Caithleann

If it is not the same issue I think it might be appropriate to call Eugene's attention to it and let him download that sample as well. I would like to know what he has to say about it.

In the meantime I have commenced starting to use a fairly heavy piece of software called Reason 2.5 which uses Steinberg's ASIO and thusfar I have not encountered any problems.

Seems that the problems occur mostly when wav files and MP3's are being played back simultaneously.

Perhaps it would be of interest to Eugene that I am using a gamebuilder called Visual Pinball Editor which allows me to create, doh... Pinball games.
The simple games are ok but it is those that have a lot of sounds firing as the ball hits a multitude of targets that trigger this problem although judging from the sound sample I posted it almost began as soon as the ball was released into the game.

Visual Pinball Editor can be downloaded from: http://irpinball.ztnet.com
You can get tables there as well.
The table that first brought out this problem is called Rapid Vienna- Kick'n Roll(DVO3).zip and is a very complicated pinball with lots of sounds and music.

This is what it looks like..
Finally, The sample I posted earlier was not from this table.

Anyone with some interest in arcade gaming can try it and see if they can duplicate the problem.

Caithleann

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Rox271

I think Eugene has been aware of this issue for one year
Check the first message of this thread, this is actually the continuation of a previous long thread.

Reason is a fantastic piece of software and I never ever experienced any issue with this program.
With Reason it is very easy to export a final wav file and do some final mastering using SoundForge for example.
I wouldn't say the same about Cubase (from the same Steinberg who designed ASIO ) which is crackeling, crashing etc... In my humble opinion, Cubase is just good for external MIDI devices when Reason is a true virtual studio (though with no recording capacity but you can still play with samplers to do that).

For the rest it looks like games and MP3 players are sharing one thing in common : DirectX.
What about hyperthreading. Did you get rid of it?
Eventually, I discovered something: the BIOS PCI latency setting may be ignored for some reason (probably the video driver; we also discovered before that Creative drivers force the PCI latency to 64). The tool Powerstrip is capable of showing and setting PCI latency for each individual device. After I set 32 in the BIOS, I discovered that the video card was actually using 248! This of course ruine the BIOS setting. You may therefore install the trial version of powerstrip and check all your PCI latencies.

Caithleann

I didn't get rid of it on a permanent basis, no. Too many programs run poorly if I do and it defeats the purpose of having a P4 in the first place.

If the sound I have supplied is completely different from what you heard it may be different to Eugene as well.

Whatever may be the cause of it; I can no longer disable parts of the hardware and install/uninstall stuff in hopes it will get better, this machine is a production tool now and the end result will be that if the KX driver cannot be fixed to eliminate this uncontrolled bursting of sounds in my case and beeping in other cases, the KX-project ends for me and I will have to get another sound card for this machine. I can still run it on win2000.

The SBLive is 4 years old going into its fifth and that is old in computer time. I probably will save some money and get a Hammerfall. Creative is out for me even if their latest prodigy does support ASIO. They keep running AFTER our market instead of designing FOR it, which make us always second class.

It was educational chatting with you Rox but since we are the only two left in this thread I guess others have given up or resigned themselves to living with beeping sound cards, I don't know but the debate is pretty much over.

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Rox271

All this is very strange. I don't have the beep anymore but I cannot activate hyperthreading
Well you may consider upgrading your sound card but I don't understand this race for new technology. After all, one cannot upgrade his ears. I can see that the sampling frequency is always getting higher when the ear band pass remains the same . I'm still pleased with my old SB Live and fortunately the beep is gone since I upgraded the motherboard. So I guess I will stick on kx .

Grigorios75

I am currently using the 3535 version of the drivers and am experiencing the "beeping" previously mentioned by some.

I have been experiencing it for some time and have found that it occurs at random. There seems to be simply no pattern to when it occurs. It doesn't matter whether I'm playing back WAV or MP3 files in WinAMP or utilizing the ASIO drivers in Cubase or FruityLoops. Nor does it seem to matter what types of applications I run before this happens. I can have my system on for days and run every application on my system and it doesn't occur... other times it happens on a fresh reboot.

