I have already tried many (all ?) combination with PCI Latency Tool. :(
ATI Radeon 9800 (& Secondary) at 088...Sil3112 at 016...etc...etc...
Nothing!

Yes...the onboard Wi-Fi slot is empty (no jumper or bios setup to disable like the GigabitLAN, for example).
The Promise FastTrak PCI RAID controller card is a good choice..but...in italy (where i live) the prize is too high for me (> 80 Euro).
IDE to SATA or external USB2/FW ?
Uhm...new MotherBoard ? ^_^

ORIGINAL: losguy

ORIGINAL: Simo75
Uhm...new MotherBoard ? ^_^

Not a bad idea, and probably a better investment. Just keep an eye out, because with AM2's out now you have more options, and probably some great deals coming on AMD 939's.

Thanks. :)
But...what do you think about a Intel Core 2 Duo System ?

Hi all,

As I've read (a lot) on this forum and the elsewhere, clicks are a big problem. Well, I've been having the same problem now for about 3 months. I like to solve problems on my own (with the help of Google, forums, manuals etc.) But this one is beyond me.

The clicks are not recorded onto the tracks, therefore I've just kept going with the project and trying to fix the problem as I go along. The clicks start to appear after about 20 mins into a session. They increase in volume and frequency as time goes on, one time distorting the audio a little. No matter if it's a track with audio, VSTi's or both, the clicks are still there.

As you can see below I've tried most things. I think I've narrowed it down to "SATA Hell". Although I suppose I could be wrong about that, at this point anything's possible.
The clicks also happen in Wavelab, Goldwave etc listening to a Wave file or MP3 not just in Nuendo.
I'm thinking of buying 2 Firewire/USB Enclosures for the 2 SATA drives, ripping out my Sil SATA Controller.

Any ideas will be much appreciated.

My setup is as follows:

eMachines T6524 (used purely for Audio)
2.2 Ghz Athlon 64 AMD Processor
Motherboard: MSI MS-7184

Adaptec PCI FireConnect 4300 Firewire Card
Sabrent Silicon Image Serial ATA 3112a 2-Port SATA Controller PCI
(tried different slots for PCI cards, still no joy)

2x 512mb PC3200 Onboard Memory (Installed in DIMM Slots 1 & 2)
A-Data 2x 1GB PC3200 DDR 400MHz Memory (Installed in DIMM slots 3 & 4)

C Drive: 200GB 2mb Cache 7200rpm IDE
2x Western Digital Caviar SE16 400GB 16mb Cache 7200rpm SATA
(Temperature of hard disks hover around 45oC)

PCI-E GIGABYTE X300SE GV-RX30HM256DP Video Card 128MB (Latest Drivers)

Disabled from BIOS:
Onboard ATI Radeon Xpress 200 128MB Video
Onboard Firewire Card 1394
Onboard Soundcard
Networking
Media Reader
All but 2 USB ports (tried to disable all USB's, still get clicks)

Removed from PCI Slot:
Modem PCI Card

The usual Windows XP Pro tweaks have been initiated. Background services enabled, no fancy WinXP crap.
The supposed Firewire "fix". Defragmenting all drives religiously.

Onyx 1220 Mixer with Firewire Card option installed
M-Audio Keystation 88es via USB
Logitech Wireless Mouse (tried a PS2 mouse, didn't have any different effect on the clicking situation)
PS2 Keyboard

Software: Latest Nuendo

Thanks juca, I'll definitely give that a try.

Update:
Well, I just had an hour and a half music session with no clicks whatsoever. A miracle! That's never happened before. I'm still going to put it through it's paces a bit more but I think changing the ram to different slots may have made the difference. Thanks again juca.
Now, if only I could have done that about three months ago! D'OH!

Homer,

The emachines site didn't have enought info on that MOBO, so I had to dig a little to get more detailed specs. I found this, which looks right. According to thos specs, your MOBO supports two SATA ports, and those ports appear to be integrated into the ATI chipset.

Not sure why you went with the PCI SATA controller card. Is there any way that you can connect your SATA drives to the SATA ports on your MOBO?

Edit: I see you got it working. That's great. Usually memory mismatches don't cause clicks, they cause worse things like BSODs first. But I'm not going to argue with success. Good going, Juca.

Still, if find yourself encountering clicks again, you may want to give a try to what I recommended above.

Hi guys,
Thanks so much for the feedback. And for the link to the MOBO specs. Awesome!
Going to have another music session today, so I'll see how that goes regarding the clicks.

