EMU 1212m/1616m on Windows 7 - The Thread to End All Other EMU Threads!

[Easy_Does_It]

Brilliant! I did it as is and my sound improved a lot. Thank you!

Awesome! So glad it helped you.

[mcdebugger]

ClubHouseKey, rawl747, thank you very much for your solutions!

I previously tried manually replacing driver from X-Fi in Device manager. Everything worked except the problem that was hard to troubleshoot - probably with clocking or something else in Windows Wave audio. When just listening to audio from Windows (not from ASIO) it was randomly starting making glitches in audio which looked like some sample shifting. Resetting samplerate helped but after some period (from 1 to 30 minutes) it was appearing again.

Then I reinstalled drivers with scripts updated by rawl747's and new X-Fi driver provided in his archive and now it works like a charm.

Thank you guys!

P.S. somewhere here in this thread I saw a solution to finally force to work recording in Windows (I need it for Skype). I think I should try it now.

[l_maseroni]

Thank auron.

Even if not bulging, it is worth it in my opinion to replace the 2 or largest electrolytic capacitor in an electronic device this old. It seems that the larger the electrolytic capacitor, the more likely it will fail. And the largest ones are most always associated with DC power supplies. And the voltage and current stress on them is the highest. The 1820m modules don't have the AC to DC portion of power supply circuitry since they receive DC voltage from the card in the PC. But that largest cap is probably the input DC filter cap for the entire 1820m module.

Rawl

Thank you very much for the suggestions. The question is that the technician to whom he took the 1820 says he measured all the components of the emu, not only with a tester, but also used other devices that provided analyzable graphics. He ensures that everything is fine, everything measures well. I also check the important welds. He assures that if everything gives the correct voltages it is because all its components, including the capacitors, are in good health. So we got to this point where he asks me if I can get the plans or diagrams of how the emu is built, to see exactly what each component does and try to figure out the cause of the problem. The only thing he tells me he can do is try to change the A / D D / A converter, since it is the soul of the device in question. But I see absolutely very difficult to get that specific converter and more here in Argentina. I have a friend in the US who stayed there because of the corona virus and who would return in June or July. If it gets there I can ask you to bring it to me. What do you think? worth it? will it be very expensive? Do you suggest changing the capacitors anyway, even if the voltages are good? Can creative provide me with the plans?

[l_maseroni]

I think rawl is right, i would bet on the capacitors. The problem is, they can look swollen (bulge ...whatever) but not neccessarily.

On gearslutz forum there is an interesting thread about this, maybe it is helpful:

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-c ... blems.html

Thank you! Very interesting, everyone claims that the problem is the capacitors. I think I will tell the technician to change them anyway even if they look good and measure well. I do not know. They also talk about the pins where the edi cable goes

[rawl747]

Thank you! Very interesting, everyone claims that the problem is the capacitors. I think I will tell the technician to change them anyway even if they look good and measure well. I do not know. They also talk about the pins where the edi cable goes

First of all, how sure can we be that the dock itself is the source of your failure mode "symptoms"?

The absolute best troubleshooting approach for a complex "system" such as this one is by substitution. If you can send the dock (and data cable) to someone with an identical dock / 1010 card / PC that works and have then swap out just your dock for their dock, that would eliminate everything from the computer side except the data cable. Swap out the cable and they can eliminate that as an issue as well. If the dock works with another PC with 1010 card and installed drivers then you know that the problem IS NOT in the dock but somehow "in" the PC / 1010 card / drivers side of the equation. I have seen very strange behavior from my dock after Win 10 updates 1903 and 1909 until I re-installed successfully the drivers.

If the dock fails in substitution for a known good dock in a working system then you know for sure that the dock itself has a problem.

I obviously wasn't there with the technician but how he measured the voltages would be an important question to have answers to. If he measured DC voltage across the DC input filter capacitor with a digital voltmeter while the dock was powered on, then the meter may very well read a normal DC voltage even if the capacitor is failing. Because that DC voltage measurement in itself does not tell us about the quality of that DC voltage.

