Bristol_Jonesey


Sort your attitude if you want any help - bragging about what you've done doesn't endear you to anyone else, possibly with the exception of your immediate family members.

The issue has been stated quite plainly - you've got a smoking hot pc, probably in excess of a couple of grands worth and you expect it to run on a 20 cent chip?

What did you spend all your royalties on?

I can't believe I just read that, really.
 
titetrax, Mike is on it.  I ran my rig on a Realtek card for the best part of 18 months without issue (aside from the fact that recording anything external was a no, no.)
 
There is some good advice here already, but sweaty attitudes like the one above that have nothing to do with the question seem to be all to common on this forum I'm afraid.
 
I've got a big mouth normally when it comes to having an opinion about STUFF, but seeing some of the responses aimed at YOU on this thread, I'm actually appalled. 

titetrax


Ever since I built my computer in January, I've had audio dropouts from the Realtek ALC892 8-channel high definition audio codec that came on my motherboard. These dropouts occur on all 3 of my bootable drives. I'm wondering if one of the driver files is checking for updates or something and THAT'S what's causing the dropouts. Do any of you have any experience with stopping these dropouts? Also, if I install the Creative SB X-FI XtremeGamer sound card I have laying around, will that REPLACE the Realtek driver and give me some peace? Thanks in advance for any advice, y'all!  
 
 
 
FWIW concerning the SoundBlaster card:
  
 
I'm using a similar SoundBlaster soundcard (X-Fi Platinum) in my Windows 7-64 machine, and it works just fine with Sonar X1 & X2 with the updated drivers from Creative!  Granted, mine is a "home studio" setup, and I doubt if I'll need to do any pro-level recording, but so far, so good!  I completely disabled the onboard sound card within Windows Device Manager, to eliminate a possible source of conflicts & problems.
 
Before using the card with Sonar, you'll probably want to use the Creative control panel to turn off the additional default effects Creative provides.  Also, you might need to tinker with the Creative mixer input/output settings so Sonar is given full control of the signal path (easier to understand hands-on than talking about it on a forum).
 
Everything you need to get the card working is included in the Creative drivers package, so if you go this route UNINSTALL any add-on "generic" drivers like ASIO4ALL before installing the Creative software suite.
 
Maye take a bit of tinkering with the initial Creative setup, but I'm happy to say I have had NO soundcard-related issues using mine with Sonar that couldn't be fixed by some minor tweaks in the Creative or Sonar preferences.

To Bristol_Jonesey and Linear Phase - I only mentioned some of my accomplishments because Robert B came at me like I was some ghetto kid squirreling around with a MPC and FruityLoops. He edited his comment after he actually READ the whole post.


To Jim Roseberry - Not a fan of Miles Davis yet? Keep listening. I wasn't at first either. His tone was too harsh and brittle for me. But after I kept listening, my ears became acclimated to his "voice" and now he's my fav Jazz trumpeter!! Of course Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, and Donald Byrd are great too. :)


To Azslow3 - Great info and advice. The ASUS mobo I have comes with a bunch of BIOS related software(some related to overclocking) and thanks to you, I now realize THAT could also be the problem. I'm not currently overclocking, but I'll check out that ASUS software. Thanks for your time and expertise!  :)


To Daryl1968 - So do I. It's a great health tonic!!  :)


To Mike_McCue - Great info and advice as well. I only mentioned the drives to illustrate that the problem is related to the BIOS or OS and not some random software that I may have installed. You successfully answered my question about whether or not another sound card would actually replace the Realtek or just be another option. If I DO decide to install the X-Fi, I'll remember to disable the Realtek in the Device Manager. And I agree that simply buying another sound I/O device probably WON'T stop the dropouts. Thanks for your time and expertise!  :)


Thanks to all of you for stopping by(even the Meanies!!). Hopefully, we've ALL learned something here!!! :)

