Long story...sorry

I have been running a PC based studio with a MOTU 24IO as my audio interface. I bought the 24IO because I have a lot of outboard gear and I needed the massive numbers of TRS ins & outs.

So up until about a week ago, I had been wondering why my hardware synths did not sound as good when I recorded them to audio. Well, the obvious answer for me was recording in 16/44.1 wasn't good enough for recording external audio hardware. Based on advice from this board and my own research, I converted my project to 24/96 and the sound quality difference when recording my external hardware synths was much better. Problem solved right? Wrong.

Now while my audio did sound a lot better, I noticed that my ASIO driver was running about 3-5% with no project loaded in Cubase. Strange, but not a show-stopper. My buffer is set to 2048 @ 96000 which gives me a latency of about 23ms. Good enough. Then once I recorded all my synths to audio then played them back, I started noticing massive clicks, pops, and other audio artifacts that seem to be caused by loss of sync between Cubase 4 and the MOTU. The audio files seem to be OK as far as recording OK but its almost as if the setup can't handle 5 or 6 24/96 audio files playing at once alon with the standard compliment of Waves plugins and a few Cubase internal plugs as well.

My project is running at about 60-70% CPU usage during the "dense" parts (read: lots of audio playing), so I am fairly certain this is not a CPU spiking problem. The only thing that makes me not 100% sure this isn't the case is that I'm now using Cubase 4 with some of the new VST3 plugins, and those only use CPU when there is audio passing through them.

In addition, from time to time by computer will BSOD with an IRQ_LESS_OR_NOT_EQUAL error (usually on startup or shutdown), which I am fairly certain is related to the drivers for the MOTU PCI-424 card. I contacted MOTU support about this and after taking their sweet time to get back to me their answer was that since I had one of my USB ports sharing an IRQ with the MOTU card, then I should try to give the MOTU its own IRQ. Well that is not possible on an ACPI-enabled computer so they suggested reinstalling Windows with ACPI disabled. After researching this solution, there seems to be a 50/50 mix of people who say: "Yes, disable ACPI", and others whoc say "No, Windows XP works great with ACPI, dont do it". SO I'm not sure this will help.

One other possibly dodgy setup thing I have going is that I store all my audio on a Network server, so when my project plays, it is actually streaming audio over a dedicated network link (100mbps), instead of playing my files on the local disk. When working in 16/44.1 this never seemed to be much of a problem, but I'm wondering if the extra size of the 24/96 audio files is pushing this network link to its limits and maybe that might help solve the problem. This could very well be a big problem, but I'm not entirely certain.

Bottom line is that I have found loads of people who have problems with MOTU audio interfaces on the PC platform, and the general consensus seems to be that MOTU is a Mac-company and thats where they sink most of their development work. Their Windows support seems to be a bit dodgy. Now I read a bunch of people that seem to be running MOTU products OK, but I am unsure of their configurations. My 24IO worked pretty well until I started pushing it with 24/96, and thats when it started dying. I say worked "pretty well" because I would still experience minimal pops and clicks when working in 16/44.1.

So based on advice from the internet (for what its worth), and a very good guy at Sweetwater, I was thinking of selling the 24IO and going with a PreSonus FireStudio paired with a DigimaxFS. Same cost, but seems to be a more PC-centric company. The things I have heard about the FireStudio are all very positive, especially as far as PreSonus providing good tech support, having regular driver updates and working well in the PC arena.

I'd have to buy all new cables for my synths as the Presonus has XLR inputs, but the good news is I can also replace my Mackie Big Knob with the additional MSR controller that works with the FireStudio.

EDIT: Apparently the PreSonus has these "combo" ports that will accept either XLR or TR/TRS cables. Never seen that before, but that is very cool.

So the three questions I have for you all is:

1. Do you see any other possible solutions other that switching audio interfaces?

2. If you have a MOTU and a PC studio, have you had problems, especially working in 24/96?

3. If you own any of the PreSonus audio interfaces what are your opinions/experiences?

Last edited by Eric J on Sep-12-2007 at 18:19

quote:

Originally posted by Eric J I have been running a PC based studio

Well there's your problem right there.


