just recently started experiencing serious dropout

I've had the same system for a few years now, without problem. Recently, my performance has dipped seriously. I posted a question on a technical PC-related forum, and have been able to improve performance a bit... my disk is completely defragmented, i've removed some adware, etc. However, I'm getting dropout in sonar after playing a relatively simple project file (2 audio tracks, 2 midi tracks) for only a second or two.

Before I go out and reformat my HD and completely reinstall, or buy a new computer, I'd like to figure out what the problem is... any suggestions on how to go about finding out what could be causing this?

relevant hardware/software:

Gigabyte GA-7DXR motherboard
Athlon Thunderbird 1.4Ghz
M-Audio Delta 44
IBM Deskstar 60GXP 40GB HD
512 MB ECC DDR RAM

Windows XP Pro
Sonar XL 2.0

If there's anything else that would help, please let me know and i'll post it.

Try operating without USB activated if it is. I disabled USB when working on my DAW and It has given me a greater performance. I have a pretty up to date system so I was dissapointed when I started getting dropouts and such.

Here is a list of the first things I look at when problems happen with Audio performance in my DAW:

1. Increase the latency to see if it helps
2. Increase the I/o Buffers
3. Increase my soundcard buffer/latency
4. Disable all non-DAW processes
5. Disable all non-DAW related hardware in the hardware profile for the DAW

Try disabling USB to see if it makes a diofference first.

Some IBM Deskstar drives have a history of going bad.

This may well be the problem. I have had 2 go out. A 40G then they replaced it with a 60G that died too.

Reprofile your Audio card for grins. First delete your AUD.INI, the reprofile your card.

ORIGINAL: Guitarmech111

Some IBM Deskstar drives have a history of going bad.

This may well be the problem. I have had 2 go out. A 40G then they replaced it with a 60G that died too.

Reprofile your Audio card for grins. First delete your AUD.INI, the reprofile your card.

I still get the same results... actually, my onboard Creative PCI can max out with a smaller buffer (10 msec) than my Delta 44 can (11.6 msec). Is this normal? I thought the better card would be able to have a smaller buffer...

yeah, i had heard some horror stories about deskstar .. right after i bought the thing, which made it even better. But it's been roughly 4 years since i bought it... and i've put it through its paces, it's probably time for a new one. i've been feeling that the HD has something to do with it, i just want to see the smoking gun, to be sure that when i get a new HD, it'll be ok.

DaveR, sorry I didn't even see your post the first time around. No new software to speak of... can't really say how sudden and drastic the change was, all i remember is that one day i had been playing an audio file in Windows Media Player -- without any other programs open -- and it was popping and skipping like crazy. As I had taken a hiatus from recording, it wasn't until later that I had issues with Sonar. it does happen with new projects as well, recording within a brand new project will drop out in well under a second.

I will try running a full scandisk on my drive tonight to see if there are any bad sectors... my guess however is just that the disk is slowing down. there must be a tool to measure the actual read/write time of a disk drive; there are probably a number of them... i'm trying to find one that someone would recommend? I'm going to try the "Drive Fitness Test" program from the ibm website...

(i actually do have a second drive (a trusty Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 Ultra ATA 66), but i don't use it because it's around 5 or 6 years old and a bit slower (slower advertised speed, that is) than the IBM.

MightyLeeMoon, yep i had run norton, spybot search & destroy, ad-aware, a few different kinds of defrag programs.. yeah, it is pretty disheartening

It HAS to be your hard drive. I can't imagine playing a Sonar project with only TWO audio tracks and getting drop outs!!
Hard drives are cheap these days. Why not buy a second, and move some audio files over to it and see what performance you get. At least you can eliminate the Hard disk if that doesn't do it, and you'll know it's time to take the computer in for some service.

Sort of sounds like a virus to me. Did you check for virii?

pete

Get the update. Then try to figure it out if you still have dropouts. Your time is too valuable to blow in the wind.

sbavin,
it's tough to tell what the disk usage is while recording because it drops out so quickly, it's tough to read the meter. with task manager open, the cpu goes up to 80% before dropping down.

i ran scandisk, as well as the disk utility from IBM- neither of them reported any problems.

over the next few days, i'm going to check a few other things... i seem to recall it happening right after we installed Cable instead of DSL, could that be related? my network (NIC) card is pretty old... i tried disabling it without effect, but i'll try uninstalling it entirely and see what happens.

i'm actually still using sonar 2 xl, so i wouldn't have any of those sonar 3 bugs i've seen other people having.


groove, i ran a full system check with norton 2004, after updating the norton virus tables. i also ran spybot search and destroy, and ad-aware. so there aren't any viruses or spyware. that was my first thought too.

i plan on upgrading, but since this problem is affecting my whole system and 2.0 used to work fine, i think i'm going to upgrade after i fix this (or reformat/reinstall, or buy a new hd...)

i tried starting a new project and recording in sonar just now, CPU usage jumps to 1% (inside Sonar, that is), disk usage stays at 0%... this lasts for 23 frames (less than 1 sec).

i tried taking out all of my PCI cards... no change.


does anyone know of any freeware partition resizer that will work on an ntfs partition? i can try installing windows on that partition and see if i get the same problem... of course if i don't get the problem, it still could be a system issue, and not necessarily the disk itself.. but it doesn't hurt to try.

ORIGINAL: digipenguin

Is is only 1 stick of 512? Sounds like bad memory.

it's actually two sticks of 256, and i think i had at one point swapped them out one at a time to see how things did with only one stick in... no difference, if i remember. i'm also sure i had run MemTest on them, and those tests came back fine.

Oh - to check UDMA settings in Windows( I have 2k but I imagine it is the same in XP ), go into Device Manager and locate your IDE controller. In one of the properties tabs(Settings, I think) there should be a checkbox for DMA mode or "Use DMA mode if possible) or the like. Check the settings in there.

pete

Is audio on your slave drive? If your wavedata/audio directory is your slave drive then this shouldn't hurt the performance so far as stopping audio( I don't believe ). Your primary drive - what kind of drive is it? Maybe it doesn't support UDMA? If it's autodetected in Windows, you might have to change something in the BIOS settings for that drive( usually AUTO is best there, too ). This depends on your BIOS. Mine has Advanced Settings where the individual Primary Master and Slave and Secondary Master and slave can each be set to UDMA or PIO mode or Auto. Usually AUTO is fine here, too. Did you look at all the BIOS settings to make sure that your cpu cache is enabled? That's another potential culprit.

pete

[Post deleted by author. Sorry, "never mind."]

by cpu cache, do you mean prefetch?

If you go into Advanced Chipset Features, do you have a setting called "Top Performance" at the top of the list? If so, be sure that is set to Enabled. It defaults to disabled.

pete

problem is fixed now, thanks all for the help. After doing a little bit more research (read: googling) on XP and PIO, I found this url: http://www.overclockers.com/tips839/ I just uninstalled and reinstalled my HD from Device Manager, and it comes up as Ultra DMA again. Thanks all for helping me, I couldn't do it without you.