I am running a AMD XP 2600+ based machine with 512 MB of RAM, NForce2 Ultra 400 chipset (Biostar M7NCD PRO), and Windows 2000 Professional with a SBLive CT4830.

The only thing that seems to have increased it's frequency of occurance is when I moved my SBLive CT4830 up a couple of PCI slots.


*** THE SOLUTION *** ---------> (at least a TEMPORARY one that has worked for me at present)

Originally I dealt with this problem by simply rebooting my system.
The past 10 or times that this has occured, I have remedied this
problem by entering:
MULTIMEDIA PROPERTIES->AUDIO TAB->ADVANCED

And then toggling the speaker selection. I'll simply change it to
some other setup and then back to it's original setting click APPLY
... and normal audio playback resumes.

Hopefully we can pinpoint this problem, but for now, when it occurs, I simply use the above solution.

Take care all!

Caithleann

Rox,

How is it that you can't re-enable your hyper threading anymore?
It is a bios function that you turn on by simply going to the CPU page and pressing the + button\

I wouldn't exactly call buying the RME Hammerfall card a race for new technology; it has been around a couple of years already, certainly from before Creative's Audigy and Extigy cards.
RME does not push their soundcards like the newest gizmo "hot off the press" stuff as Creative does.

The latter really disappointed me with their broken promise of not letting the SBLive go obsolete on their then (1999) Front-page. "No hardware upgrades necessary. Can be updated through software for years to come." yeah right... SBLive! was rapidly succeeded by a slew of spinoffs and in 2000, not even a year later, I had the dubious honor of seeing the first promo flyers of the Audigy on a Russian site, 16 pics complete with banter... in English. One wonders why Creative did their best to keep it off their own servers.

As soon as the Audigy came out, all development on the SBLive ceased or at least was limited to updates of the current software. It is pretty much a slap in the face of a customer who shelled out almost $300 for a piece of hi-tech hardware only to find out that despite the promises of continuity the product had a built-in obsolescence factor after all. Remember Bush and his "no new taxes" mantra? This was exactly the same about-face. Especially now that we know that ASIO was possible after all plus several other technologies that Creative didn't bother to try. Also their decision to axe the APS during its development speaks volumes of the way those audio robber barons gut and liquidate the music making market, they literally slurped up the last two great American Manufacturers of professional keyboards and synthesizers, Emu and Ensoniq Corp. and totally gutted the latter of those two. I seem to always pick the losers... I have a studio full of their gear. And to add insult to injury the soundcard by the same company gets ditched within a year of its release. That is the reason why I was elated when I was pointed to the KX site more than 2 years ago. I have used KX ever since and it has served me well, Thank you Eugene! But now it seems we have hit an unsurmountable obstacle. I won't abandon KX just yet though, I haven't got the money for the Hammerfall. It is a $500+ piece of hardware that I would not buy if it weren't for the multiple input output configurations. so there might be plenty of time for Eugene and others to find and fix the problem.

You should let go of "the Nyguist frequency of 44.100 Hz as the best possible sampling frequency and any higher is useless" idea. The fact that CD's have a fixed Nyquist doesn't make them the best quality Audio. Far from it.

But the reason why higher sampling is a good idea is because mixing down digital audio introduces artifacts known as aliasing just as analog tape used to become more hissy and noisy with every following generation. The higher the sampling rates the less susceptible you are to digital glitches, beeps and boops. You can (and must) reduce the rate anyway when you are ready to cut your CD but if you start with a low sampling rate you have no headroom for editing. It has absolutely nothing to do with the human hearing's pass-band of 20 - 20.000 Hz.

Caith

__________________
One cannot lie unless one knows the truth!

Rox271

>>How is it that you can't re-enable your hyper threading anymore?
>>It is a bios function that you turn on by simply going to the CPU page and pressing the + button

Well, actually I can, but this is causing BSOD in certain applications, especially games.
Also when I turn it on, I don't witness any particular boost.
So I'm not really convinced but I will keep trying and see what happens...