I have a PCI based motu system, and it works flawlessly. I have the 2408 and the 308 interfaces. i've never experienced a pop or a click that wasn't sync related.

Why don't you eliminate some of the variables here to troubleshoot? Recording files over the network? Your PC is giving your strange errors?

I'd give your PC a birthday with a new fresh install. and record to your local drive.

I seriously think all of these problems are software related. When you plug that same interface into a mac, and it'll run fine. = software.

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Well I would agree with you that if it was an option I would just simply go to a Mac. I used to produce on a Mac G4 867 around 2001 and I loved it. The problem was, when I started producing again in 2006 (after a 4 year hiatus), the choice was: Use a Mac with an 867 Mhz processor or use the PC with a 3.2 Ghz processor. There really wasn't much of a choice. I had 5 times the processing power on the PC and I already owned it, so I switched to PC.

I simply cannot justify the $4,000 to $5,000 it'd cost me for a buy new Mac Pro and Logic Pro (if I went to Mac, I'd definitely switch to Logic from Cubase). Even a decent refurb Mac Pro is $3,200. I'm certain that the MOTU would work great on a Mac, but $5,000 is just not in my budget at the moment.

I recently talked with my guy over at Sweetwater and he was saying that the streaming files over a network was a definite no-no. I kind of had a feeling that was part of the problem, so his suggestion was to get an Glyph external firewire drive and use that for my audio drive. Apparently the Glyph external drives are really good, reliable and made for use in an audio setup. His other suggestion was to drop to recording in 24/48, as recording in 24/96 was too much to justify the CPU overhead and the result was basically the same when recording external hardware. I've seen much debate about this issue.

So I think I'm going to try that before dumping the MOTU 24IO.

I want to make it clear that I would really rather not dump the 24IO. Its a choice piece of kit and I absolutely love it, but it has to work properly, otherwise it is just an expensive doorstop.

One other thing, I have done a clean install (2 actually) just last week when I upgraded to Cubase 4. I wiped everything out and reinstalled the OS and even made many of the tweaks suggested at musicxp.net (fantastic site!). This improved my PC performance tremendously, which is great, but still the problems remain.

CReddick: I'm definitely going to try some of the things you suggest, and I'll post back once I have the new drive and see if that helps things along. Thank you.

P.S. if you know of any place to get a decent dual-core and/or dual proc mac for less than $3,200, please let me know. A platform change may be in my future regardless of the outcome of this particular situation.

Last edited by Eric J on Sep-12-2007 at 18:25

upgrading to a newer mac will require you to get a new pci card from motu. I had to bump up to the pci-e card when i bought my quad g5. You can def find a kick ass g5 or mac pro on ebay for cheap(er).

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BEATPORT

more analog, more sidechain

quote:

Originally posted by CReddick upgrading to a newer mac will require you to get a new pci card from motu. I had to bump up to the pci-e card when i bought my quad g5. You can def find a kick ass g5 or mac pro on ebay for cheap(er).

So I'm assuming that is becuse the new G5 Mac Pros only have PCIe slots? It looks like they have PCIe/PCI-X combo slots on the pictures on apple web site. This might also cause a problem for my PCI-based UAD card. I have one PCI UAD card and one PCIe UAD card.

quote:

Originally posted by Eric J I recently talked with my guy over at Sweetwater and he was saying that the streaming files over a network was a definite no-no. I kind of had a feeling that was part of the problem, so his suggestion was to get an Glyph external firewire drive and use that for my audio drive. Apparently the Glyph external drives are really good, reliable and made for use in an audio setup. His other suggestion was to drop to recording in 24/48, as recording in 24/96 was too much to justify the CPU overhead and the result was basically the same when recording external hardware. I've seen much debate about this issue.

Totally agreed. Have you tried ditching the network file share yet?

Why an external drive? They are more expensive and firewire has associated overhead. I wouldn't bother with an external drive unless you need to move it between machines or connect it to a laptop.

Glyph doesn't make hard drives. They make the box the drive goes in. Most Glyph products use Seagate Baracuda drives. These are midrange drive with decent performance, but certainly not top end.

