1 Topic by Yurodivi (edited by Yurodivi 2012-03-01 21:26:30)

  • Registered: 2012-02-16
  • Posts: 5

Topic: New to RME

[large]Hi there everybody !!![/large]

Pseudo color-code :

+++ : things ( hardware, software, ... ) I have and I most surely will keep or things I think are OK

+++ : things (hardware, performances, ...) that don't work well, I have changed or I would want them to change

+++ : say ... Hopes ...


I'm new to RME - thus my long introduction, scaping it might be worthy for you and me, anyway - I have just bought a silver Babyface - though I've been familiar for about 20 years with the hopes and despairs of Homestudio based "music" making - since my first "soundcard", a Turtle Beach Tropez 'pnp' -. Dealing with all this in the course of years has been a bit frustrating since I don't really have instrument performance skills and my solely redemption could come through the wonders of technology acting both as a quick reward mechanism and an encouragement to surpase my clumsiness when it comes to trying the amateur musician role.

Anyway ... recently I bought as well and iCore 5 2300 2.8 Ghz based PC with Windows 7 64 bit and a ( tricky ) Asus P8P67 LE Motherboard . I expected it to be able to run more or less hassle-free my brand new Native Instruments Komplete 8 and perform quiet decently at keeping low latency ( buffer ) settings ( 64, 96 or 128 spls ) without pops and crakles in most scenarios with my NI Vst(i)s plugins in Reaper or standalone mode ... The thing is I'm getting erratic behaviour and what sometimes will work fluently at 64 spls eventually will give me crackles and glitches at even a 256 buffer setting. Then, eventually, I learned that getting low latency settings to work at mid budget - even counting upon the "masters" at it, this is RME - and, on top of that, through USB, with a computer "out-of-the-box" should be taken as divine intervention, a miracle, a sign ... Well ... I just got the hard-worn "sight" instead, though this time around, being myself more familiar with the WWW resources - I started with the computer thing back in 1984, with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48 K and Internet ADSL access in Spain is no way that old of course - and aware of the kindness of WWW era Homestudio pioneers I learned that if you can't afford an specially build up and pre-tweaked Audio Workstation or even a "legendary Mac of the Apple tree" you should be ready for struggling your way through to get you DAW to work near its "raw possiblities".

I've been through trying to bring back to life my EMU 1616m on the new workstation and, even though at latencies above 176 samples, it didn't perform as bad as it did on my Core Duo E8400 I still considered it no good enough for the potential of my computer and the requirements of playing eDrums (Alesis DM-16) or guitar through NI soft - Battery 3, Studio Drumer or Guitar Rig 5 - or the highly demanding NI flagship virtual synths such as Absynth, Massive, FM8 or Reaktor . So I moved on to learn about DPC latency checkers, music production not-friendly BIOS features such as EPU and adaptative speeds, disabling all possible onboard devices, giving away automatic Turbo settings and diletante oveclocking, optimising Windows 7 itself disabling everything related to energy saving or fancy visuals, the old setting priority to background processes, no antivirus, firewall disabled, RME Babyface isolated on its own USB hub, uff, uff ... I even thought of a planned assault to Kling Klang as if I was Bruce Springsteen goin' to Graceland ( in Memphis, Tenesse ) ... You have to understand me, please; I'm givin up my Literary Studies at University to try a last renouncement to real world complexities and hiding myself in my room ( am I (yet) a rock, am I (yet) an iiiisland ? ) with my magic sonic filters and telling Mephisto I'm a poor mixture of Werther and Fausto and he more likely will get prince Myshkin to quest for all the Earth wealths and pleasures than me at my 40's and my present moods ...

Summing up ( my questions ) ...


- Anyone knows if my Asus P8P67 LE motherboard is suitable for building upon it a decent DAW on Win 7 64 bits ( 64 -128 latency buffer settings for recording in some 10 or 20 track -at once max. - and running a few NI Komplete 8 plugins and VSTies ) taking into account that I have a Babyface and what are my MoBo USB related specs ( the Resplendece LatencyMon utility gives the honour of the highest reported total DPC routine time to the USBPORT.SYS driver ( USB 1.1 and 2.0 port controller with an ISR count of 414472, a DPC count of 1442297, a highest execution time of 0,069 ms. and a Total execution time of  11489,64 ms. ) in a some 9 minutes time elapse ??!!