Regarding your bitter thoughts about SB Live : it looks like Creative is to music what Mc Donald is to food . A big company pretending to care about customer satisfaction and quality... No doubt that Emu was a professionnal company when Creative is just building buzzers for gamers. Well there is another thread for political considerations but I understand your point . On the other hand, remember that APS and SB Live are very close devices but they were not sold the same price.

>>The higher the sampling rates the less susceptible you are to digital glitches, beeps and boops.

Unfortunately I'm just a humble home music maker for fun so I never had an opportunity to try better pieces of hardware. But I'm under the impression that it is a matter of algorithm, isn't it? I mean if a software produces glitches at 44100, it certainly will at higher frequencies. For example in Reason, they took care of wave form band pass. If you look at the shape of a pure Substractor square signal, it is not a sharp mathematical square shape cos they took care of the 22050 band pass.
Anyway you probably have a much better experience than I. Thankx for your technical input.

Caithleann

Rox,

Although I am brand-new at using Reason, I am an old hack when it comes to sampling sounds.
Incredible as it sounds I have done that since Ensoniq came out with the Mirage, an incredibly primitive sampler by today's standards and the last keyboard as far as I know that had a solid steel cover. Later editions were made of grey plastic which became the corporate Ensoniq color

In the days of the EPS I did thousands of samples on a commercial basis for audio studios and got so fine tuned to the dynamics of sound I never used or needed a wave editor to make loops. Brag brag. hehe... Steinberg and Cakewalk were fledgling companies in the late eighties and Cubase was an Atari ST program with a dongle the size of the computer... Indeed we have come a long way since then.

Software does not "glitch" arbitrarily or at certain frequencies, aliasing, the act of introducing digital polution into a sample, is not caused by the program per sé but by lack of resolution of the sample. Suppose you have a sinewave of 10 Hz. That is inaudble but it is an easy number to use for this example.
To sample that with the minimum required accuracy you need to sample it 20 times in one second. This sampling rate of twice the frequency of the wave itself (10 Hz) is called the Nyquist frequency and that is why 44.100 has been determined to be the minimum required sampling rate for CDs, as it represents twice the highest frequency humans can hear.

But taking just 2 samples per cycle of a wave form is a very crude representation of that wave and the software that has to deal with this data is forced to make an educated guess as to the level that the soundwave would have been in between those two samples. So it plops in a "guestimate" extrapolated from the two neighbors in the hope that it is correct. The software creates a copy, an alias, of the previous sample, a slightly different one to adapt to the next sample.
If the real waveform made a sudden rise or drop in that particular unrecorded (unsampled) instance the waveform will lack that dynamic change and is said to be aliased. The artifact created by the software has masked the real sound.

This is precisely the reason why sampling at 4 or even eight times the audio frequency is the way to go. It is also the reason why MP3 encoders offer a Variable bitrate and a fixed bitrate. The variable bitrate is the way to go. As the pitch of a musical tone increases so does the bitrate. The higher the sampling rate the lower the risk that a sound is aliased. It is literally speaking equivalent to the analog tape recording at 19" per second (studio quality) versus 2.4" per second (cassette tapes). The slower the tape, the duller the sound, as you lose all your high frequency content. Can you guess why analog tape at low speeds lacked the crispness of high speed tapes?


When one starts manipulating samples and one sample is merged with another sample there is a distinct change that some zero crossings may not be in the exact same place as before and audible clicks and pops result because of that displacement. This too is called aliasing as the sound of the original wave gradually morphs into something different. That is is becoming "something different" is the reason why the word "Alias" was chosen.

The best examples of horribly aliased sounds are those you can her in children's toys that "speak" The sampling rate of the sample(s) is atrociously low, often not even 2 Khz and the resultant sound is so distorted and broken up by the alias that it is hard to make out what the toy is actually "saying".

