Egosys Gigastation woes, lead to Echo Mia woes

[pianojoe]

The driver for the soundcard keeps crashing my computer, usually about two hours after Giga has been opened, whether it\'s currently opened or closed. \"Blue screens of death\" with V x D failure pointing to the soundcard. Went to the Egosys site & downloaded the latest driver, GOT NO SOUND AT ALL! Reloaded the original so I could at least play. If anyone else uses Gigastation. PLEASE HELP! No support from Egosys images/icons/mad.gif

Athlon 1700
98SE
(2) IBM Deskstar 7200RPM
Giga 96 2.2

[Bruce A. Richardson]

Originally posted by pianojoe:
The driver for the soundcard keeps crashing my computer, usually about two hours after Giga has been opened, whether it\'s currently opened or closed. \"Blue screens of death\" with V x D failure pointing to the soundcard. Went to the Egosys site & downloaded the latest driver, GOT NO SOUND AT ALL! Reloaded the original so I could at least play. If anyone else uses Gigastation. PLEASE HELP! No support from Egosys images/icons/mad.gif

Athlon 1700
98SE
(2) IBM Deskstar 7200RPM
Giga 96 2.2 <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Sell it. Buy Echo. Live happily ever after.

[Lewis]

You might have a conflict in your hardware. Have you tried different IRQ adresses? If not - do so. They often solve the problem. It could be a motherboard issue aswell. A good advice is to stay with mobos with Intel chipsets.

Love - Chris

[pianojoe]

It sounds like the only known successfull treatment for this is installing XP. Instead I took Bruce\'s advice & went with an Echo Mia. I have just installed the Mia, for use primarily with GigaStudio. It works, but after opening GS, about every 3-5 minutes I get a loud \'tick\' sound, thru one or both channels. I notice the spikes on the Mia console when this happens, assuring a problem within. This is not a result of exhausted polyphony, as it continues to happen when no music is played.It is not a sample problem as it happens with any sound. It does not happen when GS is closed. The computer is plugged into a grounded outlet. I was attempting to replace the Gigastation soundcard (constant driver failure), though when I disabled its drivers, it would not transmit midi. The soundcard & midi port appear to be setup seperately, though apparently must function together.?.? I have left the Gigastation \"in\", though rout nothing to it, just using the midi port. Any advice for ridding of these untimely ticks? thanks!

[Scott Speed]

I would wholeheartedly disagree with Bruce on the Echo cards from personal experience. I have an Echo Gina20 and used it with no problems with Windows 98SE...loved it to death. I recently upgraded to XP and the card is about as stable as nitro glycerine on a bucking bronco. What really steamed my dumpling is that after three emails to tech support and no response after a week, I had to email their sales department to light a flame under tech supports butt.
When they finally did get back to me, the best that they could offer after a bunch of back and forth emails was \"change PCI slots and update your drivers\". When that didn\'t work, the guy told me to go back to Win98. Totally unacceptable!! I had to wait two weeks to hear *that*??
A card is only as good as it\'s support team, and in this case it\'s lousy. RME, here I come.

Regards,
Scott

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bruce A. Richardson:

Sell it. Buy Echo. Live happily ever after.

[BluesWest]

There were several detailed threads discussing precisely this problem with the Mia on the Sound on Sound Mag forum a few months ago. I don\'t recall what the exact solution was, but I think eventually a solution was found. You can find one thread here: Sos Mia Thread (\"http://sound-on-sound2.infopop.net/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=215094572&f=351097254&m=3273052272\").

