Ableton Forum

Hi - I hope someone can help me out with this, as I've been around the block with the folks at M-Audio support several times, and they're very nice, but they don't seem to be able to help much.

The setup:

Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop w/windows XP, running Live 5, M-Audio ASIO (I've also got/tried ASIO4ALL). I switched from a Mac laptop (don't ask), and I had an M-Audio Firewire Audiophile from my last rig. With the Audiophile plugged into the firewire outlet on the Inspiron, the software conflicted with something internally and the volume control on the Audiophile would freeze within a half hour. When I contacted M-Audio support about this, they suggested switching from the built-in firewire out to a PCM/CIA firewire card they'd approved, because it sounded like an IRQ problem.

Switching to the Firewire PCM/CIA card solved the volume control problem, and now I have new problems. The audio output from the computer will suddenly become VERY distorted, and while the program is running (or not), if I switch the output (in preferences) from M-Audio ASIO to No Device and then back M-Audio Asio, the problem is resolved, but the problem always comes back. More rarely, the program just straight up freezes (after sitting idle for a while), and I have to quit and restart the program.

The M-Audio folks have diagnosed this as an IRQ conflict problem, and so I now know more about IRQ's than I want to. I've switched off the modem, the network card, the wireless network card, and a few other things I don't need to make music, and still this problem is bugging me. I've optimized the machine using most of the suggestions at musicxp.com as well as pcaudiolabs.com, and so I have an optimized machine that still doesn't work.

I was REALLY hoping to use this rig to DJ out in the next few months, as I'm booked to tour with it.

I'm considering the following:

1) I've bought a laptop that supposedly is great for audio/video work, and it's internal setup won't let you use firewire to make music. As a last resort, I’ll have to sell it and buy some machine that works.

2) I haven't turned off the right IRQ device, butt I'm afraid that my ignorance of Windows will cause me to really screw up the machine if I turn off any more stuff.

3) I should write off using Firewire at all, since M-Audio can't help any more, and try to find a USB interface that has a stereo pair in and 2 stereo pairs out (for DJ cuing), but there doesn't seem to be any such animal.

4) Perhaps I should switch to the ukulele and give up this computer stuff.

I’ve tried using ASIO4ALL in place of the M-Audio ASIO, and there’s no difference. The M-Audio people I spoke to pointed out that even if I used one of the Indigo cards in the PCMCIA slot, I’d likely have the same problem because the IRQ conflict is with the slot location, not the firewire app as such.

Ay information, suggestions, help, or sympathy would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

St.

Hey I feel for you. I have had many of the problems you describe on a variety of different hardware setups.

I have a M-Audio quattro that does exactly what you described on both my AMD systems. It works great on a Celeron system that I have, but it is just too slow to do everything I want. I picked up the Firewire 410 just to find that it has an intermittent distorted clip or skip sound while my wireless antenna is enabled on my Acer Ferrari 4000, but it works and sounds amazing otherwise. Since my laptop has a wireless on/off button right on the front I decided I could live with it. I do miss listening to live sets while using the internet though.

Going back further I have used soundblaster audigy 2 platinums with Asus / VIA chipset motherboards with very little success. Pops and clicks everywhere with the latency set more than twice as high as other people have reported using with slower systems. I seem to have the worst luck picking out audio / computer hardware combinations. I was going to buy a powerbook instead of this ferrari, but I tried live 5 on a powerbook, and I couldn't believe how slow and sluggish it ran compared to an AMD 64. At least the Mac worked properly and the audio never glitched no matter what else I was doing on the machine, even to the point of locking it up and closing the lid. When the powerbook finally caught up the audio paused until I opened the lid. It was slow, but worked flawlessly.

As for some advice, if you bios allows you to turn APIC off and assign the IRQs youself you might be able to come up with settings that work. If you are stuck in the APIC universe there is very little you can do which seems so stupid. Windows assigns the IRQs and I have never found / heard of a way of changing them. If you type msinfo32 at a prompt, you can get the list of IRQs that are assigned to your system. I have firewire (IEEE) on the same IRQ as my wireless adapter. If they shared properly, I wouldn't have audio artifacts when using both.

If you can take the laptop back I probably would. Find out from laptop users here which models have the seemingly lucky hardware combinations that work before getting a new one. Look at the Live 5 performance test thread and check out some of the specs that get amazing results.

I'm having the exact same issues but with my Digi MBox. The first track I record is fine, then ever take after that is distorted. The only way to fix the problem is to reselect the driver and then I get one more take before I need to do it again.

Bit of a bummer.

My audiophile always went into the distortion thing using it on my Toshiba laptop.

I've since purchased an Inspiron and having the same problems as you. With the control panel freezing. I'm glad to know the PCMCIA card thing kinda works.

Have you had any more luck? I'm planning a clean install of windows to get all that Dell O/S crap off there and will let ya know how I go.