To close this "lecture" I bet you have heard samples where the sound ended with a really loud pop or click, right? That is caused by the sample ending at the highest point of the waveform. At the peak amplitude. It is very easy to remedy this, just use a wave form editor like Cool Edit Pro (Now Adobe Audition) or Sound Forge and chop that end piece off at the zerocrossing. Done, and no more pops/clicks.

As to the Square Wave not being perfect in your example, you could call yourself lucky that it isn't for if it were you would be drowned in an infinite number of harmonics that would ultimately sound like the noise you hear on an FM tuner. Squarewaves are formed from a finite number of sinewaves each with a slightly lower amplitude. A perfect square would need an infinite number of sines. This is complicated stuff. If you want to know more I suggest you dig out a good mathematics book and look up "Fourier's Theorem" and Formant harmonics.

Go well.


Caith

__________________
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Rox271

Actually I think that sample rate is a matter of application.

For normal playing/mixing operations, a high rate is not necessary (the sum of two unaliased signals cannot produce an aliased signal). For this kind of application (Hifi, gamers sound cards etc...), I wouldn't recommend to go for an expensive high frequency device. Doesn't it sound like having an expensive monitor that can display ultraviolet, X-Rays and Gamma rays ?

Now as soon as you have heavy Digital Signal Processing involving resampling and pitch shifting, this can be a necessity. For example when you shift a sample down, you keep more resolution if you sampled it at a high frequency. Resampling occurs in many occasions : samplers, chorus, flangers, phaser etc...

So at the end of the day I understand that for professional applications, a high sample rate is a benefit.

Happy sampling

Caithleann

You got it.

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Eugene Gavrilov

I've listened the sample mp3 -- well, seems to be unrelated to the issue discussed in this thread...
no ideas about its reason -- probably, a hardware/software conflict

/E

Caithleann

Sure...

The soundcard was the second piece of hardware I installed so there were enough IRQs on this brand new system to prevent conflicts. It is very unlikely that a hardware/software conflict is causing this... as it ONLY happens while the KX drivers are installed and not with the onboard drivers or the Creative drivers. I have seen the discussions about hyperthreading and honestly I am amazed that you dismiss it so easily as "probably not KX related".
Your answer however tells me that I do not have to hope for further investigation or resolutions so thanks, I did enjoy it while it lasted but I've got to jump ship now and get something that's really geared to music production.

Take care,

/Caith/...

__________________
One cannot lie unless one knows the truth!

Eugene Gavrilov

>> hyperthreading

I admit that the recent kX driver releases conflict with hyperthreading/SMP machines. However, the -reason- cannot be easily described as "invalid kX Driver code", since the problem is rather complex. It is related to the present Microsoft Windows kernel limitations, 10kX hardware issues as well as kX Driver synchronization code...

>> further investigation

the very recent postings have prooved that the issue was related to the particular motherboard / BIOS
this reminds me the famous 'VIA Bug', which was mainly caused by 10kX<->686B incompatibilities...
the argument that 'things work well when using CL drivers' doesn't really give us a hint to solve the problem --
moreover, -we- do NOT have any CL documents / specifications dealing with similar problems, nor
do we have -all- the possible hardware available for our tests...

and, finally, -your- sample file is NOT related to the issue discussed in this thread...
if you wish it to be solved (or at least if you wish to find any other people experiencing the same) -- start a new topic

/E

Caithleann

I NEVER said anything that might have been construed as such.

What is CL? Creative Labs I presume? Have you tried to get it from them? Or have they become as tight as Microsoft with their code and tech docs?

And ok, I will start a new topic as this problem IS KX related...
It happens on both my SBLives with KX Drivers installed so summarily writing it off as a hardware/software conflict would be a stretch of the imagination. On the other hand, you're right: it is a software conflict, the software being KX.

The New Topic shall be known as Random and Loud Sound Bursts from SBLive!

