Following is the text of a message I just sent to my four closest and most accomplished musician friends, all of whom are highly skilled with computers as well. It summarizes my experience since Thursday, May 10, through yesterday, Sunday, May 13. I am eminently open to suggestion.

Quote:

Gentlemen,

I'm at the end of my rope on this. I'm about to put my DAW in the shop for resolution. Here's the deal.

Two soundcards (Roland/Edirol UA4-FX and Presonus AudioBox USB) have briefly produced beautiful sound before degenerating into horribly distorted sound completely unrecognizable as the source. Both cards definitely had Win 7 64-bit drivers. Both had the latest version of the driver. The Roland actually never produced anything but distortion. The Presonus degenerated. I uninstalled, reinstalled, and briefly had good sound before deteriorating again. I was never able to get any MIDI throughput through either card. Using the Onscreen Keyboard in Reason 6 produced the same distorted sound with several devices and patches.

I took the Presonus back to the store, where it tested as being in perfect working order. I then spent an hour with Microsoft Support via chat, to no avail. I will take my MIDI controller keyboard (M-Audio Keystation 49e, which was working before) to the same store to test it as well. I have messages in to Propellerhead, Presonus, and the MIDI school I was supposed to start today. I don't think the problem lies with any of them, but I am trying to cover every base. [I have also checked their forums and FAQs as well as Googling extensively.]

This is looking to me like a Windows issue. It has been suggested that it may somehow be a 32-bit vs. 64-bit issue, but I'm not sure how. The only thing that I can think of is that this version of Windows is only licensed for two processors, and I have four. But everything else works perfectly.

I am hoping that this will resonate with something in your collective experience. If so, or if you think of something I haven't covered, please let me know.

Win 7 Ultimate 64, Gigabyte Z68AP-D3, Intel i5 2500K 3.3 GHz quad CPU, 16 Gb RAM, Zotac GeForce GTX 560 2 Gb GPU.

Thanks,
Richard


"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."