At my bloody wits end! Edirol UA25 & Cakewalk and my laptop...

seachto7

Howdee,

I know I have posted some VERY dumb threads here, but this one, I think, has me rightly stumped...Here's the problem:

I'm using a Win XP laptop by the way and the specs are defintiely fine, 2G of RAM etc.

I'm even saving the file on an external hard drive. I've turned off the antivirus, made sure I'm using the edirol UA25 drivers, checked the buffer size etc.

I recorded just one audio track earlier on a new song, so it's just a one audio track file. No problems with recording.
The laptop crashed on playback on a few occasions. On one occasion I heard some slight crackles before it crashed....CPU use looks ok. I'm stumped....

It also crashed while left idle.

Also, when I save a file and open it again, before it opens fully I get the following message:

Windows cannot find E:\Documents and Settings\.....cwp. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again...

However the file opens in the background and plays fine. SHould I be saving it as something else, a .cwb file maybe? I'm saving it onto my external hard drive

So my main query is why it could be crashing out of the blue and I get the dreaded blue screen.....

My settings seem to be all fine....

Some more info which may be of use about the Blue Screen of Death:

Error Signature:

BCCode: 1000000a BCP1:FF9B00E8 BCP2:00000002 BCP3:00000001
BCP4:806E6A16 OSVer:5_1_2600 SP:3_0 Product:768_1

The above means nothing to me...

The blue screen is so quick, it disappears before I can read anything on it...

I rebooted, changed the buffer size to "min" and a few secs later it crashed again.

I rebooted, and it seemed ok until I went to record something over the one audio track to see if everything was ok, and on playback and record it seems not.

It's like the recorded track hangs for a moment, then continues, then hangs again for a second. This means it's impossible to record along with it, as my recording will be out of time and I can't predict when the sound will momentarily pause.

When I changed the Edirol buffer settings in the control panel, I unchecked the Use Asio Direct Monitor check box as well. I don't know if this makes any difference.

I'm at a bloody loss. Maybe my laptop is crud. I did have vista on it when I bought it but installed XP, and have never had any problems with crashes, only with the Edirol, and recording music.

I recorded the track at 44.1 and I'm aware maybe I should have used the advanced driver setting and the 96 sample rate on the Edirol, but still, I don't think this would cause any crashes.

I also noticed that after recording a track dry, the CPU usage is around 4%. When I add Amplitube as an effect/VST plugin, the CPU usage jumps to 40%.

So, I would imagine, the more tracks with amplitube, like if I had a few guitar tracks, the laptop would crash again?

Is this normal? Should I just invest in a POD to record the guitar tracks?

I mean, I'm just recording some basic audio, and everything crashes. I'd understand if I had loads of tracks with effects, but even just connecting the edirol and listening back to a tune can crash the machine.

If anyone can help at all, I'd be very happy!! cheers..

If anyone around Limerick can help, I'll buy ye a slab of beer.

I have quite a few riffs and ideas, and can't even get them bloody recorded basic...:o:o

PMI

hi mate, just for test purposes, activate the on board sound and try that for playback just to rule out the edirol/drivers.... use direct sound and then the asio4all on the on board. see if it does it then !!!

Once that is ruled out we can move to plan B I have till Plan G

PMI

Also SP3 isnt ideal for a DAW stop at SP2 in future.... and check whats running in services and possibly do a print screen for us then knock off what you dont need and see if thats a problem !

Thats Plan B

PaulBrewer

Call Bloody Support .... that's what it's bloody there for!

seachto7

well, as I originally had Vista on the machine and bought the edirol second hand, I don't know if support could help me. I'll try it.
Anyways, here are some screenshots of my performance and processes

PaulBrewer

seachto7 wrote: »

well, as I originally had Vista on the machine and bought the edirol second hand, I don't know if support could help me. I'll try it.
Anyways, here are some screenshots of my performance and processes

Worth a call ... at least you're talking to someone who can help ...

TelePaul

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Worth a call ... at least you're talking to someone who can help ...

I was always curious about this Paul. If someone was to buy a soundcard from yourself and run into problems, what's your stance on it? Considering the discrepancy between different operating systems and software configurations, I think returns are largely indicative of user issues rather than issues with the product, no?

PaulBrewer

TelePaul wrote: »

I was always curious about this Paul. If someone was to buy a soundcard from yourself and run into problems, what's your stance on it? Considering the discrepancy between different operating systems and software configurations, I think returns are largely indicative of user issues rather than issues with the product, no?

