Windows Monitoring application to see what was happening on my system when it does this, but after hours os sifting thru that info he still came up empty. My CPU usage is never more than 20 percent, I am not hooked up to the internet, no games, no applications running at all (that I'm aware of). I had Dell bulid this strictly for this purpose. There is tons of system here, but something's not quite right. I can never achieve a roundtrip latency of less than 5 or 6ms which seems high to me considering the rig I'm using. I know there are a lot of variables, but that's why I'm starting this thread. One of you guys has likely experience similar issues somewhere down the road. Ryan has gone way above and beyond the call of duty trying to figure this out and I'm going mad. Help!
System: Dell Studio XPS435T,  intel Core i7 940 processor(8MB L3 Cache 2.93 GHz) , -6GB Ram, 500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive 7200 RPM, Windows Vista SP1 Home Premium 64 Bit

No VS2480 involved. Just the Sonar. The drive listed is my C drive. I think Ryan (from Cakewalk support) has had me tweak everything relevant in Vista, but I'm not sure about the program thing you mentioned. Where is that located? I don't have a copy of Windows XP, but I'm still suspicious about Vista. Ryan says I'm the only call they've had with this problem that they haven't been able to solve. He also says they don't have a test machine there at Cakewalk yet that is running the Intel i7 processor. Any chance the length of my usb cable (12ft.) could cause an issue with the V700R?

Cable lengths can cause some problems. Cable capacitance can sometimes degrade very high frequency signals. Try the cable they provided with the VS700R.

Oh ya, Jeff, I have run a latency checker - no spikes show up when the audio drops out, although once I did get a 'too high' spike.

I am running in 64 bit mode. Haven't tried running 32 bit yet, but I feel I shouldn't have to.

Thanks Jeff. No, I haven't checked that usb cable yet. I'm at home and the VStudio is at my studio. I bought a supposedly high quality one when I got it, but that doesn't guarantee anything.  There's something odd going on, because I sometimes get the audio dropout when I'm just monitoring through an input and not recording or playing back anything. I mean that's virtually no demand on the system. Like I said, Ryan at Cakewalk suspects some sort of IRQ conflict withing the computer. I don't have any of the other 5 usb ports being used by anything else except the mouse and keyboard, so it must be something going on internally if it is indeed an IRQ conflict. I'm also wondering if there's any possibility the power supply could cause anything weird like that.

There shouldn't be any problem with the i7 as that's what I'm using and what we use at bigger demonstrations.

The fact that the DPC latency checker said "too high" at one point concerns me. Was this while idle? What average DPC latency figure are you getting? As a test try disabling your onboard LAN interface in device manager and see if that has any effect.

If you haven't already, definitely try other USB ports. But first I'd like to see that DPC latency solid well below 100 with no spikes while idle.

Audiodog


Ryan had me try a different usb port, but I think we only changed it once. I might try moving it again. I'll check the DPC latency figure again tomorrow. It was idle when I saw that spike one time. Seems like it goes higher than 100, though. I'll double check that and post it.

In answer to Jeff, I am running a UPS power supply as well as a Tripplite voltage regulator.

Do you have hibernate and standby enabled in your power schemes? There could be a power system monitoring background service going on with a UPS power supply which is enabled in Windows?

Audiodog


Brandon, I'm running the DPC  Latency Checker now. While idle it shows Absolute Maximum of 331.

Yeah 331 is way too high for a machine such as yours. For example, my i7 sticks around 40-50 and never spikes above anything in the 60s. There is some driver or component that is causing trouble and interrupting realtime performance.

Have you tried disabling your onbaord LAN drivers in the device manager?

Audiodog


Yeah, I've disabled the LAN driver and damn near everything Ryan and I could think of. I went to the link Jeff sent me above(Sweetwater computer audio setup) and did all the stuff they said to do (except what Jeff said not to do regarding programs or background settings) . Then I ran the latency monitor again. For a while it went down to about 140 then I got this spike of 14,746 which seemed to stay there for a while. I went in to Device Manager and started disabling anything that wasn't already but nothing seemed to help. After resetting the latency monitor my readings were hovering around 140-250 on average. Then I started running Sonar again - just recording some simple two track audio - and kept getting constant dropouts - about every thirty seconds until I went in to my ASIO settings and maxed out the buffer. Then it ran fine for about an hour. But, mind you, it was just simple two track stuff and any 'live recording' with a musician having to monitor himself would have been unusable with that kind of latency.
I'm going crazy. I hate to think this brand new computer I spent two grand on to do nothing but run Sonar is worthless and will have to be replaced. I can edit on it and live with it - but no way I can record even myself on it - let alone a group - which is what I do for a living. Gotta keep recording on my VS2480 and exporting .wav files to edit in Sonar - what a drag.

I feel your pain and I can imagine how frustrating it is to get a brand new machine and have this happen. We'll work with you for as long as it takes to come to some solution - so at least take some solace that we won't abandon you on this.

