Hi,
I'm about to re-install my DAW (see profile) hoping to solve the phenomenon.
Here are the symptoms which are driving me nuts, and which is the MAIN problem I need to solve:
If I raise the sound volume (and I mean "medium") I can hear
a) a deep sonic "heart beat" through the subwoofer
b) some Star Wars Jedi sword fight like "buzzing" sound when moving the mouse or a window is being resized, dragged or scrolls
If I turn up volume to 60-70%+, a crackling sound adds to the "heart beat" in the subwoofer which makes it sound like a turntable reaching the end grooves of a vinyl record (turntable and vinyl records = hardware/media used in the pre-CD area ;-> )
Speakers are Tannoy monitors for the front channels, Heco for the rear, a Canton subwoofer, and a 2nd set for audition recordings with a cheap vanilla 5.1 PC desktop set. Both speaker sets buzz along with my mouse and any windows actions on the desktop ...
The PC is supposed to be used as a DAW (digital audio workstation) for video editing, music recordings, and (serious) 3D graphics (not games)
I was able to drill down the "heart beat" problem to the onboard LAN card: as soon as I disable the device (BIOS or device manager) the beats are gone.
The former setup (XP pro SP1) caused the very same problems, but apparently a *new board* and replacing the video card didn't solve this. I still have another ATX power supply here with "PFC" -- whatever that means -- which I'm still due to replace (all those wires...)
OS + drivers:
- fresh install of XP-pro (en) SP2 (installed via slipstreamed SP1 CD)
- .NET 1.1 framework w/ SP
- latest ATI Catalyst drivers (not the older Sapphire)
- latest Audigy2 ZS driver updates and apps incl. THX console (EAX console is not installed - I use VST for F/X)
- DirectX9c (as part of SP2 I think)
Using XPLite pro (1.5) I uninstalled some of the M$ kids-toys such as NetMeeting, crappy Movie Maker, and Media Player; then reinstalled the WMA9 codec distributables as they're req. for the playback of some footage.
what I tried so far:
* reinstalled all from scratch as noted above; initial install was XP SP1 having the same problems
* searched the ATI and Creative forums/boards for similar effects; found some old entries mentioning
- to disable DMA(!) on the harddrives (tried - didn't solve)
no DMA woudn't make sense on a DAW anyway ...? wrong?
* tried MSKB search but no success
* to find out if it's the mouse driver, I wrote a script that resizes windows programmatically: still buzzes, ergo it's not the mouse
* my audio editor scrolls the window if ot plays a wave, and thi scrolling causes the same effect w/o my interacting
I believe that as the heart-beat comming from the LAN cand it's all somewhat related to the hard drives or AGP/IDE bus, because any activity on the drives (not the CD/DVD!) adds a low frequency equivalent (< 100 Hz) of the old-fashion "hard drive spin-up rattling" we know from noisy SCSI devices.
Many audio-pro forums discourage having ACPI active in the BIOS for DAWs, and as this is not a laptop I'll probably do a 3rd installation of this w/ ACPI disabled. Good? Bad?
In the M-audio newsletter archive they recommended using "MPS Multiprocessor PC" in the XP setup routine (DOS part) instead of "ACPI Multiprocessor PC".
I don't care saving 20W a year with ACPI enabled: it'll never save me the money I allready invested in the hardware and software and I donÄt mind keeping this machine up and running all-day-long.
However, I somehow doubt that ACPI is the true source of this phenomenon, but rather the combination of the ATI X800 and Creative Audigy2. But hey: I'm not an expert
They're now connected to
- AGP
- PCI slot 4, the last one
the Audigy2 has been pluggininto PCI2 before - same prob -, unfortunately PCI3 is almost unavailable, as the card will then cover the Floppy connector ... pretty impractical mobo design.
I do not need any of the "goodies" or tools these manufactorers provide, esp. all those game-related tweak settings in their control panels. I'm complete satisfied if I can make fast renders (in OpenGL, too) and create & listen to high quality (surround) audio, and do some regular "work" with this otherwise nice machine.
There's no data to keep on this machine, so I though about
- just ripping all the unneeded hardware off
- do another - 3rd - fresh install of XP
- install the ATI and Audigy2 drivers
- add the "extra" hardware one by one
- and if I find the mood: use the other PSU
I dunno if there are some "common"
- IDE / ATA drives issues
- AGB video and PCI sound card troubles
- with ASUS boards ...
I don't do and care of PC video games, so FPS is no goal, but good audio quality and fast data processing (I'm satisfied with the general speed of this machine)
I'd also like to know about the minimalistic install for the ATI and Audigy2 cards. Their CD setup alsways installs a lot of crap I don't want and need - in fact I don't even know *what* I "need" to run the _system_.
I somewhow "lost" the ASIO control panel for the Audigy since I only installed the drivers only - now it just gives me a small dialog box with the ASIO logo sitting there. I saw a "bigger" one before with input-output channels assignment, when I made a full install of the Application CD.
But I certainly do *not* need any of their cool looking applications, like another fancy looking Media Player/Manager or useless CD/DVD Burning software if I have Nero ...
So beside trying to get rid of the buzzing, any hint's on what to install *at least* to work with this hardware and to configure their rudimentary settings would be nice to know of.
Any help is highly appreciated, and thanx a bunch in advance!
