PCI on Sandy Bridge?

Borsch

Borsch

Borsch

Soldato
Joined
10 Jan 2012
Posts
3,104
Hello,

I have just sold my beloved M-Audio iAudiophile 192 which served me perfectly for over 3 years because I was not able to resolve its crackly sound on my new sandy bridge system. THe card still sounded perfect on old C2d PC. I have tried latest drivers, messed with power settings, bios power settings- no avail.

Is there any official policy somewhere on the net - by Intel probably, with regards to PCI audio being abandoned? I've read several hysterical threads on various forums, but they were all abandoned some months ago and I just want to know the current situation...
 
I don't think there's any issue with PCI audio in general. I have a PCI Xonar DS that's worked fine with two different Sandy Bridge motherboards. Maybe the M-Audio drivers were being tripped up by the PCIe/PCI bridge chip used by Sandy boards, which introduces some extra latency into the PCI system.
 
Starting from Sandy Bridge Intel don't actually natively support PCI in the chipset, it's added on by motherboard manufacturers, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to see PCI slots disappear off motherboards in a couple of years.
 
DrBombcrater said:
I don't think there's any issue with PCI audio in general. I have a PCI Xonar DS that's worked fine with two different Sandy Bridge motherboards. Maybe the M-Audio drivers were being tripped up by the PCIe/PCI bridge chip used by Sandy boards, which introduces some extra latency into the PCI system.
Click to expand...

Its not just M-audio, ESI Julia cards have exactly the same problems:( These are higher tier cards that probably demand more from PCI than a lower level cards like Xonar... And from what I've heard from others who build DAW computers, no professional PCI based audio interface works well with sandy bridge, it's not limited to any one brand.

But if this issue is hardware related than there is little hope for drivers/patch cure:(
 
Progress hurts:)
I'm not too affected - although I LOVED the sound of the delta 192, and if sandy bridge issue gets sorted I would buy another 192 in an instant... But some people spent maybe a thousand pounds on audio stuff, and the other thing- its not like in graphics cards where a new and better card comes out every few months- audio setups remain top of the line with no changes for YEARS. Finding replacements is harder.
 
Like Broken Hope says PCI is no longer natively supported by the chipset, Sandy Bridge motherboards with PCI slots are using PCI-E to PCI bridge chips (by ASMedia I think).
 
Last edited:
Borsch said:
Its not just M-audio, ESI Julia cards have exactly the same problems:( These are higher tier cards that probably demand more from PCI than a lower level cards like Xonar...
Click to expand...
I think it's much more likely the M-Audio and ESI cards are being affected by the same driver issue, since they both use a VIA DSP chip. There's probably something in the core driver code supplied by VIA that can't deal with the presence of a PCIe/PCI bridge chip.
 
Bridge chips add latency I think which might be the problem with a sensitive device like a sound card, although VIA may indeed just have compatibility/driver problems.
 
Im running my x-fi xtreme music pci card on my new sandy bridge motherboard that IVe had for about 5-6 yrs now, and it still works perfectly.
 
Strange, both my X-fi XtremeGamer and Xonar D1 both work via the PCI interface, on a Sandybridge motherboard (I came from a C2D E8400).

Did you reinstall anything when switching to your new Sandybridge, before trying to tackle the sound card problem?
 
X-fi and Xonar are not high performance audio cards. All higher end PCI cards by all manufacturers do not work with sandy bridge - I've googled some more on this problem and there is no way out- its hardware issue and no driver revision can help it :(
 
Borsch said:
X-fi and Xonar are not high performance audio cards. All higher end PCI cards by all manufacturers do not work with sandy bridge - I've googled some more on this problem and there is no way out- its hardware issue and no driver revision can help it :(
Click to expand...

"Higher end" doesn't mean anything to me, and sounds like you're repeating marketing language. Please define a "higher end PCI" card.

After a quick search upon google, I found the following common opinion or advice given (some stated earlier in this thread):
1. SB uses a PCI to PCI-e bridge through an ITE chipset, that is not implemented well on SB motherboards. No SB has native PCI support. Can possibly fixed with updated firmware.
2. SB motherboards do not work well with PCI audio interfaces.
3. SB motherboards have a problem with m-audio PCI audio interfaces.

So from this, either you need to (bear with me, I'm stating the obvious):
1. Update firmware or change motherboard (not likely that it would fix the problem).
2. Update your audio interface to PCI-e (buy new audio card).
3. Go to another processor architecture.

To me, I agree with DrBombCrater in that the crackling you are hearing is the latency - audio information is not able to stream quick enough to your audio card, so it runs out of information to process (hence crackling artifact). You can replicate this artifact by turning down the buffer length on any audio card too low, or have some device cause increased computer system latencies (which can be checked via the DPC latency checker) whilst running ASIO or real-time audio data streams.

I haven't tried either the XtremeGamer or D1 in ASIO mode, which is probably why I'm reporting that the cards are fine. Ergo, the problem isn't caused because your card is "higher-end":- rather you just happened to notice it immediately because you're doing something that requires real-time streaming or it is permanently on/set to default as real-time.

Not sure if I helped.
 
Last edited:
Borsch said:
X-fi and Xonar are not high performance audio cards. All higher end PCI cards by all manufacturers do not work with sandy bridge - I've googled some more on this problem and there is no way out- its hardware issue and no driver revision can help it :(
Click to expand...

Someone should let Asus know that.
 
acbluflame said:
"Higher end" doesn't mean anything to me, and sounds like you're repeating marketing language. Please define a "higher end PCI" card.

.
Click to expand...

With sound defining is hard - tighter bass, crisper sound, more clarity and other such unscientific nonsense:) But there is a audible distinction between "raw audio quality" and "gamer" type cards.

And Xonar ST is actually a very good card, easily comparable to my iaudiophile 192 and ESI Juli@, I was thinking about £30 Xonar Dsomething and the like when I dismissed "Xonar" altogether...:o

To ask the same question in a different way- did anyone manage to get an "over £100" PCI soundcard working properly with sandy bridge motherboard? Btw I did try changing latency, ASIO - all to no avail unfortunately.
 
Borsch said:
And Xonar ST is actually a very good card, easily comparable to my iaudiophile 192 and ESI Juli@, I was thinking about £30 Xonar Dsomething and the like when I dismissed "Xonar" altogether...:o
Click to expand...
You might want to listen to one of those £30 'Dsomething' cards before dissing them. They're actually rather good, and quite difficult to tell apart from the ST/STX models unless you're using thrillingly expensive headphones.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom