garbled, distorted, metalic messy sound from FW410

georgebrazil · Post by **georgebrazil** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:26 am

Dear folks,

I sincerely hope you can shed some light on a problem i´m running into with my m-audio fw410 interface.

Problem is this:

. When just playing my guitar connected to it, everything is fine (i use live 5 as my DAW) - arm an audio track, turn monitor on and listen thru phones to what i'm playing without any problem;
. Whenever i start recording, i hear pops/clicks and after a while the sound becomes a garbled, distorted, "metalic" sounding mess! I´ve noticed the problem occurs primarily when there is a bit more disk activity.

After the problem occurs, usually i have to close live and start it back to get sound to normal status. Then, whenever I kick recording in, after a couple of seconds and some disk activity...distorted sound arises again.

The problem happens irrespective of when i´m using the laptop´s embedded 4-pin port or an Adaptec DuoConnect PCMCIA 6-pin firewire card i have (with TI chipset on it). I´ve tried setting buffers to higher values without success. I´ve also checked IRQs - XP Device Manager tells me FW port is not experiencing any sort of conflict (even though it is on #16 as well as the GForce 5200 that equips the laptop). I´ve also attempted to increase page file size, did not solve the problem. I´m with SP1 and latest m-audio driver.

Tried to replicate the situation using other DAWs (ie., Cubase, Sonar, ..) - same thing happens.

I'd strongly appreciate any insight on what could be going on. I´ve bought the FW410 in the US during a business trip; I live in south america, which makes it hard to return the interface and replace it with something else.

Thanks a lot in advance,

GB.

My laptop is a Toshiba (model P25-S520) P4 3ghz with 512MB RAM, 80GB IDE 4200rpm disk.

fsk · Post by **fsk** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:45 am

snds lkike ur 410 = bust

call them up.

chris vine · Post by **chris vine** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 1:31 pm

Hi George,

Have you set your processor scheduling in XP to "background services"? in the performance settings?

Do you get the same problem when using another audio application?

Best wishes,
Chris

Athlon XP2600, 1gig RAM, Samsung Spinmaster 160gb 7200 HD, FW410
Toshiba Laptop, 2Ghz, 768MB Ram, whatever speed HD, FW410

abletoff · Post by **abletoff** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 2:39 pm

it's the same, lame driver problem that plague m-audio cards on some systems that have firewire cardbus or internal fw chipset that the driver does not like. i was using a laptop with my fw 1814, and after trying absolutely everything including m-audio support, the only way to go was switching to a desktop pc. Now the card works almost flawlessy, it disconnects itself sometimes but it's a matter of on/off switch and it goes back to normal, which is an "acceptable" driver issue.
Two solutions possibile afaik: find a cardbus fw interface with TEXAS INSTRUMENTS chipset (a solution that does not work for you it seems) or switch pc. It's an awful solution I know, but I granted myself hell for eternity for all the swears to god casted while trying to fix this same problem.

chris vine · Post by **chris vine** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 3:13 pm

Hi Abletoff,
So if this is a persistent prob with M Audio cards, I wonder why they haven't addressed it.

I use a PCMCIA FW interface on my laptop.......dunno what the chipset is though. Cost next to nothing on ebay.

cheers

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 5:21 pm

Are using a Firewire disk? I got the same problem when I tried to use a firewire disk on the same bus as the 410.

if you're using a usb disk then which chip set is your usb interface? usb and firewire traffic share the same bus in the PC and can interfere with each oher.

otherwise it could be caused by a bottle neck somewhere in the PC's bus archetecture, or maybe lack of cpu power - the extra data thruput when recording to the diskdrive is just to much for the system. Try whacking up the bufffer still further, avoid using 96Khz 32 bit recording etc.

Oh and make sure your power management setting are set to "always on", It's amazing how much difference it makes.

georgebrazil · Post by **georgebrazil** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 2:47 am

Guys - tks for your kind replies with sugestions. Let me update you on whats going on.

* "background services" option selected - nothing changes;

* tried again with another FW Cardbus - no success;

* i am not using any external disk, only internal toshiba hd so far;

* i get several pops and crackles, cant seem to get rid of them (even after disabling many background programs).

* i've switched computers and took home my work laptop for a test (a dell latitude d505 whose engine is a Pentium Centrino. it is a 512MB RAM machine with small hd of 30GB), using motherboard FW port. result: i get some pops and crackles but....surprise, no metalic/garbled/distorted sound, not even after some disk activity, as it happens with the toshiba computer

interesting thing is that the IDE controller is similar to the toshiba's, and the disk is a slow one (5400rpm i believe).

is there a way to increase the disk caching to see if some improvement is possible in the toshiba audio, or is it a fixed hardware characteristic?

tks again for your contributions, but i am very curious to understand whats really going on with the toshiba p25-s520 & fw410 combination -- i keep welcoming suggestions on what else could be done, since this is my main music/leisure machine.

be good,

GB.

chris vine · Post by **chris vine** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:04 am

Olá George,

Sorry if this is a dumb question - in fact probably not even a solution - but what bit depth/sample rate is the FW410 set at?

And to scrape the barrel - have you been using the same FW cable each time you tested with other setups?

Good luck again,
CV

georgebrazil · Post by **georgebrazil** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:05 am

Tks for your comments Chris. I'm using 44khz/24, with the same cable everytime (the one that came in the box, with the fw410).