Have fun,
CirTap
I'm about to re-install my DAW (see profile) hoping to solve the phenomenon.
Here are the symptoms which are driving me nuts, and which is the MAIN problem I need to solve:
If I raise the sound volume (and I mean "medium") I can hear
a) a deep sonic "heart beat" through the subwoofer
b) some Star Wars Jedi sword fight like "buzzing" sound when moving the mouse or a window is being resized, dragged or scrolls
If I turn up volume to 60-70%+, a crackling sound adds to the "heart beat" in the subwoofer which makes it sound like a turntable reaching the end grooves of a vinyl record (turntable and vinyl records = hardware/media used in the pre-CD area ;-> )
Speakers are Tannoy monitors for the front channels, Heco for the rear, a Canton subwoofer, and a 2nd set for audition recordings with a cheap vanilla 5.1 PC desktop set. Both speaker sets buzz along with my mouse and any windows actions on the desktop ...
The PC is supposed to be used as a DAW (digital audio workstation) for video editing, music recordings, and (serious) 3D graphics (not games)
I was able to drill down the "heart beat" problem to the onboard LAN card: as soon as I disable the device (BIOS or device manager) the beats are gone.
The former setup (XP pro SP1) caused the very same problems, but apparently a *new board* and replacing the video card didn't solve this. I still have another ATX power supply here with "PFC" -- whatever that means -- which I'm still due to replace (all those wires...)
OS + drivers:
- fresh install of XP-pro (en) SP2 (installed via slipstreamed SP1 CD)
- .NET 1.1 framework w/ SP
- latest ATI Catalyst drivers (not the older Sapphire)
- latest Audigy2 ZS driver updates and apps incl. THX console (EAX console is not installed - I use VST for F/X)
- DirectX9c (as part of SP2 I think)
Using XPLite pro (1.5) I uninstalled some of the M$ kids-toys such as NetMeeting, crappy Movie Maker, and Media Player; then reinstalled the WMA9 codec distributables as they're req. for the playback of some footage.
what I tried so far:
* reinstalled all from scratch as noted above; initial install was XP SP1 having the same problems
* searched the ATI and Creative forums/boards for similar effects; found some old entries mentioning
- to disable DMA(!) on the harddrives (tried - didn't solve)
no DMA woudn't make sense on a DAW anyway ...? wrong?
* tried MSKB search but no success
* to find out if it's the mouse driver, I wrote a script that resizes windows programmatically: still buzzes, ergo it's not the mouse
* my audio editor scrolls the window if ot plays a wave, and thi scrolling causes the same effect w/o my interacting
I believe that as the heart-beat comming from the LAN cand it's all somewhat related to the hard drives or AGP/IDE bus, because any activity on the drives (not the CD/DVD!) adds a low frequency equivalent (< 100 Hz) of the old-fashion "hard drive spin-up rattling" we know from noisy SCSI devices.
Many audio-pro forums discourage having ACPI active in the BIOS for DAWs, and as this is not a laptop I'll probably do a 3rd installation of this w/ ACPI disabled. Good? Bad?
In the M-audio newsletter archive they recommended using "MPS Multiprocessor PC" in the XP setup routine (DOS part) instead of "ACPI Multiprocessor PC".
I don't care saving 20W a year with ACPI enabled: it'll never save me the money I allready invested in the hardware and software and I donÄt mind keeping this machine up and running all-day-long.
However, I somehow doubt that ACPI is the true source of this phenomenon, but rather the combination of the ATI X800 and Creative Audigy2. But hey: I'm not an expert
They're now connected to
- AGP
- PCI slot 4, the last one
the Audigy2 has been pluggininto PCI2 before - same prob -, unfortunately PCI3 is almost unavailable, as the card will then cover the Floppy connector ... pretty impractical mobo design.
I do not need any of the "goodies" or tools these manufactorers provide, esp. all those game-related tweak settings in their control panels. I'm complete satisfied if I can make fast renders (in OpenGL, too) and create & listen to high quality (surround) audio, and do some regular "work" with this otherwise nice machine.
There's no data to keep on this machine, so I though about
- just ripping all the unneeded hardware off
- do another - 3rd - fresh install of XP
- install the ATI and Audigy2 drivers
- add the "extra" hardware one by one
- and if I find the mood: use the other PSU
I dunno if there are some "common"
- IDE / ATA drives issues
- AGB video and PCI sound card troubles
- with ASUS boards ...
I don't do and care of PC video games, so FPS is no goal, but good audio quality and fast data processing (I'm satisfied with the general speed of this machine)
I'd also like to know about the minimalistic install for the ATI and Audigy2 cards. Their CD setup alsways installs a lot of crap I don't want and need - in fact I don't even know *what* I "need" to run the _system_.
I somewhow "lost" the ASIO control panel for the Audigy since I only installed the drivers only - now it just gives me a small dialog box with the ASIO logo sitting there. I saw a "bigger" one before with input-output channels assignment, when I made a full install of the Application CD.
But I certainly do *not* need any of their cool looking applications, like another fancy looking Media Player/Manager or useless CD/DVD Burning software if I have Nero ...
So beside trying to get rid of the buzzing, any hint's on what to install *at least* to work with this hardware and to configure their rudimentary settings would be nice to know of.
Any help is highly appreciated, and thanx a bunch in advance!
Have fun,
CirTap