[Scott Cairns]

I would wholeheartedly disagree with Bruce on the Echo cards from personal experience. I have an Echo Gina20 and used it with no problems with Windows 98SE...loved it to death. I recently upgraded to XP and the card is about as stable as nitro glycerine on a bucking bronco. What really steamed my dumpling is that after three emails to tech support and no response after a week, I had to email their sales department to light a flame under tech supports butt.
When they finally did get back to me, the best that they could offer after a bunch of back and forth emails was \"change PCI slots and update your drivers\". When that didn\'t work, the guy told me to go back to Win98. Totally unacceptable!! I had to wait two weeks to hear *that*??
A card is only as good as it\'s support team, and in this case it\'s lousy. RME, here I come. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Hi Scott, I had the exact same problem with a Darla 20 under XP. I suspect that Echo have stopped writing decent drivers for their older sound cards and are focusing on the newer ones. My Darla 20 was totally screwing my system up. I switched to a Delta 44 and haven\'t looked back.

I think Bruce is quite right when talking about the newer Echo cards available. You probably got stuck with the same driver as I did, I think it was 6.05 and seemed to be a pretty generic one for Darla20,24/Gina/Layla etc, etc. Anyway, a nightmare to say the least!

Cheers, Scott.

[Hudson]

Sorry to hear you\'re in the same boat. I spent my hard earned deniro on my Gina20, I loved it, and I promoted it whenever the topic came up. For them to stop developing drivers for a perfectly good card makes no sense to me unless they just wanna push people to buy their newer cards. If that\'s the case, then its an even stronger reason *not* to buy from them anymore. Seeing as how they dumped support for the 20 bit line of cards, anyone who buys the more recent cards can expect the same when the next batch of cards comes out. There\'s no reason to think otherwise. That\'s just plain lazy, greedy, short sighted, call it what you will. Echo tech support didn\'t even make an effort to try and get me up and running before they copped out. Too bad...they just turned an ardent supporter into a vocal adversary.

[Bruce A. Richardson]

I have never had a problem with Echo products.

I own three Layla 20s, two Layla 24s, and two Gina 24s. All seven pieces operate perfectly in a variety of machines, and the older ones have been in several machines each. I own several other interfaces as well, and while some of them are nice quality pieces, none of them have had consistently good drivers. The Echo products have been great performers, with solid low-latency drivers and good sound and features.

I\'m sorry to hear that others have had issues. Echo has a great track record with me.

[pianojoe]

Originally posted by BluesWest:
There were several detailed threads discussing precisely this problem with the Mia on the Sound on Sound Mag forum a few months ago. I don\'t recall what the exact solution was, but I think eventually a solution was found. You can find one thread here: Sos Mia Thread (\"http://sound-on-sound2.infopop.net/2/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=215094572&f=351097254&m=3273052272\"). <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">Thanks BluesWest, I found that you have to remove the Icon from the taskbar to rid of the clicks. I think it worked fro me, but not all... It\'s a drag to have to go the driver & reset the properties to make adjustments on the console. A new problem has risen: When I reach max polyphony (96 in my case) Everything stops! No Midi, no sound. I have to close out GS, re-open & reload. After doing this several times, it seems to fix itself. I just upgraded to 2.53, could this possibly be the cause?

[Scott Speed]

Hi Bruce,

I\'m glad to hear you\'re not having any probs. I would have said the same two weeks ago, but that was before I actually had a major problem. I think the issue at hand is that when you do have a problem, Echo support is either nowhere to be found, or genuinely uninterested in actually helping. That\'s been my recent experience. I\'ve also heard other people grumbling about it on usenet, so its not an isolated incident.
If the best they can do is \"try switching pci slots and updating your drivers. If that doesnt work switch back to Win98,\" they might as well not even bother. As I said, a card is only as good as its support. Their is none with Echo. I just felt obliged to say something before someone else finds themselves S*** Outta Luck.

Regards,
Scott

[Houston Haynes]

I\'ve never had a problem with ESI (EGO Sys) products, except for an IRQ conflict that was solved with a slot change and a BIOS setting (don\'t let the BIOS assign the IRQ automatically - and stay away from ACPI mode - standard PC only).

Of course, I\'m now an XP Pro only studio (2 PCs) running a WaMiRack24.

P.S. You may want to check to see if you have the latest drivers. A bonus is the DirectWire control panel. Sweet. Check out the ESI support site for more info. Good luck.