If however he measured and examined that DC voltage using an oscilloscope and observed no AC component or "ripple" than that tells us much more about the health of that capacitor. The main purpose of the DC input filter cap is to filter out any AC component so that only a "clean" DC voltage is provided to subsequent circuits. A failing cap does not adequately filter out residual AC.

As to your other question, even if these largest electrolytic capacitors have not failed yet, this is the most common point of failure with these devices and they are now at or near their expected "end of life." The cost of replacing them now assuming that the tech still has the unit with the cover off, should be minimal. It is a bit like changing the oil in your car. Sure you can skip replacing the oil filter but the incremental additional cost of replacing the oil filter as well Is relatively small while the tech is already changing your oil.

If your tech wants a lot of money to change 2 or 3 electrolytic capacitors while he already has the unit on his bench then I would start to question the choice of this technician.

Given the COVID-19 problem, perhaps you could ship the dock and cable to someone who could try a substitution test far cheaper than purchasing a replacement IC for your dock. You might even be able to purchase an entire used Emu interface used from eBay cheap enough. That might give you the spare parts you need if the tech is correct in his original suggestion.

I would ask the tech how much to replace the three largest electrolytic capacitors and see if his price is reasonable or excessive. And proceed from there.

Rawl

[rawl747]

Thank you! Very interesting, everyone claims that the problem is the capacitors. I think I will tell the technician to change them anyway even if they look good and measure well. I do not know. They also talk about the pins where the edi cable goes

A follow up to my previous reply.

I took the cover off of my 1820m audio dock. There are quite a few medium sized electrolytic capacitors. Actually not one large one for the DC input as I thought I recalled accurately. Still, a number of these are associated with DC power and these are the ones I would be most concerned with.

A number of the larger ones are 470uf at 16V for example. This is typical of a cap providing DC filtering as opposed to any other purpose such as those used to effect audio circuits. And these are not expensive caps either.

There are a lot of components on the three connected boards in this device. Quite a few are surface mounted. It is not a simple device by any means and I can see why your tech wanted a set of schematics and/or a service manual. But getting anything specialized such as the IC you mentioned will be a struggle.

If it were me and I couldn't get a quick and cheap fix from replacing the most obvious DC filter caps, I would be looking to find a used replacement system or to move on.

My unit is still working in my old desktop although I have had to go to rather extreme lengths to keep it running after the most recent Win 10 updates which stomp on the Emu drivers. And this May we should see another major Win 10 "feature" update.

When I replaced the desktop with my current DAW host machine, I went with a laptop and I got a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 USB interface. Focusrite has been good about keeping the drivers updated despite the fact that my 18i20 is "first generation" and several years old now. It has decent latency specs and has a mixing GUI application rather similar to the old PatchMixDSP app that I grew used to using with my 1820m interface.

So, it may be time to consider moving on yourself. Or, finding a used Emu interface like yours one on eBay or Reverb.com.

Rawl

[l_maseroni]

Thank you! Very interesting, everyone claims that the problem is the capacitors. I think I will tell the technician to change them anyway even if they look good and measure well. I do not know. They also talk about the pins where the edi cable goes

A follow up to my previous reply.

I took the cover off of my 1820m audio dock. There are quite a few medium sized electrolytic capacitors. Actually not one large one for the DC input as I thought I recalled accurately. Still, a number of these are associated with DC power and these are the ones I would be most concerned with.

A number of the larger ones are 470uf at 16V for example. This is typical of a cap providing DC filtering as opposed to any other purpose such as those used to effect audio circuits. And these are not expensive caps either.

There are a lot of components on the three connected boards in this device. Quite a few are surface mounted. It is not a simple device by any means and I can see why your tech wanted a set of schematics and/or a service manual. But getting anything specialized such as the IC you mentioned will be a struggle.

If it were me and I couldn't get a quick and cheap fix from replacing the most obvious DC filter caps, I would be looking to find a used replacement system or to move on.

My unit is still working in my old desktop although I have had to go to rather extreme lengths to keep it running after the most recent Win 10 updates which stomp on the Emu drivers. And this May we should see another major Win 10 "feature" update.

