Emu
Previously I’ve written articles on the Emu 0404 PCI soundcard and my problems getting it to work cleanly on my system.
Originally I gave up and reinstalled my M-audio 2496 and put the 0404 away.
Well while trying to fix something else last week as reported on in the article, XP and Bios Tweaks and Fixes, Pops and Glitches I decided to try again.
It seems to have worked, the cuplrit seems to have been the belkin gigabit lan card. Wether this was a IRQ issue or not I don’t know but whatever it seems to have solved all the problems with clicking and glitches.
Also another weird turnup as well, the 0404 seems to have reduced CPU usage!
Not my imagination, with the 2496 audiophile my CPU was at around 35% in Sonar, now it’s down to 14%.
So it looks like I’ll be going back to 0nboard lan for FX Teleport. But maybe I’ll just see how I go.
Now I’ve got quite a bit of FX processing power with the TC Powercore, UAD and now EMUs PowerFX.
Previous articles about EMU 0404 below.
Emu 0404 pci sound card clicks and pops
EMU 0404 Clicks and Pops Part 2
Emu 0404 PCI and Sonar Mixdown Problem
Related Reading:
And we’re back, from outta space yes I just walked in with this sad look upon my face…
Argghh EMU you have been so kind in the past why do you mock me so?
STOP!!!
Breathe…
Feel better?
Nope.
Why so sad? Well it all began a few weeks ago, ebay + curiosity + £30 = whole heap um arseache.
If you’ve landed on this page and are thinking of buying this card please read the following articles,
Emu 0404 pci sound card clicks and pops
EMU 0404 Clicks and Pops Part 2
I would consider myself a pretty savvy computer user and this card has almost defeated me.
Anyway onto the next problem I suppose…
Decided after a few days off to paint my bathroom to fire up my PC and remix a tune from a few months back.
This meant using the 0404 – some odd stuff kept happening – the screen going blank and audio stopping! weird.
Well that only started happening after I messed with bios and I reckon it’s graphics related…
Audio when working has no glitches and using the PowerFX alongside my UAD worked perfectly, that is until I went to export as audio / create mixdown…
First was warned to setup PowerFX to render – which meant a restart.
Restart and try again…
Rendering/mixdown garbled and just messed up.
Some internet investigation reveals the that the EMU 0404 doesn’t like rendering in Sonar.
So here is my solution(so far not tested) but noted here tonight ready for tomorrow morning.
Disable Fast Bounce and use Audible Bounce instead.
To disable fast bounce Check this guide out
Also while I was looking at PowerFX solutions I came across this Forum/Site which has a forum dedicated to the EMU 0404…follow this link
Related Reading:
So today I’m going to try bios settings to see if I can fix my EMU 0404 problems.
Anyway I was mesing yesterday and the problem came again, clicks and glitches.
But only when using PowerFX – annoying.
This morning I decided to look into my Bios settings.
1st one I noticed,
PCI Latency Timer- Did a search and found this article at SOS; Incurable Soundcard Stuttering?
Could this be it?
I have an NVidia card and it’s AGP – so let’s try switching the setting in my bios to AGP rather than PCI and clock timings at ’32′
Well so far seemed to work?
Less clicks…
Weird – now the progress indicator on Sonar has stopped moving yet sound plays – and yet again clicks although less audible are still there.
Back to Bios.
Let’s see if it’s Graphics Card related.
‘It defines how much of your system’s memory is to be used as a data buffer for your AGP graphics card. The default setting should be half the system’s RAM, however, certain cards work better with specific settings (e.g.: 128 MB despite having 512 MB in the system)’ – found this here
Let’s drop that down and see what happens.
PCI Latency Timer:
‘The PCI Latency Timer is a mechanism that helps PCI bus-mastering capable devices to share the PCI bus. Each PCI device able to operate in bus-master mode is required to implement a timer, called the Latency Timer, that limits the time the device can hold the PCI bus. The timer starts when the device gains bus ownership, and counts down at the rate of the PCI clock. When the counter reaches zero, the device is required to release the bus. If no other devices are waiting for bus ownership, it may simply grab the bus again and transfer more data.