140-250 with no spikes should be sufficient to do realtime audio work, but it's still IMO unacceptably high for a machine of that speed and newness. The spike of 14k is just bizarre and suggestive of some serious interruption in the system.

Let me just get the easy question out of the way first. Is there even a possibility of returning the machine if we can't get it worked out? And if so, how much longer do you have?

The main things for me that have caused higher DPC latencies in the past have been LAN, Bluetooth, or WLAN drivers.

Let me ask this (and this may require a call to Dell) but are you absolutely sure you havethe latest motherboard BIOS, Chipset drivers and video card drivers? What kind of graphics card is in the machine.

Bottom line is that if I couldn't get my new 2k i7 based computer to a lower than 100 DPC latency I would be disappointed. Perhaps Dell tech support could run the latency checker on the same model you have and tell you what they get. If they see the same spikes you are getting they should attempt to explain why it is so high.

One more thing: Do you have any other computers around, even a laptop or something, that you could at least just try the VS-700 on to see if you get the same behavior or if in fact it works fine.

Oh yeah, there are no Bluetooth devices or drivers on the system, and I purposely left off a wireless LAN network card when having the computer built. I do have a LAN card installed that I can enable when I need to get online for support or registering product, etc. Disabling it never seems to matter with regards to my problem.

Hi Audiodog,

Do download and install the latest BIOS and drivers for the system from Dell's website. Since they don't use standard off the shelf components its impossible to know exactly what's in your system in terms of the motherboard. Because of that will be tricky to find the culprit. At this point all you can do is update drivers/ BIOS. If that doesn't do the trick then Dell needs to update their system so it works properly.

Just thought I'd report back after a couple of days on the phone with Dell tech support. Long story short: my BIOS/chipset drivers are the most current available (A07), they had me disable something in my system BIOS that dropped my latency reading on the DPC to about 80 while idle. According to Brandon this should be acceptable. This didn't solve any of my recording/playback dropout issues, however. They also went through a few other things after taking remote control of my computer but nothing has solved the issue. It still seems weird to me that if I go into my Audio/Options tab in Sonar and set my ASIO mixing latency to the max my system performs reasonably well. However, you can't record a live band or do overdubs like that. Even then I still get random dropouts - sometimes while just setting there monitoring. Pretty much relegates me to mixing and editing only. So....... I'm now prepared to give up and can my new 2K computer and buy something else. Anybody have a recommendation? I've been looking at this one on Sweetwater's site:
http://www.sweetwater.com...n_station/csrackxt.php
Anybody using any of their stuff?

Yeah, I loaded it on to my laptop, but unfortunately it's also a Dell and it wouldn't run 30 seconds before dropping out. Exact same problem. It's and XPS1530 - reasonable powerful dual core intel 2.6 GHz , 6 MB ram. Not sure about the motherboard. I replaced the usb cable on both computers just to be sure something wasn't squirrely there. I didn't really go through the laptop with a fine tooth comb checking through the device manager and disabling stuff. Probably should have disable the internal sound card before I tried the Sonar, but didn't.

I hear you Jeff. The Dell tech couldn't tell me what kind of motherboard they used in there. It sounded like they use all kind of different ones. My main i7  computer doesn't haven't much of anything running on it. I left tons of stuff off of it intentionally when I had them build it - knowing it's only function in life would be running Sonar. They did actually hint that they might replace the motherboard in my computer. Right now the status is that the guy I talked to at Dell for the last two days is referring it to his 'higher up' tech specialists. In Dell's defense, this guy really was trying to figure this out and was very concerned.

Hey Brandon, yeah I have been trying numerous options as per Dell's higher up techs. They apparently have a more specialized support dept. and they've been calling me regularly trying to resolve this issue. I've got to give them credit, they've been trying damn hard to deal with this. Unfortunately we ran out of options yesterday and all parties have now resigned to getting a different computer. They're not sure whether a proven motherboard replacement will fit in my chassis. I'd have to check into physical specs to see if a motherboard with a proven track record with Sonar will drop in to my chassis. I'm not sure if I want to risk spending $600-700 on a motherboard and find out it won't work either. Just thinking about talking to Sweetwater at this point. Last thing we did was completely wipe the computer clean and re-format the C drive and re-install Vista and Sonar - nothing else - no sound cards, no software, just essential stuff to run the system. Still dealing with dropouts, although the system does seem much more stable in general. In fact, damn stable with ASIO mixing latency maxed out. I just can't record that way - way too much delay. Still drops out fairly often with Perfect Space inserted on the master buss at mixdown. So, for now I guess I'll just keep recording to my VS2480 and exporting .wav files over to Sonar for editing. I must say that after a month of using Sonar under my belt, this software is AWESOME. I love the the whole system. I hope someday soon to be able to actually record with it as well. The power of this system is unbelievable and the c700C console is very well designed. A few wish list items like everyone else, but all in all, excellent. Still open to computer recommendations from any of you guys!