To titetrax - sorry my friend, never meant to cause offence. That was a little out of character.

need.....to.....chill.......

titetrax,
We got a little crossed up. I was actually responding to your earlier post (#7).
I don't type very fast. In the meantime, you had posted again (#12).
Unfortunately, I didn't see that until after I had posted.
You are quite right, my initial post was rather harsh, and I said so at the time. 
The part I deleted was kind of inappropriate, and I probably shouldn't have written it in the first place. I am sorry about that.
However, post #12 introduced new information which drastically changed the complexion of the problem. Hence my edit.
This new information led Mike and others to look in a different direction, and I do agree with them. You have a system issue that needs to be addressed before a better sound card will be of any benefit. It would appear that you are well on the way to pinning that down.
And you are also quite right about my not having any notable accolades relating to music production.
Just a handful of songs posted on the internet, and a seven year legacy of helping others find their way around Cakewalk. Many of them have done very well, and their success serves as my accolades.
I really do hope you get your problem fixed, but for now I am going to shut the f*** up.

Hmmm....

Certainly - I wouldn't want to confuse anyone here, but I don't think I'd be too harsh on the SB if it's an XFi series PCI unit made in the last few years. Some of these units have specs which actually outdo some well known 'pro' brands. I'd quibble with an XFi's mic/line input, no doubt, (although digital in would be fine) but its output is way more than suitable for driving a set of monitors. I've used them in the past (I had an XFi Extreme Music) for a time and their ASIO interfaces worked fantastically (plus they had no-cost DSP based effects you could drop on a monitor/headphone mix - it's based on E-MU technology after all). Creative also endeavored to update it's drivers to Vista and Win 7 as well. For myself,  I'd put a more confidence in their ability to produce well-written Windows ASIO drivers than a company that considers a PC internal interface product a niche item.

I would agree with a PCIe recommendation for new equipment, but I don't really see that using an existing PCI interface, at this moment, as much of an issue for audio data. Within reason, there is just no way anyone is going to 'overload' an PCI interface with audio data, nor is the the bridging from PCIe to PCI going to have any real impact.

What's key are two things; the quality of the interface drivers, and the quality of a DAW's internal scheduler for mixing and and effect processing. Unfortunately, we're limited to subjective observations here - we have no proof other than what we see/hear.

Personally, I'm not crazy about Realtek. They could easily have better specs. In a perfect world, motherboard based sound chips would be ideal for monitoring. But we're not, and we as music and sound oriented folk have greater needs.

stratman70

titetrax


Thanks for your help but I can't afford to buy ANYTHING right now which is why I came to the forum for advice on how to FIX the problem. I can't be the only person experiencing audio dropouts from the Realtek driver so I thought someone here would have a fix(remove the XXXX driver file, uncheck the xxxx button, etc.). I guess I'll try the ASUS forum since my motherboard is from them. Try to remember in the future that BUYING a new this or that, has probably ALREADY occurred to a person seeking help and OBVIOUSLY wasn't an option. 

Wow-very classy reply-These folks were only trying to help you. Please READ yor title-You asked if a sound card would help. So if you knew you couldn;'t buy one, why then did you ask. So chill out man

Have you bothered to read this entire thread before posting?

SuperG


Hmmm....

Certainly - I wouldn't want to confuse anyone here, but I don't think I'd be too harsh on the SB if it's an XFi series PCI unit made in the last few years. Some of these units have specs which actually outdo some well known 'pro' brands. I'd quibble with an XFi's mic/line input, no doubt, (although digital in would be fine) but its output is way more than suitable for driving a set of monitors. I've used them in the past (I had an XFi Extreme Music) for a time and their ASIO interfaces worked fantastically (plus they had no-cost DSP based effects you could drop on a monitor/headphone mix - it's based on E-MU technology after all). Creative also endeavored to update it's drivers to Vista and Win 7 as well. For myself,  I'd put a more confidence in their ability to produce well-written Windows ASIO drivers than a company that considers a PC internal interface product a niche item.