It's a real simple process - we can't be component level experts on everything so we give a hand were we can sort problems - if it's actually broken broken we might give a loan unit , the same one or similar. Or it might be a power supply so we'd replace that.

As was discussed on another thread with so many permutations of hardware problems can easily arise. Therefore speak to support for the product. That's what it's there for. You're probably talking to one of the guys who was involved in the product from the beginning and as he works for the company who built it will probably have seen your problem a million times.

Software Compatibility or Computer problem? Straight to Support. It's the quickest way to get things sorted. It doesn't really matter how the problem occurred, Pilot Error is VERY common but that doesn't matter - Get to the solution.

Neurojazz

If you need to catch BSOD you need to go into bios and disable the restart on error - that way the machine won't reboot when it crashes - then note down the stop code which might help with debugging... a cursory glance at the issue looks like latency is set to low - but check the bsod stop code first - that may show where a physical fault lies.

seachto7

For what it's worth, here's the error on the blue screen:

BAD_POOL_HEADER

stop:0x00000019 (0x00000020, 0x89814000, 0x898141E0, 0x0A3C0000)

There are fixes for ox00000019 errors online, but not for the full one above for XP SP3.

I suppose I've narrowed it down that it's the laptop that's the problem...

I'll get onto roland as well..:o

Neurojazz

Just looking at the services list, there's an awful lot running there - looks like this is your 'home machine' as well as the music one.

XP service pack 2 is know as stable for those apps your want to use - going back to that would help the debugging process.

As the cpu spikes with just adding 1 plugin then there's a problem either at the software end talking to the driver (if the latency is set too low) or the machine actually has a ram problem or loose cpu cooler - a loose cpu cooler etc...

44k or 48k should be fine.

Post an image of the audio settings page if you want and can do some digging there - and unless you have another computer for surfing the process list will be pretty large - once a computer is dedicated to music that list shrinks to about 9/10 processes.

PMI

As said above alot running in services....

KIll:

Ipod
Itunes
ctfmon
search indexer
apple mobile
sync services
good update
av guard
avgnt
maxmenu manager
acrotray
jusched
rthdcpl

and then run your music app.....

this is a home machine and too much junk software to be running a serious music app bud....

Tweaks

Change Processor Scheduling to 'Background Services' found in advanced in system page, you do this because asio drivers run as a background service

Switch Off Power Schemes switch to always on....

Disable System Sounds

Turn Off System Restore on all drives

Set Menu Speed to 'Maximum' a registry tweak but helps...

Disable Error Reporting

good luck

seachto7

Yeah, I'm beginning to think I have too much installed on it.
I've sorted some of the list above.

One other thing. I installed Photoshop,Dreamweaver,Illustrator but havent saved anything on the machine. I would think that possibly these are taking up some space even though I havent been using them or saved any of their stuff on the laptop.....

cheers, I'll keep ye updated.

I hope I'm not wasting anyones time who has checked in on this thread..

slavedave

I am running Sonar 6.2 on an acer laptop (centrino 1.6, 2 gigs ram) under XP SP2 using an alesis IO14 (previously had sonar on a desktop amd3500,2gig xp with an m-audio pci card). Both work but I opted from the outset to set the systems up as dual boot and dedicate one installation on a machine to DAW duties only (no internet, networks, com ports, bells and whistles,etc). It is quite straightforward to do if you have the windows installation disks. It gives you a good start at avoiding loads of hassle. XP tweaks are readily available at Soundonsound, xptweaks and in the sticky of this thread if I remember rightly). Buy partition magic to divide up your drive to do this and then use something like Acronis Drive image to give you security and confidence to mess around with settings once you have your key software for audio installed. Great investments and, genuinely, invaluable.
M-audio drivers are regularly updated so check your interface for current ones and try them out. My IO14 took several attempts to get it stable - all part of the learning curve.
Also go onto the Cakewalk forum and do a search for your particular issue - you may be surprised to find some answers there. It is a good forum by and large with some serious Sonar users on it with bags of experience. General word is that official support from cakewalk can be hit and miss.
All the best.

seachto7

Ok, I went through all the suggestions here, and am also waiting on reponses from the cakewalk and roland/edirol forums. The collection of all your answers and help is helping me cheers.