You're right about the SATA inputs on the MOBO. I actually only saw them a couple of days ago, about 3 months after I bought the SATA PCI Card. (The emachines computer didn't come with a MOBO manual and didn't state anywhere that there were SATA inputs on there).
Anyway, I tried to get the two SATA hard drives to appear in Windows, but when I attached the drives to the MOBO SATA inputs, (there's actually 4 of them) the IDE drive with WINXP on it wouldn't load.
There's an option in the BIOS: "Onboard Chip SATA", which has the options: SATA Disabled or IDE Controller. I actually tried both.
When "SATA Disabled" was checked, the SATA drives didn't load at all and the IDE drive loaded WINXP with no problems. When "IDE Controller" was checked. I got a message before WINXP was supposed to load saying "OS will not load" or something to that effect. I think it was trying to load WINXP off of one of the SATA drives which obviously didn't have WINXP on it.

Either way, I'll see what happens today and hope for the best. If I still hear clicks, I'll go down the onboard SATA inputs route, before I head for the SATA hard drive external enclosures.

Thanks again.

Ok, the clicks came back, so I took your advice juca and losguy and put my SATA drives on the motherboard SATA inputs and yanked out my Silicon Image PCI SATA Controller.
I also went into the BIOS and found the settings to change the bootable drive order, the IDE drive was the last on the list behind the SATA's, that's why the OS wasn't found by the system when I tried it the first time.
All seems to be good now though. Been working on a song for about an hour with absolutely no clicks. Still not fully convinced however, but it's definitely a major step in the right direction.

I can't thank you guys enough for all your help. If the clicks appear again, no doubt I'll be back here pronto though.

Great, Homerun. Here's hoping that it's really solved (I'm pretty hopeful). But like my friend juca said, let us know either way!

Hi-

I don't even know what this thread is about, nor do I care, but I'm astounded that it's gone to 22 pages without degenerating into name-calling! Or did it and I missed that part?

Anyway, carry on, by all means! Sorry for the interruption...

-Susan

Hi Carlos-

Hey Susan, since you're here... did you know that the top post to this thread was my first post ever to the CW forums?

No, I didn't!

-Susan

Hello all!

I found this thread while googling for a solution to my sata + audio problem, and it was very interesting reading it. However, none of the suggestions here solved my issues. Apart from the occational glitches and pops while playing and recording audio, I also experience extreme stutters when writing to my sata harddrive while playing back audio with any player, like winamp for example. If I copy files to the disk while playing audio, the system hogs up and I can barely even move the mouse pointer.

This is my setup:

Intel Pentium 4 2.53 ghz
Abit BE7-S motherboard
onboard Sil3112 SataRaid controller
2 x Maxtor 200 gb sata hard drives
M-Audio Audiophile 2496 sound card
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
1 GB RAM

I've disabled everything onboard that I'm not using, which just leaves the NIC and two USB controllers (which I also tried disabling). My soundcard has IRQ 22 (not shared). I also changed the pci latency according to suggestions in this thread. It did not make a difference.

Now, it seems there really is no solution to this problem that doesn't involve replacements of hardware, so I'm figuring what might be the best way to go. Is there any sata controller cards that are known to work with the Audiophile 2496? That Sata->IDE converter looks like a possible solution, but I can't find any retailer in Sweden who sells them. Another (expensive) solution would of course be to buy two new IDE harddrives, but I'm not keen on that idea.
I've also thought of buying another sound card, but I guess chances are that I would have the same problem still.

Thanks for any possible advice on the matter.

Hi guys, here's an update on my clicking situation.
Seems like the dreaded clicks are back. Although, it did take about 2 hours into the session for them to reappear and that was after recording 7 mono audio tracks. So the situation has become a little more tollarable but hasn't subsided completely.
I'm going to give it another session tonight, to see how fast the clicks come back and then somehow work out another strategy. Maybe I might go down the "Sata->IDE converter" road too.

As for bjornw, I'd say ditch anything that has "3112" in the name for starters :-)

You might also want to try getting your M-Audio card on a lower IRQ (M-Audio recommends 10 or below). It's worth a try.

- Billy

Looks like it's a waste of time, anyway. After reading some other posts in the forum, the lower IRQ assignment seems to make no difference. I had just remembered reading that on the M-Audio site a few months back. It looks like the SATA controller card is the way to go.

Good Luck,

- Billy