__________________
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Rox271

Eugene,

After a few weeks, I think I can conclude that the beep issue has gone since I upgraded my PC. Everything is just perfect now and I'm plainly enjoying the kx driver again (relief!). What is the conclusion? Since only a hardware change could fix this issue for good, the problem seems to be hardware related and you were correct from the right beginning. Can we then publish some kind of hardware recommendation?

Eugene Gavrilov

Rox271,

could you please remind the -exact- hardware changes you've made?
was it your MB, MB+CPU, MB+Memory etc etc
have you re-installed your OS?

>> Can we then publish some kind of hardware recommendation

well... it seems that certain BIOS/Motherboards have this issue
probably, nForce2-based (well, mine works fine ), but certain intel-based mainboards are affected, too...
hmm...

/E

Rox271

Eugene,

>>could you please remind the -exact- hardware changes you've made?
Well, I changed about everything.: new RAM, new CPU, new MB.
* ASUS P4P800
* P4 - 2.4 GHz (hyperthreading off, overclocked 30%)
* Intel 865 Chipset
* FSB 800 MHz
* DDR400 1×512MB memory module.

Before it was a Dell Dimension 8100 computer
* Dell mother board (and poor BIOS)
* Intel 850 Chipset
* FSB 400MHz
* 384MB RIMM (4 modules)

I kept the graphic card (CL NVidia FX 5600), HDs and CD drives... and of course my SB Live

Yes I reinstalled Windows XP Pro further to the new config but I did that already with the old config. So this doesn't actually affect anything.

XDread

I have given up on this error using the on-board soundcard of my once again newly bought computer, and regarding nvidia as a source of this bug I must say that I have had the same bug on a "Intel 440BX AGPset" chipset too so in my opinion I don't think that is the solution either.

But good luck sorting this out!

XDread

Ah... There you go!

Eugene Gavrilov

anyway, it seems the issue is not audio card-specific (since the same card functions correctly when plugged into a different motherboard)

/E

Rox271

Well, since I acquired my new PC, everything was fine, no more beep.
But all the sudden, I started to experience BSOD on kx.sys.
I have a hyperthreading P4 but the feature was disabled so I don't know if this is related to HT.
Oh well, I went back on MS drivers and now everything is back to normal. I just miss the ASIO driver.
The Audigy 2 ZS has a native ASIO support and Xmas is soon... Any good or should I wait for the kx to be HT compatible (v3537)?

Jorgo

This thread is quite long and I haven't read everything, so excuse me if i post something that was said before.
I also experience a high-pitched continous noise which gains in volume if i don't do anything. On my machine Athlon/Via KT333 it is directly related to the CPU HLT mode (power save /cooling). If I turn this feature off, noise (which has all the properties of a feedback) stops.
Hope this helps someone.

chapter7

Since my system is HT i was reluctant to make a post, i'm sure the developers have a clue as to why HT isnt compatible with the current driver release. My system freezes right after driver install sometimes before reboot and if not, right before the driver loads up on rebooting.

Ive been using these drivers for around 6 months and never had any problems with my Athlon XP machines, this pentium 4 machine is driving me crazy with these drivers, i dont want to uninstall them becuase they are so ****ing cool and do everything i intended for this Audigy card, making it well worth the money i spent on it.

If you have a beta program count me in on your list for beta testing hyperthreading P4's who knows when my next processor upgrade will be and dont want to be left behind in the Kx versions.

P4 3.06 HT
Audigy 2 Platinum Ex
Ati 9500 pro
1024 Crucial Ram
1x Audiophile

rubber_glove

well. i've been following this thread for a while now, always hoping for good news...
i've been experiencing this bug ever since upgrading to a p4 with an intel based board (d850gb, if anyone is interested). i've tried all manner of fiddling with pci latencies and whatnot, to no avail... i gave up for a while and just got used to working around the beeping noise. then, while dealing with an unrelated problem, i remembered that i had never updated my bios... stupid me! i was cautious at first, since this bug can sometimes go away for long periods of time,...but it's been a few weeks now.... and no more beeping.

so, to all sufferrers of this bug, i ask: have you flashed your bios recently?
did it affect your problem at all?

cheers, and happy new year.

