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Wayon 25 January 2015

I was the one that started the thread "Are updates necessary?" Here's where I'm at now.

So I just wiped my hard drives completely and reloaded Windows 7. I loaded a new version of Reaper. When I bring in a project from the external drive, it takes a loooooong time to load. But, worse than that, I'm having the exact same problem that I was having before.
win7 64bit i7 CPU 920@2.67GHz 6GB Ram This thing is 6 years old.
The performance meter is at around 20% and I've got cracks and pops and static.
I've been dealing with this for a while now so I've done all the optimization techniques and nothing is changing.
Someone in another post suggested an IRQ problem. Yes, I do have some IRQ's doing multiple tasks, one actually doing 5.
On a side note (this may or may not be related) but my mouse pointer sometimes jumps around like it can't keep up. It only lasted for 10 seconds or so and then is fine.
Please help.

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audiokid Sun, 01/25/2015 - 16:13

Wayon, post: 424209, member: 37102 wrote: win7 64bit i7 CPU 920@2.67GHz 6GB Ram This thing is 6 years old.

Your computer should do a lot better than this! Especially with Reaper.

Wayon, post: 424209, member: 37102 wrote: The performance meter is at around 20% and I've got cracks and pops and static.

Sounds like your interface is weak and your buffer setting is struggling. What interface are you using?

audiokid Sun, 01/25/2015 - 16:42

Wayon, post: 424211, member: 37102 wrote: I'm using a Fireface 800.

What Firewire device is installed in your computer> Texas Instruments is the recommended. If you are using something else, it may be whats causing this. What RME FW driver are you using as well? Are your drivers up to date? [="http://www.rme-audi…"]
[/]
64 bit: http://www.rme-audio.de/download/driver_fw_win_3110.zip

Wayon Sun, 01/25/2015 - 16:51

audiokid, post: 424216, member: 1 wrote: What Firewire device is installed in your computer> Texas Instruments is the recommended. If you are using something else, it may be whats causing this. What RME FW driver are you using as well? Are your drivers up to date?
[[url=http://[/URL]="http://www.rme-audi…"] [/]="http://www.rme-audi…"] [/]
64 bit: http://www.rme-audio.de/download/driver_fw_win_3110.zip

I found the interface is located on 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller. Is that what you mean?

And yes, the drivers are up to date.

audiokid Sun, 01/25/2015 - 17:29

Wayon, post: 424218, member: 37102 wrote: I found the interface is located on 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller. Is that what you mean?

And yes, the drivers are up to date.

Sounds like you've got it covered but I'm still wondering if your FW card is the recommended Texas instrument

Maybe others more software savvy will chime in to advice better.

Tony Carpenter Sun, 01/25/2015 - 18:07

For the record, to the best of my knowledge, shared IRQs (interrupt request) are no longer an issue. That went away when we got rid of external com ports and parallel ports. Sort of thing we stuffed around with when adding sound blaster cards in the late 80s and early 90s :). It is ideal still, if using cards to sometimes establish order of slots in some machines though.

Since you are on an external device using a bog standard 1394 chip set, it can, or can't be blamed, there is no rule. I personally ran a Mackie 1640i onyx and never had specific issues with it. That being said my PC may be built with better/different components. And certainly had much more RAM. General rule of thumb to me is, give a PC at least 8GB of RAM, Windoze is a guzzling bitch.

Hard drive speeds below 7200 (unless SSD) are not recommended, and a bad quality 5400 drive can cause your issues, size of the HDDs cache (not adjustable) involved. If the drive is trashing back and forth, though your buffer sizes are insanely large. I have never run bigger than 512, and usually run 128 or 256. That's been the rule for my many machines over various interfaces.

Number one job, try another firewire cable if you have one. All above are things, so many things can be involved.. :unsure:

Wayon Sun, 01/25/2015 - 19:13

Makzimia, post: 424235, member: 48344 wrote: Did you establish there was absolutely no issue with the original drive?.

Well now, this is just it. I am trying to do a system backup an it fails because of an I/O device error. Same thing with system image.

(Sigh)

I'm thinking it could be that drive.

audiokid Sun, 01/25/2015 - 19:21

FWIW, I will track and mix with a 64 buffer on 32 tracks, 8 Gig of Ram on Windows 7 64bit I7, running Sequoia 13 which is a serious huge program, all night long.
Only when I am running 8 instances of Melodyne on top of the basics, do I then run into problems. :LOL:
I'm pretty certain the problem people have on any platform is over user of plug-ins and too much of whatever, at least so I've heard . My PC will rival any Mac and still leave some money left over to buy and nice preamp., which I did. :)

I often wonder how much better my system will run when I add more memory. I'm thinking about 32Gig.

There are certain MB that don't do firewire or audio well. John may know more about that. We don't want Tony's opinion here lol, he's a PC hater ! Kidding, well sort of... . :ROFLMAO::p

How do other programs run on it? or is it just Audio? What video card do you have. This is also something you need to have right.

