Does anyone know if the Sil3114 controller as in this card here:

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=3Z2Q&SearchType=1&SearchTerms=SATA+pci+card&PageMode=3&SearchKey=All&SearchMode=All&aQuicklinx=3ZRL&InMerch=1

would cause the same issues as the Sil3112?

losguy!!!
man, i know you put this thread up AGES ago... and this board is way old now... but being a student and having just come back from living overseas, i came back to my PC built off the A7N8X-Deluxe board and googled "sound crackle a7nx8 deluxe" and two results came up, this being the first... and awesome!!! im so happy, my old hoontech dsp24 mkii soundcard was about to get thrown out as i thought it was that, but i read briefly elsewhere that someone else had problems with crackle which gave me my google search term... its too late in the night/morning to fully test it, but so far so good!!! life saver mate!!

now all i need to figure out is a quick and easy way to shield my monitor speakers from my screen as i just purchased a cheap pair of studio monitors which sound alot better than what i was using before, but they dont appear to be magnetically sheilded... i hope to find a way to maybe stick something on the sides of them to prevent the magnetic field effecting the monitor... any suggestions seeing as you are the king?

once again... thanks heaps...!!!
dan.

Hi Everyone,
I see that the focus on this thread has been incompatibilities between M-audio products and Si SATA controllers. I'm observing similar issues on my new system.

Intel E6600 (core 2 duo @2.4GHz)
2GB DDR-800
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (rev. 1.0)
Seagate 7200.10 SATA2 200GB system drive
Pair of Seagate 7200.10 SATA2 500GB in a RAID0
Radeon 1300 PCI-E
Delta 1010LT

The 1010LT has its own IRQ (20). So I've only been having problems in Sonar, as opposed to Reason or SoundForge. I experimented w/ increased latencies, which ruined my beloved input-monitoring. Further experimentation revealed that an identical project can run at 1ms Latency and no crackles from my system drive, but required 17ms (768 samples @ 44khz) from my RAID drive.

From this it appears that the chipset integrated SATA controllers are fine. Has anyone had any positive/negative experiences with Gigabyte's SATA2 controller?

Edit: Great job everyone (losguy!) in your debugging of this very annoying problem.

Hi Tecton,
nice sig. I believe those purple connectors are the only ones to support RAID on the motherboard. Do you use it this way?

Thanks,
Charles

ORIGINAL: illin_noise
I see that the focus on this thread has been incompatibilities between M-audio products and Si SATA controllers. I'm observing similar issues on my new system.
...
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 (rev. 1.0)
...an identical project can run at 1ms Latency and no crackles from my system drive, but required 17ms (768 samples @ 44khz) from my RAID drive. ... From this it appears that the chipset integrated SATA controllers are fine. Has anyone had any positive/negative experiences with Gigabyte's SATA2 controller?

Hey illini, sorry to hear about this trouble. This is an interesting board, I must say, in that RAID is only supported with a non-integrated SATA controller. First time I've seen an outboard SATA controller chip branded with a MOBO maker's mark. Up to now, it's been SiI and Promise. I ownder if Gigabyte just licensed the SiI hardware and slapped their logo on it.

Anyway, since your system is PCIe, there's unfortunately little if anything that can be done. TTBOMK no tool is yet available to throttle traffic on the PCIe bus. So, you're at the mercy of driver and/or BIOS updates to get a real fix for this.

A workaround would be to abandon RAID 0 and/or move your SATA audio drives off of ports GSATAII0-1 and onto one of the four ports SATAII0-3. Another workaround may be to try a different audio interface. Sorry that neither option is easy.

If you absolutely must have RAID 0 (which for audio applications is most likely unnecessary), another option still could be to try a Promise PCI or PCIe SATA controller card. I say 'try', because it's no guarantee.

Blessings, and good luck!

Hey illini, sorry to hear about this trouble. This is an interesting board, I must say, in that RAID is only supported with a non-integrated SATA controller. First time I've seen an outboard SATA controller chip branded with a MOBO maker's mark. Up to now, it's been SiI and Promise. I ownder if Gigabyte just licensed the SiI hardware and slapped their logo on it.

Windows detects it as "IRQ 19 GIGABYTE GBB36X Controller". I've tried moving my sound card to different PCI slots which didn't help. It already had it's own IRQ. Tried disabling the other hardware shared w/ the GBB36X, but that didn't have any obvious effect on the clicking and pop-locking.