I would agree with a PCIe recommendation for new equipment, but I don't really see that using an existing PCI interface, at this moment, as much of an issue for audio data. Within reason, there is just no way anyone is going to 'overload' an PCI interface with audio data, nor is the the bridging from PCIe to PCI going to have any real impact.

What's key are two things; the quality of the interface drivers, and the quality of a DAW's internal scheduler for mixing and and effect processing. Unfortunately, we're limited to subjective observations here - we have no proof other than what we see/hear.

Personally, I'm not crazy about Realtek. They could easily have better specs. In a perfect world, motherboard based sound chips would be ideal for monitoring. But we're not, and we as music and sound oriented folk have greater needs.

It's not a case of which of the choices available are 'better' it's about which one is most likely to work.
 
PCI on a bridged PCI board is a crap shoot at best regardless of whether it is an RME unit or the latest SB one.  PCIe is another matter if it IS a PCIe card then I'd be suggesting trying that first.
 
Lets not confuse the idea that one will be better than the other based on capabilities or what you may have read about one over the other here.  Neither are ideal as the OP is already aware but in the interim he'd like to get something going. regardless of 'brand'. 
 
I know for certain from experience and from the amount of mobile users here that you can get HD Audio working adequately with Sonar, thusly equipped along with a pair of cheap cans, as I was myself at one point, I won a couple of minor mix competitions against some much better equipped entrants.
 
Its not ideal because of the high latency when monitoring and lack of external IO options but trust me it at least should work.
 
 
It may end up that neither choice is a goer, but I've personally been in a position where an extra can of beans isn't an option let alone a hundred bucks for a cheap interface, hopefully the OP isn't in that situation but that's been the reality for some of us at certain points.
 
 

Jonbouy

SuperG


Hmmm....

Certainly - I wouldn't want to confuse anyone here, but I don't think I'd be too harsh on the SB if it's an XFi series PCI unit made in the last few years. Some of these units have specs which actually outdo some well known 'pro' brands. I'd quibble with an XFi's mic/line input, no doubt, (although digital in would be fine) but its output is way more than suitable for driving a set of monitors. I've used them in the past (I had an XFi Extreme Music) for a time and their ASIO interfaces worked fantastically (plus they had no-cost DSP based effects you could drop on a monitor/headphone mix - it's based on E-MU technology after all). Creative also endeavored to update it's drivers to Vista and Win 7 as well. For myself,  I'd put a more confidence in their ability to produce well-written Windows ASIO drivers than a company that considers a PC internal interface product a niche item.

I would agree with a PCIe recommendation for new equipment, but I don't really see that using an existing PCI interface, at this moment, as much of an issue for audio data. Within reason, there is just no way anyone is going to 'overload' an PCI interface with audio data, nor is the the bridging from PCIe to PCI going to have any real impact.

What's key are two things; the quality of the interface drivers, and the quality of a DAW's internal scheduler for mixing and and effect processing. Unfortunately, we're limited to subjective observations here - we have no proof other than what we see/hear.

Personally, I'm not crazy about Realtek. They could easily have better specs. In a perfect world, motherboard based sound chips would be ideal for monitoring. But we're not, and we as music and sound oriented folk have greater needs.

It's not a case of which of the choices available are 'better' it's about which one is most likely to work.
 
PCI on a bridged PCI board is a crap shoot at best regardless of whether it is an RME unit or the latest SB one.  PCIe is another matter if it IS a PCIe card then I'd be suggesting trying that first.
 
Lets not confuse the idea that one will be better than the other based on capabilities or what you may have read about one over the other here.  Neither are ideal as the OP is already aware but in the interim he'd like to get something going. regardless of 'brand'. 
 
