M-audio Firewire 410 problem....

conuk · 2 Jul 2006 at 23:30

Have just purchased one of these to help run my external mixer and Traktor DJ studio 3.

I have a problem with sound drop out ..... and Winamp freezing - it will freeze randomly .... I then have to close winamp via Task manager... and am able to restart it.

Have only had it for a few days - and not have had time to dig deep - but

the driver is the latest
connected via firewire port at back of PC
using supplied 6pin lead which is powered by PC as recommended

Is the firewire interface on my PC better or the same as a sepearte firewire card - I have one of these and was wondering whether to try it ?

My board is
Asus K8v SE

Also the Creative Labs Audigy is still plugged in to my board - but disabled.... will this cause a hitch as well ?

Any thoughts appreciated.

conuk · 3 Jul 2006 at 00:15

update -

Ok ive removed the Creative card.

Installed the firewire drivers again

Now when playing a song - anything from 30secs to 1min 30 ... sound gets all corrupted - closing winamp then starting again fixes it....
hmmmm not good

Codmate · 3 Jul 2006 at 09:39

Have you had a chance to try the Firewire device in another system? It may be faulty from what you say.

The firewire interface on your PC's mainboard should be fine.

I've had strange behavior playing back media in the past, and it's sometimes becuase I accidently had some driver settings wrong. I don't know what the control panel for your device looks like - but if it has a 'Hardware Settings' tab, look for 'Disable audio app use of monitor mixer/patchbay router' and make sure it is unticked.

Hope you track down the problem

conuk · 3 Jul 2006 at 17:40

thanks for your reply.

The control panel seems ok -

There is a hardware tab - has the following options.

Sample rate detected : 44100 hz (currently)

ASIO / WDM buffer size : 256 samples (currently)

Sync source : internal optical (highlighted)
internal coaxial
external coaxial
external optical
external coaxial

monitoring settings : check box to disable ASIO direct monitoring.

Havent been able to try it in another pc - but am asured it is working fine.

any possible things to check ?

Codmate · 4 Jul 2006 at 09:28

I guess you could try your firewire card (and maybe another firewire cable).

Also check the status of devices in Control Panel::Sound and audio devices.

Make sure the "disable ASIO direct monitoring" box is unchecked.

Sometimes running several audio apps at once can confuse a card. I know teamspeak used to lock the sample rate in a weird way.

Also make sure DMA is enabled on your CD/DVD drive - it might sound weird, but I've had sound problems if Windows pushes my optical device back to PIO mode (usually due to Starforce or CRC checks).

If you're sending stuff via SPDIF, try the analogue outputs instead and see if the problem persists. If you remove the SPDIF connection, how do the headphone outputs behave for instance?

conuk · 4 Jul 2006 at 12:34

hey thanks for those :

gonna try the other card now.

ASIO monitoring is unchecked - tried both ways

Was going to try the analogue outputs next but they have different connectors to what I have available - ordered some they come tomorrow - so can try this next.

In device manager etc all seems ok -

DVD writer is in Ultra DMA mode 2 (have a hard drive UDMA mode 5 - other two raptors are sata)

And have only really tried to play a tune to be honest - am wanting to use Traktor DJ studio 3 with my external mixer - thought this card would be cool for that... will keep trying

anything else to suggest just holla! thanks again.
gonna try the firewire card now - not sure how old this is though.

Codmate · 4 Jul 2006 at 13:22

You my find you get different, or (hopefully) no problems, when using Traktor DJ; as it uses ASIO.

Give it a try

BTW - did you try the headphone outputs?

conuk · 4 Jul 2006 at 14:22

hey,
just tried the firewire card I had from a while back...

It turns out it is a ADS Pyro 1394 DV card - anyways just this second tried it...

was playing a mix for about 3 minutes... then same problem...

the headphones sockets provide the same problem - theres 2 on the front and tried them both.

When checking the resources list for either the onboard Firewire controller or the ADS one I notice they both use IRQ 16 along with my AGP graphics card...I am unable to change any of the settings.... they are greyed out .... that a problem ?

It states that they are all fine though.

conuk · 4 Jul 2006 at 15:20

ok just spoke to the guy from M-audio technical support.... hes pretty sure its a resource problem ie IRQ sharing problem.... hmm thought he might say that - so that poses a few new problems.

The onboard 1394 controller - obviously I cant put that into another slot... as the options via device manager are greyed out... i cant see a way to change that ?

2nd problem - ok use seperate firewire card..... theres 4 free slots on the board - think ive tried 3 of them.... will only install in one of the 3 .... all connects fine etc... then while playing same corrupt noise... ggrrrrrr

so just about to try the last one... but again im sure it will go back to the same problem

how will i be able to assign a different IRQ to the M-audio ????