Echo Layla 3G and the PCIe Bus

Get in touch with EchoAudio, see what they say. I have 2 old Layla 24 PCI cards and Win7, they do well.

Gerry - I've been suggesting that he contact Echo. He might call them, but they are pretty much out of the interface business now. Working strictly it seems on audio over ethernet.
 
Sir Les - I'll try your suggestions if and when I get a chance to sit down at his PC, and thanks!

Hello, Larry. I have seen both of your threads but have been a little too brainscrambled lately to really reply. If you have been searching this forum for answers then I'm sure you have encountered the threads (and posts) I have made on the subject back when I was still trying to get my old Echo Layla up and running. Those are VERY old threads and I've moved on to using my Focusrite Scarlett 18i6 exclusively HOWEVER I did actually start getting my Echo 3G working reasonably well after some kernoodling.
 
First of I have some concerns with some of the statements you have made in regrads to PCI vs. PCIe. I am no computer guru but as far as I know a legacy PCI board will in no circumstance fit into a PCIe slot. They are physically different. If that is NOT the case I would sure like someone to tell me so but on my ASUS MOBO there is NO way for me to slide my old Echo Card into the PCIe slot.
 
So there may be a miscommunication there (in your other thread you made reference to the PCI Echo card somehow getting into a PCIe slot which is why I brought it up).
 
Okay... so that said, in my scenario I had an old XP system and an Echo Layla 3G. The motherboard was old enough that PCI (not PCIe) was the standard connection.
 
On those older boards the PCI slots used a "native" chipset. Again I will point out that I am NOT a computer guru but what I have gleaned is that "native" means that those old PCI connectors had their own dedicated chipset handling the data to and from the CPU. This makes everything flow faster making it good for audio.
 
On newer motherboards after the old PCI standard was being pushed aside in favor of the newer PCIe slots what they did was continue supporting those old PCI slot BUT they would "bridge" the board/connection to the newer PCIe chipset.
 
So now the data was taking a little detour and being processed by a chipset intended to process data from the newer PCI slots.
 
For most purposes those "legacy" PCI slots that the MOBO manufacturers installed would work (just think of all the crap you could run through those ports... like printers, controllers, whatever). The "bridged" setup works.
 
Unfortunately for streaming stuff like audio and video that bridge screws things up and creates an extra step... and that is where the "crackles" come in.
 
I had those crackles. I thought I had made a wise decision by snagging the ASUS board that I did because it had that legacy slot but that "bridged" vs "native" PCI crap bit me in the butt.
 
However... as I said, I did get it working. I did this by doing the old school system tweaks everyone needed to do on old XP systems (I used the Sweetwater guide but there is that Black Viper thingie and tons of info on sys tweaks). Increasing buffers, cache, whatever as much as possible helps too.
 
Unfortunately beyond that type of micromanagement and babying of the system settings there ain't much that can be done.
 
A couple of other things for your friend to consider...
 
Back when I was dealing with this I was told about some experimental PCI to PCIe adapters that the Layla card could be mounted with into a PCIe slot.
 
That does NOT seem like a good or reasonable idea though and I abandoned it almost immediately after a bit of research. That was years ago though so maybe that tech has come around.
 
The more reasonable option is to completely forget the PCI card and use the Layla as a "slave". The 3G has both ADAT in and out. So if your friend snags another interface that has ADAT i/o then he can use the Layla's inputs and outputs.
 
ADAT connectors allow for 8 channels at 48khz and 4 channels at 96khz (I think it's 96). So that would mean if he found something that has an ADAT in AND an out that uses USB or PCIe or whatever but doesn't have a ton of analog ins/outs he could use the Layla for recording up to 8 tracks (and the layla has two direct multi ins) and sending out to 8 separate channels for monitors, headphone mixes, whatever.
 
 
aaand... I'll stop typing.
 
Just tossing some ideas and insights at you. Other folks here actually USE their Layla's so they could give better insights than I.
 
Cheers.