DonnyThompson Mon, 01/26/2015 - 00:31

Uhmmm... did anyone else notice what he mentioned about his RAM? 6 gig?

I'm just throwing this out there, and I may very well be wrong on this, but isn't that an odd amount for RAM? Normally, memory sticks come in increments divisible by 4... like 4, 8, 16, etc., or, at least I believe that they have for awhile now... and again, this may not be it, but, besides being on the low side memory-wise, it's also an "odd" number in regard to the amount of memory installed... so, if you have, say, a 4 gig stick, and then another one of 2 gigs, this mismatch might be one of your issues, along with the possibility that you may be using two different types of RAM - and many computers don't like to see memory in mismatched configurations like that.

And, as I stated above, that amount is also pretty low for modern DAW production uses. Remember... your PC is using at least one gig of that RAM just to run the OS... so you're not really tapping into 6 full gigs... and when you start adding multiple tracks, plugs, or, the big memory hog - VSTi's - you can really tax your system's resources.

IMHO, you'd be better off getting into a more current computer - perhaps a quad core cpu, with at least 8 gig of RAM - as opposed to dealing with the hassles and frustrations of trying to make an antiquated machine work optimally with the resource requirements of today's modern production platforms, VSTi's and other processing tools (plugs).

Just a thought or two... ;)

and only IMHO of course.

-d

Wayon Mon, 01/26/2015 - 06:49

Makzimia, post: 424241, member: 48344 wrote: Pfft... I was fair about it :p

I'm betting on a bad HDD.

Yup. I'm going to go with that

DonnyThompson, post: 424254, member: 46114 wrote: Uhmmm... did anyone else notice what he mentioned about his RAM? 6 gig?

I'm just throwing this out there, and I may very well be wrong on this, but isn't that an odd amount for RAM? Normally, memory sticks come in increments divisible by 4... like 4, 8, 16, etc., or, at least I believe that they have for awhile now... and again, this may not be it, but, besides being on the low side memory-wise, it's also an "odd" number in regard to the amount of memory installed... so, if you have, say, a 4 gig stick, and then another one of 2 gigs, this mismatch might be one of your issues, along with the possibility that you may be using two different types of RAM - and many computers don't like to see memory in mismatched configurations like that.

And, as I stated above, that amount is also pretty low for modern DAW production uses. Remember... your PC is using at least one gig of that RAM just to run the OS... so you're not really tapping into 6 full gigs... and when you start adding multiple tracks, plugs, or, the big memory hog - VSTi's - you can really tax your system's resources.

IMHO, you'd be better off getting into a more current computer - perhaps a quad core cpu, with at least 8 gig of RAM - as opposed to dealing with the hassles and frustrations of trying to make an antiquated machine work optimally with the resource requirements of today's modern production platforms, VSTi's and other processing tools (plugs).

Just a thought or two... ;)

and only IMHO of course.

-d

I have 6 slots for RAM each with a 1G stick.

Yes, I just may be getting a more current computer.

One more thing to try. . . . .

pcrecord Mon, 01/26/2015 - 08:01

Unless you are running alot of vsti, 6gig is plenty of ram for tracking and mixing.
I say, change the drive, install from scratch with ALL LATESTS DRIVERS, if problems are still present. Use latencymon to find where is the bottleneck.
Also, follow some optimisation guide like this one : http://www.native-instruments.com/en/support/knowledge-base/show/752/windows-7-tuning-tips-for-audio-processing/
If it still not good enough, get another FireWire card . Oh ! btw, did someone mention to try to use the legacy FireWire driver ?

Kuroneku Mon, 02/16/2015 - 19:07

Wayon, post: 424209, member: 37102 wrote: I was the one that started the thread "Are updates necessary?" Here's where I'm at now.

So I just wiped my hard drives completely and reloaded Windows 7. I loaded a new version of Reaper. When I bring in a project from the external drive, it takes a loooooong time to load. But, worse than that, I'm having the exact same problem that I was having before.
win7 64bit i7 CPU 920@2.67GHz 6GB Ram This thing is 6 years old.
The performance meter is at around 20% and I've got cracks and pops and static.
I've been dealing with this for a while now so I've done all the optimization techniques and nothing is changing.
Someone in another post suggested an IRQ problem. Yes, I do have some IRQ's doing multiple tasks, one actually doing 5.
On a side note (this may or may not be related) but my mouse pointer sometimes jumps around like it can't keep up. It only lasted for 10 seconds or so and then is fine.
Please help.

Purchase an SSD, and you will never deal with performance issues. YouTube SSD performance. You did not mention what kind of hard drive you have, but without knowing I will tell you that you have a regular hard drive in your system, correct?
Your CPU is more than perfect for a DAW, specially REAPER, and the amount of RAM is more than fine. Your motherboard has DDR3 Ram since you have that i7

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