If I were you I'd check out either the WD Caviar RE2 or WD Raptor drives. The RE2 is an enterprise class high capacity drive with excellent concurrency handling and a high MTBF (mean time between failure; ie reliable). The Raptor is one of the fastest SATA drives on the market, at 10,000 RPM spindle speed, but they are only available up to 150GB.

RE2:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16822136143

Raptor:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16822136011

Fast local storage is quite important

I've tried the network file share thing... All I get is pops and clicks. Network IO is very, very interrupt intensive and also causes the operating system's network stack to have to do alot of work, dealing with TCP packets, etc etc. I find network boards and sound boards generally don't like eachother.

I used my 24io on PC all the time without any problems, I then moved it to my MAC when I switched about 2 years ago and still haven't had a single problem.

I normally record my synths and run my whole project at 24bit/48khz btw. I think 96 is over the top personally.

quote:

Originally posted by johno27 I think 96 is over the top personally.

Agreed. I mean, consider the destination... A CD at 44.1khz.

If you guys insist at working with higher sample rates... at least use 88.2 so it quantizes easily back down to 44.1

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BEATPORT

more analog, more sidechain

Sorry, i haven't read the whole thread, but your problem is almost definately a hard disk issue. Pops and crackles are caused (often) by the hard disk not being able to access the data you want quickly enough.
I find it hard to believe that you REALLY need to run at 24/96 to get a decent sound though? I mean, very few people do this, its not considered necesary by most people in the rock and traditional industry (from what I can gather). Maybe you should reconsider this, it won't degrade your audio quality, but it puts huge strain on your system. Besides, many synths only output 16/44.1 anyway...

Running from a network drive seems a bad idea too, so scrap that I would say... Just buy a decent drive, if you want to run 24/96 then maybe get it going in a RAID array for the speed.

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Hey Eric, I too haven't read the thread in it's entirety but I am nearly sure the problem is caused by network streaming of the files. I have seen this so many times and the problem is not directly related to the 24 IO, which is probably one of the most stable interfaces out there.

As for external drives, you are always going to be limited in the amount of tracks that can be streamed from them, even with audio specific drives. It is really best to have back ups(or the finished tracks on them) but works in progress should really be run from native hard drives. Even if it means copy back and forth, it's worth it.

MERiDiAN5i2 is absolutely right about the new raptors etc for the ultimate set up, but audio capability is still limited to how fast the continous data stream is from any given drive, and not the burst figures or seek times which these drives excel at.

Assuming you don't have all sorts of weird background tasks (nod32, video drivers/panels, etc) running, you should be able to do what you want to do with standard SATA2 7,200rpm drives.

I wouldn't worry too much about the standing Cubase overhead of 3%, nor the "dense" part CPU reading 60% as it's really only when you go upwards of 80 that problems will begin occur.

Stick with the 24IO, your PC is more than powerful enough, and use 24/96 if it sounds better - your setup will be able to handle it.

Just curious, did you see from some of my posts about musicxp?
I found it years ago and the tweaks really let you squeeze the most from your PC.

Thanks for the replies, guys.

A little update:
I moved my project folder to my local SATA disk just to take the network streaming out of the equation. I also dropped the project to 24/48. The performance has increased tremendously. Once I got all the audio pointed to my local disk, including a few Battery samples that were pointed there, the pops and clicks seemed to go away and I was happily producing for about 3 hours last night with no pops or clicks, which is good.

So that solves the problem pretty much, which is big relief, because I was NOT looking forward to replacing my audio interface. I'm glad the problem seems to have been resolved.

@DJ RANN - I have indeed done most of the tweaks suggested at musicxp.net and they make a big difference. When I did my reinstall a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that any type of audio processing was indeed much faster, and now after moving things locally, standard operations line Normalize happen in sub-second time, even with fairly large audio recordings.

--

Also, I was reading the reviews on the two drives that MERiDiAN5i2 suggested. The RE2 is getting good reviews for being ultra-reliable, but the Raptor is getting mixed reviews because they are saying that it is fast, but that it is noisy. Do any of you have these drives and can confirm these opinions?

The raptor is a bit noisier due to it's high platter speed, this is true. The RE2 series drives are quieter, actually one of the quieter drives out there

Good to hear your having better luck now. Score!