There can be things in a pc that will cause audio timing glitches or interruptions to the soundcard stream.

The internal PCI card is likely an easier way to go than a FireWire device would be, but sometimes using one over the other bypasses some of the problems I'm about to list, leading folks to think that one is "better" than the other. But that can go either way. Let's try to get to the bottom of your problem instead, rather than "throw money at it". I'm using an M-Audio 2496 card with WinXP/SP3 and ASIO *only* with all pgmusic software products and have got the machine tweaked such as there are no audio dropouts, pops, clicks nor grunts.

*Soundcard Drivers. Check the M-Audio site to see if there are newer drivers released than the ones you've got installed currently. You can find the version number fyou are using in the Delta Control Panel. If that version number is different from the one published on the website as the latest one for your OS, try downloading the driver listed there and installing it as per their directions.

*Check your IRQ table. You do not want to see the Soundcard being shared with any other IRQ number. Windows will report, "no conflict" no matter what, that's not what we are looking for here. The sound card should be all alone on its *own* IRQ if at all possible. With today's OS's we can no longer manually change IRQ numbers, the ACPI selects that for us instead, so with PCI soundcards it is sometimes necessary to shut down the computer and physically move the soundcard to one of the other PCI slots, start up and check the IRQ table again, see if the card is now all by itself on its own IRQ number.

To get to your IRQs, go to "Start", "Run", type in "msinfo32" and click "OK". In the left window, click on the "Hardware Resources" plus sign, click on "IRQs" and, after "polling" the computer, it will display what IRQ each peripheral is assigned to in the right window.

*Disk Streaming problem -- This can happen due to a hard drive that is in need of defragmenting. If your hard drive is half full or more, take the time to do a Disk Cleanup and then a Defrag of the disk. Often this can cure up audio interruption problems, especially in those machines where you enjoyed great audio streaming for awhile and then suddenly the dreaded pops 'n clicks appear.

Some OEM puters being sold these days come with 7200 rpm disk drives alright, but they only have a miniscule 2mb buffer in them. This can be problematic for streaming audio for some. The ultimate answer is to replace that drive, of course, with something that is 7200rpm and has a minimum buffer cache size of 8mb, but sometimes a good defrag will allow you to use one of these anyway, especially with a single stereo input soundcard.

*Installed anything new lately?

Sometimes the installation of some other device and even some other software program can impact the streaming of your audio. Try to think back. This too applies to situations where the sound was fine for some time and then got worse, but can even apply to brand new setups as well.



Check these things in the order listed above,


--Mac

PGmusic FAQs, Tutorials and Updates! click here

You must be Audiominds.
www.audiominds.com