- I've been using up to now an Asus EN 210 silent 512 DDR3 Nvidia based graphics card and the Resplendence LatencyMon utility points that it might be one of the "culprits" of my mediocre DAW performace since the nvlddmkm.sys - Nvidia Kernel Mode Driver, Version 285.66, NVIDIA Corporation ( I already got rid of Physix, Asus SmartDoctor, etc ) owns the record im my sytem of Highest reported DPC routine execution time with 0.5377 ms / 537.7 us, again in a 9 minutes span and with mostly nothing executing - not "Tasks" except LatencyMon itself on the Windows Task Manager,  Babyface 1.020 driver (with pannel settings) up an running with firmware 185 and TotalMix 0.963 loaded as well. The dxgkrnl.sys DirectX Graphics Kernel, Microsoft Corporation also outstands with the highest reported ISR routine execution time 54.1206 us. All of this has leaded me to consider changing my Graphics Card. I've read that ATI Radeon 5450 512 DDR2 used to be one of the choices of preference for those building up an Audio PC based Workstation. Since the guys at the main computer stores in Barcelona ( I live in a little village some 15 km. north and I don't do much visiting to the big city these days ) didn't have it in stock I purchased instead an Asus HD 6450 Silent 1GB DDR3 ... Do you think it may do the job or do I have to mistically stick to the good old 5450 and order one of its multiple incarnations ... ??!!


- And one last thing ... I went on further on my crazy run to get my RME Babyface - Native Instruments - Reaper  DAW together and bought a Core i7 2600k CPU - upgrading from my former and almost new ( almost blue, sigh ) Core i5 2300 CPU at 2.8 Ghz ... Do you think my present setup with the Asus HD 6450 silent 1GB DDR3 ( or Sapphire if you know it to be less trouble to the system in terms of DPC and everything or "old" Radeon 5450 512 DDR2 or "new" 5450 1GB DDR3 ( I think I only need a dual monitor setup (1 DVI + 1 HDMI )) , 8 GB of RAM through two Kingston 1333-1600 memory DIMMs ( the Windows 7 Evaluation Experience gives my system a 7.7 on that "field" and I'm upgrading to a total 12 GB RAM as soon as I go back to Barcelona ) and not having any SSD drive and instead having a 1 TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA 6 / 7200 rpm system HD and a so called USB 3.0 1 TB iOmega External Drive at ? rpm will allow me to achieve my performance purposes ??!!

* [b]running more or less hassle-free my brand new Native Instruments Komplete 8 and perform quiet decently at keeping low latency ( buffer ) settings ( 64, 96 or 128 spls ) without pops and crakles in most scenarios with my NI Vst(i)s plugins in Reaper or either standalone mode.

Excuse me for trying to 'hijack' , or whathever they call it ( I've mostly stayed away from Forums up to date because of my poorly trustable changing moods ), this flattering and gentle thread, please don't be to hard on me, I just thought that maybe this way I'd get a faster or any response at all than I would do starting a new thread, I just found a thread that mentioned the ATI-AMD 6450 Graphics Card but it was in the Firewire section and not giving any special relevance to this subject ...

So if possible, please, don't delete my post and, instead just move it wherever you think it might fit properly, since it took me some 8 hours to finish it - hope the bold and colors help !! ( I promise I'll get strictly straigth to the point in any other case if not required to explain things away closely and widely ) ...

Sorry again and thank you very much,

Igor

  • Registered: 2011-01-25
  • Posts: 85

Re: New to RME

Get a mac...

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,770

Re: New to RME

Welcome to the RME Forum, but general computer audio related questions are better asked e.g. here:
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=13


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

4 Reply by Yurodivi (edited by Yurodivi 2012-03-02 00:08:20)

  • Registered: 2012-02-16
  • Posts: 5

Re: New to RME

Hi artic and Hi Daniel !!!


arctic
MADI hero
Registered: 2011-01-25
Posts: 74
E-mail
Re: New to RME

Get a mac...

