KVR Audio

seamoss · Post by **seamoss** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 5:33 pm

....

I recently purchased a laptop (dell 9200 inspiron) and before I did, I spoke to a lot of the custom audio laptop companies. their feeling was the pci express was definitely bad for audio...but like you mentioned...great for gamers.

anyway, i am glad that i got a board without that. maybe things have changed (this was a couple of months ago) but i am not sure.

also...I thought it was a good thread to start. making a huge investment like a laptop is major...and eventhough technology advances every second, there is nothing wrong with doing as much research as you can before hand.

illwfafer · Post by **illwfafer** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:34 pm

PCI Latency Tool v2.3
http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951

Holf · Post by **Holf** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:05 pm

PCI Latency Tool looks really good, and what's more the functionality to keep settings on reboot is free, unlike DoubleDawg.
PCI Latency Tool listed more items in total. However, Doubledawg listed items which PCI Latency Tool didn't, such as the Intel Motherboard AC97 Audio controller.

Given that the go6800 is on PCIExpress, perhaps these utilities can't handle latency in the same way? Dunno...

illwfafer · Post by **illwfafer** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 8:59 pm

yaaaaaaayyy!

im in acpi mode right now, and everything is working great. i can get my latency in fruityloops down as low as it goes (although its a little sketchy with some plugins -ie pro53). there are no dropouts, no clicks...nothing.

what did i do? i disabled mini-PCI in the bios, which is what my dell 1450 wireless card uses. so far, it's been 45 minutes of my banging on it (figuratively) and there's been no problems.

once im 100% convinced, im going to enable it and play with the settings for the card (in the properties section).

btw, im running service pack 1a. baby steps....

illwfafer · Post by **illwfafer** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 11:21 pm

sp2 installed. its a dream come true.

my next post will let you guys know what ive done regarding the mini-PCI dell 1450.

lalo · Post by **lalo** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 9:28 am

yeah!
thanx illwfafer!!!!
your reports are sooo usefulll!!

if you use ableton live you can try if you want

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic. ... =benchmark

maybe it works with demo too

lalo

illwfafer · Post by **illwfafer** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:12 pm

lalo,

i installed ableton just for you. here were my results:

1) 19% (peak at 20%, would drop to 18%)
2) Dell Inspiron 9300
3) Windows XP Pro (SP2)
4) Pentium M 760 (2GHz/533MHz FSB)
5) 2GB Ram, PC-4200
6) Edirol Firewire FA-101 (MME/DirectX)
7) 60GB 7200rpm Ultra ATA HD (Hitachi)

lalo · Post by **lalo** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 4:32 pm

illwfafer wrote:lalo,

i installed ableton just for you. here were my results:

1) 19% (peak at 20%, would drop to 18%)
2) Dell Inspiron 9300
3) Windows XP Pro (SP2)
4) Pentium M 760 (2GHz/533MHz FSB)
5) 2GB Ram, PC-4200
6) Edirol Firewire FA-101 (MME/DirectX)
7) 60GB 7200rpm Ultra ATA HD (Hitachi)

so the puter is on top of the list

great!!
do you use DX/MME drivers?
impressive..i thought you use ASIO

lalo

illwfafer · Post by **illwfafer** » Sat Mar 26, 2005 5:14 pm

i use asio. i thought the test called for directx drivers (to get all of the samples, etc the same.

i dont use live. i use asio in fruityloops.

illwfafer · Post by **illwfafer** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 7:46 pm

in case anyone cares:

ive read that the intel 2915 is a good card to have if you are going to be using firewire audio. i may swap my dell 1450 for the 2915.

ive disabled the 'a' band on the 1450, and that seems to have solved the problem too.

voidar · Post by **voidar** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 12:06 pm

I am also looking into a 915 system. The Clevo M400A/Sager 4880 actually. Though being based on 915PM it still uses DDR1.

Anyway, from the Nuendo forum:

It would be great if someone tested some of the Sonoma machines with Nuendo or Cubase.
They've been out since january, some one could have done it by now

Copuple of days ago, friend of mine pointed me to Digidesign webpage, where they have Dell Inspiron 6000 (new Sonoma laptop) in the list of the recomended laptops for Mbox. While on the sam page they state that "Digidesign's Mbox is not compatible with Intel 925X, 915G or 915P chipsets". So there might be something different with mobile 915PM?

According to Intel, X, G and P are ATX boards while PM is the only notebook board.

Holf · Post by **Holf** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 8:52 pm

Just read some more about this. Apparently with the ATI Radeon PCI-e mobile graphics cards, it is possible to change the number of pipelines the card uses. This is done using an ATI app called Powerplay. Powerplay scales the capability of the card to fit your power settings, i.e. the card drops in power if you are on battery. But you can use Powerplay to force the card to use only 1 of the 16 pipelines available. I have read this has fixed audio problems for some people.

Can't find where I read this now, but I'll keep looking...

voidar · Post by **voidar** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:02 am

Holf wrote:Just read some more about this. Apparently with the ATI Radeon PCI-e mobile graphics cards, it is possible to change the number of pipelines the card uses. This is done using an ATI app called Powerplay. Powerplay scales the capability of the card to fit your power settings, i.e. the card drops in power if you are on battery. But you can use Powerplay to force the card to use only 1 of the 16 pipelines available. I have read this has fixed audio problems for some people.

Can't find where I read this now, but I'll keep looking...

notebookforums.com ?

Emog · Post by **Emog** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 2:47 pm

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Hi Illfwafer, you're a Gent, any chance you could possibly try out the Orangine, Five Towers, and Thonex stress-tests for measuring performance in Cubase SX, with as low latencies as possible, please? (As discussed on the Nuendo forums here (http://forum.nuendo.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=706&).

I think the links to the tests are:

http://www.citriq.com/sonomatica/sistem ... t%20SX.rar (http://www.citriq.com/sonomatica/sistemas/Orangine-Stress%20Test%20SX.rar)

http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm (http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm)

http://www.moar.net/cubasetest/index.shtml (http://www.moar.net/cubasetest/index.shtml)

Would be very grateful, if poss!

Emog

Emog · Post by **Emog** » Mon Jun 06, 2005 12:01 am

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Actually, disabling the Wireless aspect of the 915 platform could tally (?).

(http://www.intel.com/products/i/chipsets/mobile/915pm_diagram_760.gif)

(from: http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050511/index.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20050511/index.html))

That block diagram appears to show that the PCI buss is not shared by the PCI-E graphics, but by the Wireless aspect? Also, what is "PCI Down"?

Could all these latency/CPU audio problems with the 915-based (Sonoma) platform indeed all be avoided by just doing similarly to Illwfafer, and deactivating and tweaking certain aspects? Or does it go deeper than that, affecting the communication and processing between chips on the chipset, rather than the peripheral/PCI pipelines?

The music I intend to do will be very intensive on the computer (realtime multi-channel effects) and good, solid low latency functionality would be highly desirable.

Thanks,

Emog

Intel PCI express (915E) chipset - A hidden drag?