When I replaced the desktop with my current DAW host machine, I went with a laptop and I got a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 USB interface. Focusrite has been good about keeping the drivers updated despite the fact that my 18i20 is "first generation" and several years old now. It has decent latency specs and has a mixing GUI application rather similar to the old PatchMixDSP app that I grew used to using with my 1820m interface.

So, it may be time to consider moving on yourself. Or, finding a used Emu interface like yours one on eBay or Reverb.com.

Rawl

Thanks Rawl. I have decided to change the capacitors anyway. The technician suggested me to change 21 capacitors, the cost is 20 dollars, including components and labor, I found it super cheap. As soon as this list I tell you how it went!

[rawl747]

l_maseroni,

I hope it works out for you.

Rawl

[SoNic67]

Driver fix for EMU 1820 and probably all other EMU cards on Windows 10 1903.

The links for the drivers don't work that good. I can select manually an X-Fi Titanium but it gets a newer driver, XFRL_PCDRV_L11_3_00_2022, so the hard-encoded script doesn't get all the files.
Can you please update the script with that new driver?

[rawl747]

The links for the drivers don't work that good. I can select manually an X-Fi Titanium but it gets a newer driver, XFRL_PCDRV_L11_3_00_2022, so the hard-encoded script doesn't get all the files.
Can you please update the script with that new driver?

I'll wait for clubhousekey to weigh in first but in the meantime you can still get the 0019 drivers and related scripts here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/gxbi032y ... /temp.rar

If I don't see a response by the end of the week from clubhousekey, I will look at this issue and possible updates to the RAR file to include revised scripts.

Rawl

[SoNic67]

I thought his scrip was requiring "XFTI_PCDRV_L11_2_40_0018"? That's what I have in the cvs file.
I had renamed my downloaded folder 0022 as 0018, that made some progress but still had some red flags during copy.
Now, I have installed a Creative ZxR in that PC since then, I don't know if it conflicts with the drivers from X-Fi...

It would be easy if the new files would be re-packaged in a zip file as a modded driver to be installed, but that means to install that as "unsigned" driver (special reboot mode).

I have replaced the two power capacitors on my E-MU 1820m dock (that usually fail), mine were "inflated" on top. I have used 1000uF/16V instead of the 500uF/10V originals. Tested it in a Win7 machine that I still have around and it worked.

PS: I have asked Creative support on Reddit if they plan to update the drivers and their rep (Colins) directed me to emu support.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SoundBlasterOf ... s_support/
That emu.com site sells now only a pair of boutique headphones... so sad.

[l_maseroni]

l_maseroni,

I hope it works out for you.

Rawl

Hello, I wanted to comment that the capacitor change has worked, the emu 1820 now works !. First I tried it on a very old PC with win 7, it recognized me and I could plug in a guitar and monitor myself directly with the emu but it could not play any audio file, like when there is no audio device installed in the system. Then I installed it on my pc, the one I use where I already have an EMU 1616 installed and it started, I had to uninstall and install everything again and run the script.
The strange thing is that now my pc is really slow, a lot. When I open the task manager I see something called system interrupts that varies all the time. I opened the pc to see if I had moved something but no, everything is well connected. Any ideas on how to know what it can be?

[SoNic67]

I'll wait for clubhousekey to weigh in first but in the meantime you can still get the 0019 drivers and related scripts here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/gxbi032y ... /temp.rar

If I don't see a response by the end of the week from clubhousekey, I will look at this issue and possible updates to the RAR file to include revised scripts.

Rawl

Thank you, the script worked on Windows 10 (ver.1909)!

[fertje]

It worked perfect. Does anyone know how to get the midiport up and running again?
Ferdinand

[l_maseroni]

Good! lately my pc stops recognizing the EMU. It happens to me that it disappears from the list of devices and drivers. I have a 1616. I reboot into safe mode and proceed with the script again. Sometimes it works the first time and sometimes I have to do it several times and restart. Is this happening to someone? I have windows 10 version 18363