Hi there. I've been getting some problems with my presonus firebox, connected to my laptop. It's used for recording, which works fine, but when I try to playback audio, the audio stutters, and skips. Here's the laptop specs:

Acer Aspire
3000+ AMD Semperon
firewire pcmcia card (tried both NEC and VIA chipsets)
512mb ram (200mb free when trying audio playback)
4200 rpm hard drive
Win XP sp2

I've tried everything I can think of to get rid of the skipping on audio playback. It happens when trying to play mp3's, CD's from my drive, and any other audio. I don't encounter skipping when using my internal sound card. My main question is, could the issue be not enough ram? I've been suggested to upgrade my ram, but it doesn't seem like this could be causing it since my internal sound card has no issues.

Thanks for any other suggestions.

funny that recording works better - you'd think this should be more demanding than playback. Maybe you're using higher bit/samplerates for playback? Which software are you working with?

All audio programs cause this, foobar, win media player, cubase le. I think I might not end up with audio problems while recording because it bypasses the computer all togather, because it uses zero latency monitering. The final recording doesnt end up with problems because there is latency while recording (about 25ms or so), or at least I think so.

I can cause more skipping by increasing the load on the computer, like opening and closing various apps.

Hi,

I use an RME Fireface800 on one machine and a Terratec Phase X24FW on my laptop, so maybe I can be of a little assistance. A few thoughts:

1) Are you using ASIO drivers for music playback? There's no reason to use them unless you're recording. Try using the waveOut driver in foobar and see if it persists.

2) Have you set processor scheduling to background services? Control panel -> System -> Advanced tab -> Performance -> Settings -> Advanced -> Adjust for best performance of: Background services

3) The problem of opening and closing apps causing dropouts points to a problem with the videocard hogging the PCI bus. If the top 2 didn't solve your problem, you can try the PCI Latency Tool. Set your firewire cotroller to 248 (highest priority) and your video card to 64 (lower priority).

Good luck!

EDIT: One more thing, the Texas Instruments chipset is by far the most reliable for audio devices, I'm pretty sure that what the Adaptec card uses, definitely the LaCie cards.

..or, it could be due to hard disk limitations; it's only a 4200rpm device. On opening programs, there's a lot of disk activity. How badly is the disk fragmented?

Well, the problem happens using AISO driver, as well as waveout, and the directx output options in foobar. I also set scheduling to background services (as well as many other tweaks found on music tweak sites).
My video card is integrated, so that shouldn't be occupying a pci slot, right? (or its equivalent on laptops, I'm not familiar with the differences between laptop terms and desktops)

As to the disk being fragmented, its not at all. Freshly defragged, even got an app to defrag the page file. I even tried reformatting and a fresh install.
The thing is, even when I'm not using other progs on the laptop, this happens, not just with activity. I was in touch with presonus tech support, and there shouldn't be an issue with the VIA chipset on my firewire card.

I guess what would clear up a lot of confusion is if someone can explain why my laptop specs are fine for playing audio through my internal sound card, but not for my external. Does the external one need more resources for some reason? If it does, this would make more sense for it to be a ram or HD issue, rather than a chipset or some other (harder to fix) problem.

Thanks for the help

Actually there shouldn't be more resources consumed; firewire output is very easy on resources, whereas onboard audio uses the cpu a lot.

You might check the MS kb-article Performance of 1394 devices may decrease after you install Windows XP Service Pack 2 to see if it applies to you.

As to integrated video: this is "worse" in some sense, since it uses system RAM for buffering video, so it consumes bandwidth. However, when you're not doing 3D stuff, this extra bandwidth use is very low, and there's plenty of main memory bandwidth to playback audio.

This only applies to a FW800 (1394b) connection. It may very well be the problem if it's a FW800 pcmcia card.

This hotfix only increases the speed to 400 (up from 100), so if you have any FW800 devices it's best to get the old SP1 firewire drivers that actually worked at 800 speed. I can provide detailed instructions if necessary.

I did actually try this fix (its fw400 btw), as well as another fix dealing w/ firewire connectivity. Neither worked.

I know it was said earlier that I shouldn't need extra resources (ie ram) to use the external soundcard, but could anyone else confirm this? It's a fairly major point, because if that is true, then it means I could load this comp up with ram and a faster HD with no luck. So if audio doesn't skip using the internal sound, it shouldn't skip with my fw external one (because of a lack of resources).

It seems if that is true, I probably have some sort of chipset incompatibility.

But then I don't understand why the skipping wouldn't make it into the actually recording. If it were resources, it's explainable by the fact that the card purposely introduces latency to reduce the computers load.


Thanks again for helping me get this worked out.

As long as there's over 200mb free ram, there's over 200mb free ram... why would you expand it?

I can hardly believe it is a system bus bandwidth issue either, but just to rule this out:

-can you test firewire performance with something like an external drive (and then a simple file copy test?)

-can you try this in foobar2000: preferences>playback - "full file buffering": set some value much larger than the file you're testing it with. If playback still stutters, then it is not a harddisk or system bus problem.

Hope it helps

edit: one more option - it could be an issue with the cpu frequency changing; not very likely though. Do you use the AMD processor drivers? You might then try setting the Windows power profile to "Always on" (which disables frequency changes) and see if that improves anything.

I figured I'd let you all know that this ended up being a driver issue. I upgraded my ram, and the problem persisted. I did a full wipe of the windows bundle from acer and used a win pro disc I own. From a fresh install, I encountered no problems. I then began loading the drivers. It appears there were several conflicts. I narrowed it down to at least 3 programs. My wi-fi (not a suprise, and an easy fix, just need to turn off wifi when using the audio), the newest synaptic drivers for the touchpad (the bundled ones actually work, but not very well with firefox browser, so I had upgraded them before. Guess I'll just have to deal with firefox not liking my mouse) and the bundled norton antivirus 05 which came with the acer. I'm currently trying the AVG antivirus software, its free so hopefully it'll work out ok. So considering the number of problems its no wonder I couldn't get this working.

Thanks for all of your help on this. I posted my problem in several boards (even ones strictly dealing with recording cards like the firebox) and you guys were by far the most helpful. Its a great board here, you all really know your stuff.