Close to Giving Up on ACPI

[Green Red Brownell]

Onr final thing before you submit... have you tried the "video (or other kind of) driver hogging the PCI bus" test? There was a thread in this forum, about 2 weeks back, I believe. There is a free downloadable utility that says how long (in MS) each driver will hold the PCI bus when it gets an interrupt. There are quite a few video drivers that hold the PCI bus for far too long (to boost benchmark scores), and that will result in pops and crackles no matter how fast your system is.

I can't remember the name of the utilities right now (shoulda saved 'em), but I'm pretty sure others here can help out. I'll also do a quick search and see if I can find the old threads.

This test is simplicity itself to do, and you can change the settings with the utilities. If it doesn't help. you can always set it back again....

[Later] Geese, here it is

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... highlight=

Have you tried this yet?? Read through the whole thread, because there are at least 2 different utilities that you can use, plus a link to a long thread about crackles and pops with SATA drives (particularly with M-Audio sound cards) on the Cakewalk forums. That long thread might even help a guy like SeaMoss!

Hope this does it for ya!

Also, another cheap and easy trick is to swap your PCI cards around in the slots. While all hardware drivers are supposed to be able to share interrupts on the PCI bus now (which is why ACPI is supposed to work fine for everyone), some drivers do not play nicely with each other. Moving cards should change the IRQ that is assigned to the card, and may eliminate the conflict.

Bottom line: this isn't ACPI mode causing the problem... it is some flaky hardware/driver conflict. It's just down to whether it is worth your time to find out what it is...

BTW, almost *anyone* can probably use these same utilities (and the knowledge from the linked threads) to lower the latency on your sound card, or increase the instances of plugins you can support. Just remember to write down the original numbers for all the PCI latencies, so you can get back to them if need be!

Long enough post for ya??


-- Green

[seamoss]

I HAVE to run standard pc mode for the same reason. Midi timing is awful under cubase/nuendo.

Nothing special or too old on my system either.


P4 2.8
Asus P4B533-E MB
Delta 66
Midisport 2x2


ACPI is NOT an option for me and it sounds like you have a similar problem.


IRQ chaning won't change anything either.

Glad I'm not the only one, seamoss!

And I've checked my IRQs, too. Only two are sharing (a networking device and USB controller). And many have said this isn't a problem.

So basically it's inexplicable, as IRQ sharing has nothing to do with it. ACPI just sucks.

Have you had any problems running in Standard PC mode within Win XP, seamoss?

no, I haven't had any problems running in standard mode and I plan to run this way at least until a new OS is out. Then at that point, I will look at the options.

Also, I have never really read ANYTHING that shows that proof that running in ACPI mode is better than standard pc mode for DAWs. It's probably good in theory and for laptop users but I see no benefits otherwise.

so for now....I wouldn't sweat it and run standard.

and like devon said, you don't have to reinstall everything...just change the driver. I have read articles that swear against doing it this way without a complete clean install but it has never given me any problems.

[geeseaplenty]

seamoss wrote:

and like devon said, you don't have to reinstall everything...just change the driver. I have read articles that swear against doing it this way without a complete clean install but it has never given me any problems.

Thanks seamoss. I re-installed last night just to safe. It's running great now. I think you're right about ACPI being good in theory, but for our DAW-specific needs, Standard PC is just fine.

[Muff Wiggler]

i think it depends on the hardware you have, in particular the version of the apic chip on your mobo

i've done a lot of testing, and on my new system, i get better results with ACPI

but on my old system, I got better results without it

[DevonB]

Glad you got it all sorted out.

My experience with my system, APCI or Standard mode gave me the same performance.

Devon

[brotherone]

Hi guys!

Same problem here with Cubase SX3 and RME HDSP 9632.
ACPI-PC with Hyper-Threading and APIC-Mode results in bad performance with clicks, pops and high CPU-Usage.

Just reinstalled in ACPI-Mode without HT and APIC gives much better performance.

I'm also thinking about setting up as Standard-PC because all the feature who are there to do a better performance of the computer like HT and APIC seem to be the worst option for the cpu-usage in Cubase SX3 at least in my case.

Any bad experience with WinXP, P4 and Standard-PC-Mode???

Best regards
Jochen