If the latency timer is set too low, PCI devices will interrupt their transfers unnecessarily often, hurting performance. If it’s set too high, devices that require frequent bus access may overflow their buffers, losing data.’ - found this here
—-
None that fixed the progress thingy not moving/updating.
—-
Weirder still this thing keeps messing around.
I can’t set up the powerfx as a fx insert on Sonar without it killing it.
—-
Ok let’s have a looksy.
Tried messing with all that and PC went a bit hooky.
Gonna try again from scratch.
First removed all soundcard drivers.
Everyone including old M-Audio 2496 stuff.
Then ran CCleaner – cleaned all the gunk left – till everything before running.
Then check registry fix everything.
Restart + Reinstall yet again…
Related Reading:
In an earlier article I mentioned that I had installed the EMU 0404 PCI sound card.
I basically got it off ebay for £30, and it was curiosity that made me go for it.
Curious about it’s zero latency and the built in FX.
I have a UAD card and even though I knew the EMU would not be able to compete I did think it would be interesting to see if it was any good at all.
The card went in fine, software/drivers installed – downloaded updates installed those.
Without touching the Patchbay software I fired up Sonar.
Created a new project and recorded a track.
Recording went fine.
I created a new track and copied the recording over.
Panned each track left and right
So now I’ve got a ‘stereo’ recording.
<—-Track 1—–>
Vol 0db
Panned Left
FX BIN – Sonitus: EQ and Compressor
<—-Track 2—–>
Vol 0db
Panned Right
FX BIN – PowerFX EQ and Compressor
<—-Problems—->
1. Clicks and pops on Track 2 that stop when PowerFX bypassed.
2. Time lag using midi controller to change FX parameters.
<—-Solution to problem 1.—->
Reinstall software/drivers – uninstalled updates and reinstalled older drivers form disc.
Problems still there – reinstall newest drivers still problem.
Disable Sonitus FX – no dice – still a problem.
Change latency settings in Sonar – still problem – in some case get’s worse.
I’ll keep digging but it’s gonna be a few days til I get to it again.
<—-Solution to problem 2.—->
I’m stumped with this one and it’s annoying as hell.
Will be trying to fix this as well.
<—-Overall—->
At the moment I’m contemplating going back to my M-Audio and binning the EMU.
It’s a lot of work really and I can’t in all honesty see myself recommending this device as it stands.
Think I’ll email EMU and see waht they have to say.
I’ll be back…
Ok so here we go solution 1 – Update Sonar
Update sonar 7 with service packs 7.1 and 7.2 – Problem still there…
Ok so here we go solution 2 – Disable unused motherboard items in bios
Disable unused items in bios – in this case my Game Port – never use it anyway. – Problem remains
Ok so here we go solution 3 – Check for IRQ conflicts
Sounds to me like a clipping problem, dunno why – but when I dsiable the Powerfx the clipping/click/pop goes away.
Anyway by all accounts the 0404 is even more a bit demanding on a computer’s resources.
So I ran a check
- start -run – msinfo32
Checked my IRQ assignments for any conflicts with the 0404 – found none – although I did notice the M-Audio 2496 had a conflict with my graphics card???
Think the next step will be to remove that.
—->Removed M-Audio 24/96 – problem still there.
Ok so here we go solution 4 – Totally remove drivers and software completely.
Takes to restarts of pc and will try to install drivers for emu each time – cancelled as I want to run CCleaner.
CCleaner will remove any gunk left over.
Reinstall newest drivers from that point – but will search for any remaining EMU plugins and delete before I start.
Checked registry for problems and cleaned them up.
Now re-install drivers and software – make sure latest are downloaded from EMUs site.
Then downloaded Sonar Tutorial for PatchMix DSP
Might as well start from scratch as I’m convinced now that this is a software problem.
—–>>>
Well the clicking popping was still there after all that.
But anyway after following the tutorial I started to mess with the latencyt settings again and it worked.
After going through a few times I ended up settling for 14ms latency settings.
Defragged again.
Seems a bit better, I’ll keep an ear on it this week.
But for now…