External sound card problem

Pauleeeeeeee

Not sure if this would be better suited recording forum so feel free to move it mods if it is.

A friend of mine bought a computer from aldi last year, I THINK it is a MD8824 model. Anyway, it has vista, 2 gigs ram, decent cpu. Overall, a decent computer. He also has a tascam us122 external sound card for some home recording. Tascam have discontinued the product but did release updated drivers to allow it to work with vista.

Here's the problem: Playback of music keeps on stuttering fairly regularly. This happens with mp3s stored on the hard drive, audio cds, music streamed from the net, etc. The stuttering only occurs (as far as a can tell) when there is some sort of hard drive activity be it from opening a word document to just browsing the web.

The onboard sound that came with the computer has been disabled and unistalled, not just in vista but also through the bios so I can't see there being any conflict between sound cards?

The sound card is connected through a powered usb hub so I can see there being any issue with enough power getting to it.

I read somethind about there being the possibility of an IRQ conflict? There MIGHT be one between what appears to be a video card and the sound card when I go into device manager but I vista won't allow me to change it (the option is greyed out). Something tells me that this isn't the problem though.

Anybody have any ideas as to what might be up?

Thanks

blorg

My experience of external USB sound cards is that they don't work through USB hubs, powered or unpowered. This stuttering would be typical. Has he tried direct connection to see if the problem goes away?

There are USB audio specific hubs such as the Griffin USB Audio Hub, which are meant to work.

PogMoThoin

What are the full specs of the pc, how much ram has it?
You mention

The stuttering only occurs (as far as a can tell) when there is some sort of hard drive activity be it from opening a word document to just browsing the web.

which leads me to:
Is the ram used up & are you using the page file? Are there alot of startup processes? Have you tried safe mode?

Pauleeeeeeee

blorg, I've tried a direct connection as well. It makes no difference.

PogMoThoin, I'm not at my friend computer at the moment but I can remember that it has 2gigs ram and a decent enough CPU (can't remember exactly what the CPU...will check next time I'm up there).

There's only a few startup processes as far as I can tell and I've also exited out of as many as I can when the computer is fully booted up. I can remember that alto of resources do seem to be used up quite frequently when I do look at task manager but I couldn't see anything there that would be taking up so many resources so I just presumed it has something to do with vista being a power hog (I still use xp myself).

Next time I'm at his I'll take a screen grab of the task manager and maybe you'll be able to spot something?

I'll also give him a call and ask him to give safe mode a go

mike65

Can you plug it into a dedicated USB socket? As opposed to via a hub?

Mike.

Pauleeeeeeee

mike65, as I said I've tried both with a hub and into a dedicated USB socket.

Headin' up to my friends place now so will see if there's any luck trying it out in safemode.

Pauleeeeeeee

I'm just up at the friends PC now and I've noticed that I was completely wrong about the amount of Ram he has. He only has 1GB and a pentium D 2.8GHZ cpu installed.

I'd imagine that is the reason there's stuttering?

Tom Dunne

blorg wrote: »

My experience of external USB sound cards is that they don't work through USB hubs, powered or unpowered. This stuttering would be typical.

And my experience would be the exact opposite. I have been using a Sound Blaster Live External for the past two years and it has never given me an ounce of trouble.

Pauleeeeeeee wrote: »

I'm just up at the friends PC now and I've noticed that I was completely wrong about the amount of Ram he has. He only has 1GB and a pentium D 2.8GHZ cpu installed.

I'd imagine that is the reason there's stuttering?

I wouldn't agree. My spec was a Pentium 4, with 1 gig of RAM, so even worse than your friends. It was a laptop that was used as a Media Center PC, so loads of music, videos, DVDs and the like - never a bother.

Pauleeeeeeee

Tom Dunne wrote: »

I wouldn't agree. My spec was a Pentium 4, with 1 gig of RAM, so even worse than your friends. It was a laptop that was used as a Media Center PC, so loads of music, videos, DVDs and the like - never a bother.