So not that I turned off background processes etc, and tweaked performance, I noted that my track that previously ran the CPU at 43% (3 audio tracks, 1 dry, 2 with ampltube), not runs at just over 20%, so there's a notable difference. I'll probably take photoshop etc off the laptop, even though I dont and have not used it much (nothing saved on the pc), but just to free up some more space I suppose...

Here are my audio settings anyways:

Neurojazz

ok, set your buffer size to MAX (or SAFE as it's called there) - that way most the load will be taken away from trying to make things happen quickly - everything will much better after that!

JonathanAnon

seachto7 wrote: »

Ok, I went through all the suggestions here, and am also waiting on reponses from the cakewalk and roland/edirol forums. The collection of all your answers and help is helping me cheers.
Here are my audio settings anyways:

There is no point in putting up these images. Unless somebody else has the exact same card with the exact same driver, then you are at nothing.

I would suggest maybe borrowing an ASIO soundcard and testing to see if this works. Like Paul said, as an IT engineer you generally begin with a process of elimination to see is it a) Hardware or b)Software, then to either particular pieces of hardware or particular (and possible conflicting) software packages. The issue is most likely to be caused by the Edirol device, so if you could bypass this and use a different sound card to test, this would give you a place to start. If the same issue happens with a different sound card then you know to look elsewhere.

Contact Edirol for sure, but unless it is a known issue or somebody has posted a similar error on their forum, you are unlikely to get any success here.

Neurojazz

It's really helped what he posted there and the problem stands out a mile sorry.

He has a small computer that he is trying to force to process at realtime quad core speeds with such a small latency - ergo, problems happening after very little being added - increase the latency and continue de-bugging (even if there is another BSOD, i doubt it)

PMI

Sorry to start again but......

Save what you need and reload XP up to SP2 and only load drivers your require... if you dont need network card dont load it etc...

then just load soundcard driver at default settings....

do tweaks and then load your DAW software and off ya go, I pretty much think 89.73% :P it will clear your problem....

Your fighting with it rather than sorting it, sometimes you cant fix a windows problem without a clean, full format reload

TRUST ME !!!!!!!!

Neurojazz

I've seen this guys problem in front of me on others machines - i'm 99.9% sure of it - the symptoms match his settings

seachto7

So you think SP2 might fix it? I could give it a shot...
lol, now I have audio problems, none on playback, checked driver settings, all in order. F**k it, I'm leaving it for a few days. I'd say I've spent 90% of the time tying to get things to work, and 10% actually recording stuff...

PMI

If you referring to my post bud, im saying fresh load including a full format dont try just uninstalling SP3, it will get even more messy pulling out files etc...

seachto7

yeah, fresh load, I'd do whatever is necessary, I have all music files saved on an external drive, so it's not like I'd lose a whole lot.

maybe SP2 might just get me over the line...:)

Neurojazz

I'd read my post mate, your problem was obvious in the settings.

I've seen machines BSOD and stutter/crash and erratic CPU loads with low latency settings.

In your ASIO audio settings the buffer is set too FAST, when it should be SAFE, then the system will be able too breath.

After you do this, IF there are other problems you'll be able to debug them without the machine crashing.

seachto7

thanks Neurojazz. I'll make sure to set it to SAFE, and edirol audio buffer size to MAX..fingers crossed...

PMI

Sorry lookin back at pics, try neoro's first..... buffer is very low but still getting 16ms?!?! Im at 256 buffer on my live laptop and only getting 9ms ?!?

glitches will happen if you set it low and PC/driver/soundcard cant deal with it....

seachto7

Update: I installed Reaper (free version) to see if it would make a difference, to rule out the software option, and hey presto, it works fine!:):confused:

I recorded the same amount of tracks and plugins that was previously crashing with Sonar LE. I don't really know why it was crashing, but as of now, everything works fine, so I'll use reaper, spartan as it may be, and use my plugins etc with it, until I save enough for a big juicy apple sometime down the road..

JonathanAnon

that's cool. In my experience, you usually have to swop things round to actually find out which bits dont work together. At least now you know that an issue exists between the Edirol unit (or driver) and Cakewalk software, and have the choice to either work through that issue or bypass it.

I tried reaper and didnt like it, I now use Linux MultiMedia Studio (available on XP). But there are a few free sequencers out there to choose from.

seachto7

I may have spoken too soon. Worked fine yesterday. I booted up the laptop today and it crashed like never before....