If you absolutely must have RAID 0 (which for audio applications is most likely unnecessary), another option still could be to try a Promise PCI or PCIe SATA controller card. I say 'try', because it's no guarantee.

I think I'll try a PCIe SATA Raid card. Wouldn't want to rip out the mobo OR buy a new audio interface. Kinda sucks though. At least for now, I have plenty of free space on my system drive to work from until a solution is found.

1. With SATA 2 3Gig transfer it is not necessary unless you are wanting to play back 200 tracks or more.

I decided on RAID0 to maximize track number and therefore provide for a higher level of "futureproof-ness" (yes I made that word up) wrt higher sample rates. I currently record everything at 16/44k but may eventually graduate to 24/96k.

2. If the slightest thing goes wrong with the RAID, that’s it, all data gone. You can't rebuild a striped RAID.

I regularly backup my data to a network drive to cover drive failure. FWIW, I do see increased "performance" from my RAID array, but it "sounds" like CRAP

Thanks for the feedback!

It may be already mentioned in this thread but IRQ 1-16 are standard IRQs and beyond that, its all virtual. They are not maintained in the BIOS but virtually in the windows. Its better if audio card is in 1-16 IRQ.

If I keep my OS installed on my SATA drive, but have the live recording of audio go to an IDE drive, will that solve this problem.

Note: Abit NF-7, Delta 1010, I have literally (LITERALLY) tried everything so far to NO avail whatsoever.

All important devices have their own "real" IDE, latencies have been adjusted from here to next week, PCI slots have been switched to death, I am.... going crazy.

Oops, I completely forgot to say NF7-S..... So yes... my life is ruined :) And yes it is the Sil3112.

I bought the M-Audio card yesterday with hopes and dreams of grandeur...

I guess what was my recording computer, will now just become a file server.

Too bad, nowadays you just can't get a mobo with 5 PCIs (That's not some expensive Tyan), and that much free space to move around.

Very good. Actually, just loading your M-Audio card into an nForce3 (or later) machine was not on my remedy list... but that certainly works too. I'm glad you got it sorted. Blessings...

ORIGINAL: Simo75
Yuppy!!!
I buy a controller Raid SATA Arowana (based on silicon image 3512, only 20 euro) and now my PC is perfect for audio!!
On my Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe the integrated silicon image 3112 was the killer! :P

Heay, that's neat. It could be that SiI has made the drivers for their newer PCI SATA controller cards more system-friendly. It sure looks that way, at least for your case.

Yup, it's true for most game-oriented AGP graphics cards, including ATI and nVidia. Glad you got it sorted.

That's right. Some second-generation PCIe MOBOs with BIOS updates got it sorted out, but IIUC you still have to be careful with what graphics cards you use. Maybe third or fourth generation PCIe will be implemented in a way that actually provides control over messaging priority, say, through a utility like PowerStrip, but I haven't seen anything yet.

Yes, it has. IIRC, a low-end graphics card helps the problem, but does not solve it. However, I did dig up these threads:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=992704
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=748119

Scott @ ADK (jcschild on the CW forum) is the reigning authority on the issue. He found that using a PCIe Firewire card practically solves the issue. Since you're using a Fireface, this could be your answer. That is, unless you're already using such a card.

Wow, this thread just keeps springing back to life, sort of like the dandelions in the spring.

Hey dion80, I'm the OP. So, you're coaxing audio out of an A7N8X, eh? Sorry you got painted into that M-Audio+SATA corner. Unfortunately, I have never heard of a fix for this combination of hardware. It appears to be a hardware or driver conflict between the SiI controller and the M-Audio card. So far, the only successful way that I have seen to break the tangle, and still keep you SATA drive, is to either put the SATA drive on another controller (either move it to an external USB2 or FW enclosure, or get a SATA controller card) or use another MOBO. As you may see from the later posts to this thread, going the SATA controller card route may result in higher performance and good results on this MOBO. (Not that FW or USB2 couldn't be workable solutions.)

Yeah, the venerable A7N8X Deluxe. I have lots of memories with that MOBO... a whole range of them, let me tell you. But there were some good music-making moments with it too, to be sure. You know, I still have that MOBO, but it's now being used by my younger son in a gaming machine... it was just recently handed down to him from my older son, also using it for gaming. So, it's been having a long and productive life! But it hasn't seen a pro audio card or a SATA drive for years now.

I wish you blessings and good fortune with your configuration efforts.