Well ,thanks for showing up here in my RME Forum baptism ...

... and although that might count as a post and sure was a quick reply ... yet I still expect a little bit more from this Forum given that I never thought RME interfaces, conceived to work in a Wintel , or so to say an IBM PC running a Microsoft Windows OS, as well as in a Apple environement, with up-to-date drivers and firmware suitable for such an equipment, should stick to any of the mentioned technologies. If so, eventual costumers should be warned in advance ... The only thing I learnt from RME prior to my purchase as to be a required specs for any setup successfully hosting its products was that the system should be a "contemporary" one, this is, they stated that their audio devices will "work" ( I guess according to its price and long time reputation ) in anything "faster" than an Intel Core Duo with ICH chipsets from 8, 9 or 10th generation and, moreover with the latest PCIe-USB chips stocked in last generation of Intel - AMD computers ...

RME Tech Support / Admin.

From: Germany
Registered: 2007-04-10
Posts: 4733
E-mail  Website
Re: New to RME

Welcome to the RME Forum, but general computer audio related questions are better asked e.g. here:
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=13


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Offline

Thank you Daniel ... for being that fast at answering, for not deleting my post and for instructing me with this forum basics ...
So I guess I was not only off-topic and off-thread but even off-forum ... I hope not for so long ... Nevertheless, you at RME started a poll to help and estimulate PC users to consider seriously the chances of any RME USB audio interface at succeeding to manage audio as expected from a not at all bottom-low-budget device attached to a Wintel computer ...

http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_fir … uc_general


So please ... what happened to it . I mean it is not that you should go and do a research for every particular customer that gets troubles making its RME device work as expected, yet IMO if you started some USB - Wintel business and showed ( with that poll ) that you cared for its consistence relating to the brand up to now standards an reputation, maybe, since you get lots of feedback from customers and eventual customers, you could work out some sort of a database with the main verified problems one could eventually encounter in dealing with Wintel USB interfaces ... If there were not that many of them you could "easily" engage on a , say, 6 or 12 months basis compilation of facts on this subject. I know there are millions of IBM PC "compatible" components around, billions of programs and software and trillions of updates for both drivers and Windows OS's thus making infinite possible failing or successful interactions. But I guess there are not so many well established brands ( such as yours ), softwares and OS's - Service Packs, so maybe if eventually you found out about any reocurring problem ( such as pre-Core 2 Duo ICH7 controller, imposible to tweak critical parameters through bios, etc ) or any most probable successful engagement such as ( ICH8, ICH9 and ICH10 controllers with USB interfaces, Texas Instruments being reliable when it comes to firewire devices, etc ) you could then maybe add-it to a PDF or whatever up in your site in a suitable place for people to notice and check about the setup they can afford to make it work up to their needs or expectations. If there are too many possiblities the product is not reaching company usual standards, acting for people as a measure of what they might expect from its purchase , if there's so many X on the way that one can't even be half-reassured that people will get what they're after, then there's no honest sense in sticking to what might have been and refusing to face the facts and proceed accordingly to them. Discontinuig the dream ... In science and technology I guess there are empirical certitudes, empirically based probabilities ( as far as I know cuantic mechanics intends to develope technology based on probabilistic operations ... ) and irreductible to any kind of figured out and developed system ( to date ) phenomena. Of course we are not into cuantic computing yet and the devices industry developes and use for now obbey to more or less intricate mechanisms in a pre-cuantic sense ... Summing up eventually : if one knows there's a medium to high probability ( given the stated mechanisms are far to intrincate to deal with them and everyday living ) that something that affects the ones he/she/them is relating to works or happens to be, then that one should go on and do it, for he will feel useful and get the deserved reward and the other one will also benefit from this interaction. If it happens to be the other way round - medium to low probabilities that an inducted course of events will lead to predictable or desirable results - one should advice the one he's "dealing" with that there's few chances of success or explicitly state his great uncertainty about how things will go. So if you offer something to people in terms of an unilaterally inducted situation hoping for a mutual benefit, this should be done as transparently as possible and if it can't be done this way it should be given up that particular engagement IMHO ...