Guillaume

1.
OS: Windows XP NL Service Pack 1 + all hotfixes
Chipset: VIA KT133a
CPU: AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1200MHz(@1200)

2.
No, I don't have a Win9x installation available currently

3.
PCI-latency setting: 32

4.
I can't: I only have 1 256MB Dimm currently

5.
Yes, bug is 'solved' when clicking play/pause or stop/play several times (no fixed n times)

6.
When playing a game like Max Payne II, the bug kicks in very often (so the bug affects DirectX)
Also, when playing music the bug can show up, even when the KMixer is bypassed (Kernel Streaming in foobar2000)
Never use ASIO/Synth playback

10.
As said, when bypassing the kmixer using Kernel Streaming output plugin of foobar2000, the bug still kicks in.

Used versions: 3534, 3535 and 3536

[edit]
Just flashed BIOS from 1008a to 1009. Hope to see improvement like previous poster did.

[edit2]
Still having these irritating beeps after flashing. Too bad... I'm back on Creative drivers for as long this lasts, sorry Eugene

__________________
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I see seven towers, but I only see one way out...
AMD Athlon 1,2GHz, 512MB Ram PC133 (M.teq), Asus A7V133, 160GB WD + 20GB WD, Sapphire Radeon 9600XT, Creative SB Audigy 1394, Hoontech SB DBII Bracket, Pioneer 106D DVD-writer, Plextor 12/10/32A CD-RW, Iiyama ProLite E481S

Marktalking

Hi guys... i have an AMD based system with Nforce2 platform here are the specs

ABIT NF7-S 2.0
AMD athlon barton 2500+ (clocked at 200*11 3200+)
Powercolor Radeon 9800 pro 256mb
sound blaster live 5.1 (think i'll change it with an audigy2

nforce drivers: 2.45
video drivers : cat3.9
audio drivers : kx3536

the pc started the beeping issue since i installed the 3536 drivers... and i thought at a bug of themselves..

then i was in the bios for some tweaking and i turned off the "ENHANCE PCI PERFORMANCE" wich is a sort of improvement of the latency, i don't know exactly.... my pci latency is allso set at 32

by turning off that, the pc does not have any problem...

Guillaume

@Marktalking: Have you tested this thoroughly? Because the bug appears randomly, you shouldn't be convinced too soon that problem is solved.

I'm not at home currently, so I can't check if I have a enhanced latency option in the BIOS, but I'll do this tonight.

[offtopic]
Now I installed Creative's drivers, foobar2000 suddenly stops playing in the middle of a song, randomly and multiple times in one song (when using kernel streaming output, so bypassing the kmixer). Strangely enough the problem isn't solved by uninstalling Creative's drivers and installing kX again... I posted a topic on foobar2000 Forums, but it doesn't seem to be a foobar-problem, but a driver-problem
[/offtopic]

__________________
Listen to Guillaume
I see seven towers, but I only see one way out...
AMD Athlon 1,2GHz, 512MB Ram PC133 (M.teq), Asus A7V133, 160GB WD + 20GB WD, Sapphire Radeon 9600XT, Creative SB Audigy 1394, Hoontech SB DBII Bracket, Pioneer 106D DVD-writer, Plextor 12/10/32A CD-RW, Iiyama ProLite E481S

chapter7

I installed the HT hotfix. Didn't work, seems to consistently hang right as the Kx logo comes up for the mixer. If there are logs i need to post tell me where to find them and i will.

kalimba

Has anyone else tried turning off the "Enhance pci Performance" in the bios? Does it seem to solve the beeping problem, or make no difference?

Just wondering.

I don't know how to do this (gotta call computer support) but I'll try if I think it will help. I get the beep very consistantly on both of my WIN98SE machines, when I'm using the ACID software program. But the drivers work beautifully in Protools.

Marktalking

the trick does not work.... sorry... after 30 play hits the beeping sound reappers... does this issue comes with all driver versions and audio chipsets?