What Doesn't Work

[SteveMitchell]

Hi GigaDiga - The most common causes of clicks and pops are interrupt requests for the soundcard not being serviced fast enough. Before you spend tons o\' money, look at the motherboard you have now. The closest I could come to the Motherboard model you listed was P6DBE, and the manual for it doesn\'t list how the PCI slots use INTs and mappings to ISA IRQs. The best thing to try would be to move the soundcard to another slot to see if anything changes.

Steve Mitchell
The Classical MIDI Resource (\"http://www.classicalmidiresource.com\")
The CMR Players (\"http://www.mp3.com/cmrplayers\")


[This message has been edited by SteveMitchell (edited 01-26-2001).]

[gigaDiga]

I thought, in an attempt to let my misfortune help others in some way, that I should list my current setup to those who might be interested.

The reason for this is because it is crap. I only get something like 22 voice polyphony @ 44khz sample rate and 33 @ 33khz, and that\'s even with only Gigastudio running. And seeing as there appears to be little guidance from those who have good working setups as to what works and what doesn\'t I thought I\'d aid others at least in the process of elimination.

Supermicro PS2DBE Motherboard (Dual capable)
1 * Pentium II 400mhz
384mb PC100 dram
4gb Maxtor 5400rpm IDE drive (c: programs drive)
2gb Seagate 7200rpm AV/SCSI drive (d: gigs drive)
Ricoh CD-RW SCSI
Adaptec UW/SCSI card (for both the CD-RW and the Seagate drive)
ext modem
kingston network adapter

*Elsa Gloria L/MX PCI graphics card* (most probably the cause of all my woes)

*Pulsar2 PCI sound card* (I\'m informed this works fine with Gigastudio so I don\'t think this is the problem)

Running Win98Lite with all the optimisation tips presented on this forum implemented.


As you can see it\'s not, at least on paper, a badly spec\'d system. But somewhere down the line it\'s choking and cracks up with pops and clicks.

My initial theory is that it\'s the bus of the motherboard which is just ATA33. So I shall upgrade mine to an Asustek CUSL2 (ATA100). This will also help my pulsar2 out. Also choking my Pulsar2 is that horrible Elsa Gloria card which is almost entirely optimised for 3d graphics use (my job) and hence kills anything else, it even slows down 2d graphics!. By removing that card and moving over to an AGP card I should drastically free up the PCI bus and enable the Pulsar2 to do it\'s job freely. With a new motherboard I intend to upgrade my CPU to a PIII 933ghz. Hopefully all these purchases should help to solve my problems.

Apologies if this appears like a lot of verbage but I just thought somebody out there might want to know.

It appears that having a good Giga system is a hit and miss affair, some guys are getting 100 voices on lesser systems than mine, but let it be known that my system is, most assuredly, a miss.

gigaDiga (still saving my pocket money)

[gigaDiga]

Wow Steve! Thanks for the advice, I really didn\'t expect that.

Yes you got it right my motherboard is actually the P6DBE, I typed my first mail from memory.

I will rush back home this evening and try moving the soundcard around. I understand that this may not be the holy grail that I\'ve been looking for, but if it can make any improvements in the short term I shall be really pleased.

cheers for the tip,

[BONAFIDE]

As far as I have been able to see (I own a Pulsar as well and an egosys24/96) the POPs and Clicks are a combination of memory, processor speed and your hard drive config. Make sure your scsi CD-rom is not slowwing down your UW scsi disk if they are both attached to the same SCSI card. The biggest performance jump I have seen was with the ATHLON 850 I upgraded to and haveing my U2W disk alone on the scsi card.

[gigaDiga]

Thanks for the advice guys.

In the end it made sense for me to upgrade. I got a good price for my old PC and had the extra cash to move up a gear.

I now have 70 polyphony @ 44khz before any pops and clicks raise their heads, far short of 160, but workable none-the-less.

Thanks for the interest. Good luck in your setups,

gigaDiga

[Robert Kral]

Don\'t forget to also try the \"Temporary solution for Clicks and Pops\" (see thread under \"Hardware Issues). Of course it may have nothing to do with your particular case, but some of us were getting a glitch every 2 minutes (exactly) and the temporary solution has elimated the problem. (Plus. it\'s easy to try!)

Robert Kral