I feel your pain...its kinda funny cuz I was thinking the same thing about my new M-audio card.
Tech support DID finally solve my problem (user error, not M-audio BTW)...

Im sure Terratec users can say the same...that everyone has their own problems with whatever card they are using. Experiences vary...

Lesson is this: Even researching your products can sometimes not prevent silly things from happening. In my case, not only did I forget to disable onboard sound in my BIOS, but the M-audio didnt ship with XP drivers...no biggie in either case, but potentially frustrating if you're expecting an easy install.

Good Luck dude!

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dude, that sucks. You should expect something of decent quality for that price. I was under the impression the DMX-6 fire was supposed to be a decent card.

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Well, I finally managed to record my song (to be found in amateur section) thru line-in but whats the point of having a digital mixing console if you can only record thru line. All the problems I have are very annoying and probably not that hard to solve for the company (example for digital setup when on intern you have to click extern then intern again otherwise it sounds all distorted.. I reckon the card has great power and the patchbay is very handy but what's the point about it if you can't use it the way it should?
The problems are mostly in recording for producing only I can get decent results and killer latency's but well.. I hope next update fixes stuff.

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Sorry, I own a Dmx6fire, and never had the problems you mentioned problems (except some issues where Asio drivers don't get released properly when quiting a ASIO host, but that problem is not only on Terratecs). I don't even have problems recording several inputs at a time while playing a couple of dozen audio tracks (Cubase SX1 or 2, with Asio drivers, 256 samples/buffer).

Don't blame it all on the soundcard right away. Computers are difficult things to work with. There are dozens of different components, and all of them can make an otherwise perfect setup go terribly wrong.
Agreed, it's not the best of the best, but for it's price it's a great card. And yes, I'll take it over an Audiophile 24/96 (which was my first choice, but by comparing them in realtime I went for the Terratec) or an Audigy.

If you have harware, Get a proper Audio Interface like a Powercore or something, the build in cards always have their problems

Powercore is NOT an audio interface. It's just a DSP card (or box, now with the firewire) that uses the DSP to run proprietary effect/instrument plugins instead of straining the host comp. With a Powercore alone, you can't make any sound yet. Same goes for the UAD1.

And saying built in (if you mean PCI based) cards have problems isn't true either. Some of the best cards made made for audio are RME's, and most of them use a PCI card.

But if you mean onboard sound, then yes, that's usually the biggest pile of **** you can think of.

Hey, sorry to hear about your problems with the Terratec. I've got one and not had too many problems. It took me a while to find a driver that did the job (try ALL the terratec driver version before giving up!) and I'm pretty happy with the card
I did have a few crackle problems when I 1st got the card, but since I upgrade from a VIA chipset to a SIS one, it seems to be okay. I think the newer VIA chipsets are okay tho' What mobo/driver u using?

All you Terratec users comin here to say how great yours works isnt helping him LOL...

How bout those of you who have had problems and eventually figured something out!

Too funny!

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Well, yeah, but it's easy to immediately say the soundcard is crap. While it could be many other things. Consumer cards are usually made for mister everyone, so they must be fool proof. They usually are not so critical with all sorts of components.

But once you make a step up (agreed, it's not SOO much up with the DMX6, but still), you have to pay a little attention at what you're doing.

To make it worse, most home studio producers (so I imagine most of you here) don't use their computer only for audio. Usually they'll have an office package, games, internet and what else not. All this is "pollution" for a DAW. And problems only get worse the higher you step up in the quality/price range (wait until you got to install a central computer in a studio, with protools TDM or HD, and then come back to tell me everything is easy, even on Mac, and they dare to say those are more stable than PC).

So make at least sure your have all stuff removed you don't use, that your HD's are regularly defragmented (and even better, that your audio remains on a separate disk).

Just in my case, actually my comp is used for several things (I'm typing this text on it right now), but I created a separate hardware profile for the audio stuff (network disabled, services I don't use disabled to get as much memory as possible), and I rarely have problems (maybe the occasionally software bug).
Next I'm moving up, because I'm building a complete DAW that will only serve as DAW, and tweaked to the maximum of my capabilities (even to extreme nerd stuff like removing all unutilised dll's from Windows), separate harddrives for system and audio, each component selected carefully, etc... Agreed, for most it stays a hobby, I'm making my job of it.

But fact is, if you want it to work, you gotta research where the problems are. It might be even something as simple as IRQ sharing (a very common source of crackles in audio).

quote:

Originally posted by Digital Aura Lesson is this: Even researching your products can sometimes not prevent silly things from happening. In my case, not only did I forget to disable onboard sound in my BIOS, but the M-audio didnt ship with XP drivers...no biggie in either case, but potentially frustrating if you're expecting an easy install. Good Luck dude!

Hi,

Just wondering, but why do you have to disable onboard sound in the BIOS? Do you have to do this with all soundcards? Anybody can please explain this? Thanks!

Because
A) onboard sound chips are rarely good. Crap sounding, usually staining the cpu more than a "real" audio interfance. There are some notable exceptions though (those Asus Valve thingies for example, they sound good).
B) when you have a better soundcard, you're not using the onboard chip. But as long as it's activated, it takes up resources (most importantly an IRQ). IRQ problems have lessened with the coming of APIC motherboards (which provides more IRQ's). But with normal ACPI boards, IRQ sharing is still one of the main problems for bad audio performance (depends on the systems, some cards don't have any problems sharing IRQ's, with others it's crackling galore. Also depends with what device it's sharing. If you got two heavy duty devices that need lot's of bandwidth, that's asking for problems).