ASIO4ALL or KX PROJECT?

Sea~Sick

I got a SB Live! 5.1 Digital with ASIO4ALL drivers, latency set at 14ms and it works GREAT. But I installed a AGP Geforece 6200 and now I hear a "buzz" noise leaking through my speakers everytime I scroll, minimize, open, or close windows. So I heard this can be fixed with KX drivers, But will I still have GREAT audio performance like with ASIO4ALL?

I kinda do prefer ASIO4ALL over KX due to how simple asio4all is, and how complex kx is, like more bugs/issues ect. If anyone can help me out please do. All I really wan't is this annoying scrolling noise gone.

dj_stick

that "buzz" sounds like a problem with the shielding on your AGP card

move your soundcard to the pci slot furthest away, and that noise should be neutralized (at least partly)

ROBSCIX

I had something similar to this but it probably isn't related try muting all your inputs CD,LINE,MIC..etc. I am not sure if this is your issue or not...try muting everything in the record mixer..everything your not using..especially the CD...

Sea~Sick

Even when I mute everything it still buzzes through the speakers, only when I turn the speakers off it's silent, so I don't really think it's my soundcard, and it all started when I put in a "brand new" BFG Geforce 6200 AGP card. so it's gotta be graphic related right?

The two cards are VERY close to each other but I tryed moving my soundcard into the lower slot and that diden't help. All my wires, mouse and monitor are fine. I thought it was my speaker wires at first but nope their all fine.

The geforce support team said to change somthing in BIOS, but I don't even know a thing about BIOS, so I'm stuck!

Tril

What did they ask to change?

joat

potentially it might be "noise" from the cable that goes from the video card to the monitor, changes in white areas on the screen, and everything having frequencies might make some RF noises or something. lower the refresh rate and screen resolution to a lower level and see if its still there

not that this may help but thats my 2 cents worth..

>> did you get a new screen at the same time? the cable may be thinly shielded too
>> also UNPLUG the audio cable from your cd drive o the sound card if you have one (the 4 wire somtimes 3 one.. not the big cable of corse)

TravelRec.

It seems to be really pick-up noise from the graphic card, even if it´s new it makes a lot of noise - try to move the soundcard away from it or put an aluminium shield (isolated of course) between the cards and connect this shield with ground. Specially for the driver: try kX and give it a chance - you have nothing to loose, since it´s far more flexible than Asio4All (which is a good driver for many non-creative cards!). If you find kX is nothing for you, you easily can switch back. But be careful: due to it´s power, kX is a quite complicated system and you have a lot to learn to get all the possibilities out of it. It´s on YOU!

Sea~Sick

I tryed many things to fix it and everything I did diden't work, maybe aluminium shield might work, that's one thing I diden't try yet. It's very wierd sometimes I can't hear it at all then out of nowhere It just comes back. I diden't know graphics cards and AGP worked in such a shitty way, oh well.

I been hearing about BIOS alot and how disabling somthing in there might fix this but I got no clue.
I'm sure someone out there had this same problem and knows how to fix it.....

Sea~Sick

Would the KX driver give me lower latency then 14ms? I think 14ms is VERY low and my system runs good, no crackles with many VSTi's and FX? Just seems to me like KX drivers are full of bugs. One day everthing's fine then it dosen't work is what I been told. But I don't know maybe I will give 'em a try.

Thanks for everyone's help I really appreciate it...

jiiteepee

You can also
- check if there are IRQ sharing or conflicts between sound and graphics cards,
- try different settings on graphics acceleration (~50%-75%) and mouse sampling rate (try ~60Hz)
- change the AGP aperture size to be egual (or more) with your graphics cards onboard memory
- decrease PCI latency for graphics to 64 (PCI Latency tool can be found easy with google)
- increase PCI latency for sound card to 64 or 128
- use HW buffering on AsioAll settings
- ...

NOTE: I have noticed, the Asio4All driver being very CPU 'hungry' with some VST/VSTi's with lower latency settings. As an example FruityLoops + Rumpelrausch Täips's ZR-3 (VSTi)
- Asio4All (buffer size set to 192 samples) --> ~3% but CPU usage is spiking up to 75% at times (every 1-2 s)
- Creative ASIO (latency set to 4 ms = 192 samples) --> ~3 %

jiitee

dj_stick

the CPU usage would be due to the different way ASIO 4 ALL manages it's interface with the soundcard

Rogacz

I bet it's IRQ sharing. Check if sound card isn't sharing it's IRQ with anything else.

jiiteepee

As addon for my previous post ..