I know for certain from experience and from the amount of mobile users here that you can get HD Audio working adequately with Sonar, thusly equipped along with a pair of cheap cans, as I was myself at one point, I won a couple of minor mix competitions against some much better equipped entrants.
 
Its not ideal because of the high latency when monitoring and lack of external IO options but trust me it at least should work.
 
 
It may end up that neither choice is a goer, but I've personally been in a position where an extra can of beans isn't an option let alone a hundred bucks for a cheap interface, hopefully the OP isn't in that situation but that's been the reality for some of us at certain points.
 
 

I've never had any issues, but...


A quick look on the inter-tubes shows that this issue occurs on ASUS/SandyBridge designs... and unfortunately there's been a whole lot of buzz on 'SandyBridge'; some folks might be tempted to buy something simply because it says 'SandyBridge'.... Myself, I have a two year old AMD quad, and it smokes as far as Sonar goes.

I agree, it's a crap shoot if you don't have any knowledge of your motherboard. But I'd bet a wooden nickel this problem goes away with newer boards or different vendors, this looks to be an support chipset screwup, specifically spurious interrupts. The Linux kernel folks seem to have further details on the issue. Certainly not ASUS or Intel's first hose-up. Bridging shouldn't normally be an issue for PCI, it's been designed to support that from the beginning - it's just there's was little need for multiple standard PCI buses, and few if any motherboards were designed that way. However, PCIe is actually designed such each slot is a individual interface; they all bridge from one slot to another on interrupt.



I'm impressed by some of RME's products. Great specs. Horribly overpriced though. If you considered that their digital interface only cards go for near $1000 dollars, along with the knowledge that nearly all twisted pair interfaces are derivatives of ethernet technology which was amortized long-ago... well, you just have to wonder about their other products as well. The stuff is only for those who can afford it.

Anyway, this is all by the by... I'm sure titetrax knows neither of us is trying to bozo him.

^^^ good stuff ^^^

SuperG

stratman70

titetrax


Thanks for your help but I can't afford to buy ANYTHING right now which is why I came to the forum for advice on how to FIX the problem. I can't be the only person experiencing audio dropouts from the Realtek driver so I thought someone here would have a fix(remove the XXXX driver file, uncheck the xxxx button, etc.). I guess I'll try the ASUS forum since my motherboard is from them. Try to remember in the future that BUYING a new this or that, has probably ALREADY occurred to a person seeking help and OBVIOUSLY wasn't an option. 

Wow-very classy reply-These folks were only trying to help you. Please READ yor title-You asked if a sound card would help. So if you knew you couldn;'t buy one, why then did you ask. So chill out man

Have you bothered to read this entire thread before posting?

Yes I did until this post by the OP: Below is the last line in his early post. Thats what I replied to and I stand by it. IMHO that's snide classless remark.
 
"Try to remember in the future that BUYING a new this or that, has probably ALREADY occurred to a person seeking help and OBVIOUSLY wasn't an option. "

...the reason is you´re trying to drive an Porsche with an "Beetle" Engine on an racetrack, by wondering: "Mhmm 60mph is´nt really fast is´nt it ???"
...mind the problem...???
The problems with dropouts with the so called "onboard" soundchips could cause by so many problems with your system configuration, software and driver problems, that we´re still post new "how to fix"´s until new years eve...
And when 100$ are a point of "to expensive for the moment"....try to get a 15$ card with PCIe...I´m sure this card will solve your drop-out problems.

Besides the obvious problems with an on board sound chip its also noisy. I also have one on my system and its fine for Media Player its not good enough for work. It shouldn't be for you either. I wont continue to tell you its crap because that has been well said already. But you are not getting good audio out of it even if it will work. So why bother?

You need to listen to it using good headphones but they probably wont connect to it anyway and see how noisy it really is.

YOu need a "real"interface or soundcard made for multitrack recording.  Realtek is basically a toy that is a step above a very standard soundcard.  X2 is professional.  Realtek will never handle the audio load from Sonar.