When studio PC's go ape!

[Sever7]

Not the best of days Was making great progress on my next track and the studio PC began to give issues in the form of intermittent reboots.

This rig was built from the ground up (by me) so I know that the problem lay with 64-bit XP drivers (Sound card). So why not just re-install them?

I did - and that's where the horror story comes into play. Sound is completely different to what it used to by - almost tiny. I've re-checked all studio wiring, and even tried 3 historical drivers.

Truly at a loss for words. Almost as if I've lost the LFE portion of a setup running in 5.1 (I'm obviously powered two studio monitor speakers in stereo).

After battling for hours - still no joy. Even the VST's I've used for years sound different - like their rendering to a different clock speed.

Strange stuff. Anyone else ever had an experience like this?

[dsan@mail.com]

Greetings Server7,
Sometimes you cannot just re-install drivers. It is best to completely remove the previous driver before installing again like it is first time install.

This is not as easily done as it sounds (in a lot of cases)because it requires working in the registry (i am speaking about a PC here - not sure how this is done on MAC although I think you just drop unwanted files in the trash, and, "POOF", easy re-install. Could be a pain though finding all the files).

If you are on PC I suggest visiting the website of the sound card manufacturer and looking for an "UNinstall" program. Then you can start from beginning and hopefully solve your problem.

Just another thought - are you sure you did not change any levels anywhere - like on card or in software? Been there done that!

Hope this helps you.

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[Sever7]

Thanks for the reply Dsan! Appreciated. Running non MAC OS studio for now (it's a cost thing) - but found the problem.

It was a mixture of many things and it all boiled down to driver incompatibility with Windows XP 64 bit edition. This caused anything from Blue screens (IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL), high audio latency (over 100ms+), VST crashes to general slow DAW response. I carried out a few re-installs of the original OS but same result in the end.

I had to make a call. Lay out some capital on a new rig now and sacrifice my MPK49 purchase or downgrade to a 32 bit OS and sacrifice system RAM. I decided to downgrade - ripped out the ram and left 3GB - nLited the installation and re-installed 32 bit drivers.

The new install is twice as fast as the previous even with the drop in system memory. Sure I'll have to be cautious with VST usage but in the end - I used to bounce down a lot of the time anyway - working cleanly to free resources.

A new rig is still on the cards - but for now - this will do and my Akai MPK49 is the next purchase (and can't wait!)

[dsan@mail.com]

Glad you were able to solve the problem! And good luck with the MP - I'm sure you will enjoy it.

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[Jace-BeOS]

Strange stuff. Anyone else ever had an experience like this?

Have you read any of my anti-computer rants around KVR? They're increasing in number lately for a reason. i'll say this: Custom computer builds are voodoo.