But was your sound card internal/onboard out of curiosity? Because there was never any problems with stuttering sound when we used the onboard soundcard.

Tom Dunne

Tom Dunne wrote: »

I have been using a Sound Blaster Live External for the past two years

Pauleeeeeeee wrote: »

But was your sound card internal/onboard out of curiosity? Because there was never any problems with stuttering sound when we used the onboard soundcard.

Pauleeeeeeee

Doh

This is beginning to bug the crap out of me?!

When I look at task manager I tend to notice a lot of resources being used up sometimes...maybe this is just vista being a power hog.
I can't see anything that looks suspect or that would be causing resources of the system to be so drained that affects the sound cards performance...

I've attached a screen shot of the task manager. What do you reckon?

I don't want my mate to go blowing cash on memory unless he need to either. Getting another stick of 1gb ram that is the same brand as the one that's already in the machine is a friggin' rip off too : http://www.swissbit-shop.com/product_info.php/cPath/20/products_id/25/Swissbit.html

I'd go for a stick of corsair or crucial off komplett but I've had issues with two different brands of ram being used before even if specs where exactly the same.

Tom Dunne

I'll see your Doh, and raise you a DOH!

I didn't realise he was running Vista on that spec.

It's almost certainly a resourcing problem, especially since you mention problems with playback when accessing the hard-drive.

Extra memory is one thing for sure, but what type of drive is it? SATA or IDE? Also, do you know how much of the CPU the external sound card uses? Could it be offloading some of the processing onto the CPU of the PC, which could explain the performance problems.

I would certainly increase the memory.

Pauleeeeeeee

ah haaaaaa! Getting somewhere finally!

The hard drive is SATA and I'm not sure if the soundcard is offloading and processing to the CPU. How would I check that?


The last problem as I said is this: http://www.swissbit-shop.com/product_info.php/cPath/20/products_id/25/page/1/language/en

Check out the insane price for just 1GB of the same brand of RAM! Am I missing something here?

This Crucial memory seems to me to be the exact same specs but it's WAY cheaper: http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=300182

cornbb

I would think its more likely to be a problem with the soundcard or its drivers. There's nothing in the Task Manager that indicates the CPU or RAM are under pressure. Reading an MP3 from the HDD, buffering it and playing it back should be very trivial tasks for your system to handle. Anyway the problem is occurring with streaming/CD music as well as audio on the HDD.

If the Tascam came with its own software utility make sure its set to play back at 44.1kHz/16 bit. Increase the buffer size/latency if you have these options. Make sure the driver is up to date and do some intensive googling to see if anyone else is having similar problems with the same card in Vista.

Try unplugging other peripherals (eg external monitors, other USB devices) and see if that eliminates the problem.

What home recording apps is he using? Does he experience the same problem when playing back audio from these?

butts

I know that with my external creative extigy card it didn't work with Vista and Creative weren't prepared to update its drivers as it was a discontinued product. In the end, somebody managed to hack the existing driver and got it working.

Pauleeeeeeee

cornbb wrote: »

I would think its more likely to be a problem with the soundcard or its drivers. There's nothing in the Task Manager that indicates the CPU or RAM are under pressure. Reading an MP3 from the HDD, buffering it and playing it back should be very trivial tasks for your system to handle. Anyway the problem is occurring with streaming/CD music as well as audio on the HDD.

If the Tascam came with its own software utility make sure its set to play back at 44.1kHz/16 bit. Increase the buffer size/latency if you have these options. Make sure the driver is up to date and do some intensive googling to see if anyone else is having similar problems with the same card in Vista.

Try unplugging other peripherals (eg external monitors, other USB devices) and see if that eliminates the problem.

What home recording apps is he using? Does he experience the same problem when playing back audio from these?

Yep he has the same problem when using cubase or reason. The driver being used is a dedicated vista one and I can't seem to find anybody else through google that have been having the same problem.