Some has got rid of this type of 'buzzing' issues by turning the HT off (well, it's not a good choice, since HT just adds some extra performance for DAW working (~10%, as stated @ cakewalk forums)).

jiitee

Sea~Sick

^What's HT?



As for IRQ it not sharing it looks like this

PCI(18) Sounblaster Live! 5.1

PCI(19) Nvidia Geforce 6200

The ASIO4ALL driver can be a little cpu hungry but with a good cpu, it barley hurts it. I'm actully thinking of upgrading to the x-fi, I heard latency with ASIO4ALL gets to about 0.83ms.
And maybe the buzzing might stop with a newer soundcard?

jiiteepee

HT = HyperTreading --> feature on P4 processors
You didn't mention which processor you have there ... so if you have AMD --> no HT available.
But is IRQ 18 shared with another (eq. does some other device/controller has the same IRQ number)?
Well, everyithing is not necessarily the same with what it looks like ...
Maybe, maybe not.


jiitee

Sea~Sick

I'm running an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ so hyperthraeding is not an option for me, The IRQ list dosen't show anything sharing, they all got their own. I tryed tweaking PCI/AGP lattency to 064-128-032 but none of that worked.

I'm gonna try moving my soundcard to the lowest PCI slot, but before I do this should I uninstall drivers and software that came with it? Or should this be as simple as just moving it and rebooting?

Russ

With the Creative drivers, you can probably just move it without reinstalling.

BTW: Check for any power cords that might be tangled with you speaker wires, etc. Make sure that all of the plugs are fully inserted into the jacks on the sound card (disconnect/reconnect them). Do not assume that it is the new video card causing the problem (the simplest things often get overlooked, and are often the problem).

Sea~Sick

I been trying to fix this for over a month now, trust me I just about tryed everything! If I plug headphones directly into the soundcard and can still hear the buzz then it's not any wire/speaker problems. This all started when I installed the graphics card, so then it has to be the AGP card, I've heard alot about AGP cards buzzing, sh*t some people even hear it coming out of thier computer case.

I will try moving the soundcard later today hoping it fix's this...
One more thing is their one pci slot that is only for networking on nforce2 boards becuse I remember losing my Internet/Networking components after having 2 souncards a while back, and one of those cards was in the slot I'm about to put my soundcard in...?????

Sea~Sick

well I'm happy to say that moving the soundcard worked. I think Dj_Stick said to do that thanks man.
Thanks to everyone else for helping...

Sea~Sick

Now I noticed IRQ's are sharing, but performance on both devices is great?????

Can this be bad in a long term? How can this be fixed?

Sounblaster Live! PCI 19
Geforce 6200 PCI 19

ROBSCIX

AS long as there is no problem then, there is no problem. I wouldn't worry about it. When you play games everything is fine?

thomasabarnes

It's good to have your sound card on an IRQ by itself to minimize problems related to good sound card performance, such as pops and click in audio playback. You do this by disabling things in BIOS that you dont need: stuff like paralell ports, onboard sound, onboard MIDI port, Printer port, etc. Then, Windows may free IRQs and place your sound card on an IRQ by itself. There's no guarantee, but if you disable enough, it's likely your sound card will be place on an IRQ by itself.

Sea~Sick

Games are running great no pops crackles at all, and for vsti's their all the same no pops crackles, and most importantly NO MORE BUZZING.

I went into BIOS and my main video was set to PCI and I set it to AGP/onboard and diden't see any diffrence at all??? ???

Since everything appears to be fine I think I'll just stay out of BIOS...

jiiteepee

With modern device drivers, IRQ sharing is not a big issue anymore, but as in you case, it's not recommended to have IRQ for just those 2 devices shared.

You can try to get it fixed by looking from your motherboard user's manual, how IRQ's are assigned and shared. This may give you some tips like
- in which PCI slot the sound card would be best to install to avoid IRQ sharing with needed devices/controllers
and
- which devices/controllers you need/can disable from BIOS to get possible IRQ sharings w/ sound card eliminated

Like Thomas already suggested, you can disable some controllers/devices (BIOS and/or Device Manager) to get more IRQ's freed (though this does not always make situation any better):

jiitee

peate

Quote: "Since everything appears to be fine I think I'll just stay out of BIOS..."

Like the old saying goes: "If it aint broke, don't fix it."

Your main problem is gone, that's what counts.