" ' Till things are right I'm the man in black" singed Johnny Cash ... he was bold and he didn't even stay for the end of the plot ... sad

  • From: Connecticut, USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-01
  • Posts: 376

Re: New to RME

Hi,
I am not familiar with that particular ASUS board but in theory it should work fine.
People seem to be having better luck with the ATI 5000 and 6000 series video cards.
The lower end Nvidia cards like the 210 always seems to have power management issues.

The best resources for installing ans tweaking Windows 7 is here.
http://www.tweakhound.com/2011/07/27/2460/
http://www.tweakhound.com/windows7/tweaking/index.html

RME does not have any known compatibility or performance issues with any current Intel or AMD chip set.

We can not control how motherboard manufacturers implement these chip sets on their boards.
The root cause of almost every issue someone has on a current computer is how the manufacturer designed and implemented the chipset, 3rd party controllers and BIOs.

Motherboards as well as BIOs change to fast for RME to be able to recommend and exact model.

Gearslutz as well as some computer gamer sites are good for researching what t look for in a new system.

The best solution would be to buy a system from DAW builder that has already done the work for you and will support the system as well as the audio software and hardware.
You also have to factor in possible performance issues on the audio software side.

Thanks
Chris

Chris Ludwig
North East USA Sales | Synthax/RME
www.facebook.com/RMEAmericas
Twitter @RMEAmericas

ChrisLudwig's Website

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,770

Re: New to RME

The UC field test was carried out specifically in the wake of the release of our first USB interface. This was meant to determine how well the unit would perform on a wider range of hardware setups than we had available. That's why we announced a pre-release beta test phase and provided units to a small group of testers.

You will find the conclusion of this test on the same page: "In short: The Fireface UC is a brand-new product of the year 2009, i.e. with latest technology, and works best with current computers."
This also resulted in the published system requirements for the UC and subsequent USB devices. End of story... cool

Not much more to add there. We are unable to continuously test current systems. In principle, we would expect stuff to work according to common standards... Dedicated audio PC buliders perform such tests, and offer systems they know to work well for audio purposes.

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

7 Reply by Yurodivi (edited by Yurodivi 2012-03-02 07:59:17)

  • Registered: 2012-02-16
  • Posts: 5

Re: New to RME

Hi there Chris and Daniel !

You people there at RME honour your well won reputation of exquisite support to actual customers and even non-yet-costumers interested in your products.  10/10 - How do you manage to keep being so fast and kind in supervising your forum ?!

I'm sorry if I messed things to a point ... The straight "get a Mac" from that guy as I was struggling my way to get a better performance for my Babyface out of exchanging components of my computer, learning, tweaking and disabling so many things in the BIOS and Windows 7 as well ... I've been up all night and I'm really tired ... As Chris Ludwig points out on his reply my system performs much better in terms of Deferred Procedure Calls execution times, both average and peak : where I used to get 60-100 us average values now I get sort of 35-50 us and, what's more relevant ( I just guess, glups ) to audio production, the top peaks of DPC execution times have remarkably dimmed from some 550 us peaks ( caused mostly by the Nvidia low-end card drivers ) to my present 65-100 us maximuns ... However all this with "no programs running" in "standby mode" so to say... Well just one thing I almost got rid of by purchasing an inexpensive Asus 6450 1GB graphics card with ATI-AMD ¿chipset? ...

My guessings are that something might be wrong with the way USB is implemented through my ASUS P8P67 MoBo hardware and Windows 7 64 bit SP 1 related controllers ( my hopes that the Windows KB981214-x64 hotfix will solve my problems vanished as soon as I learned it was already contained in Win 7 x64 Service Pack 1 ) ...

I'm almost certain I already quick checked those links you kindly provide ( maybe in the 1234567890th ocassion to WWW wanderers that stop by on your Forum to see if they can get some peace of mind and you gently try to guide to trusty resources ... ) and as at least one of them kinda discouraged me as not being mainly devoted to DAW issues and since you had posted as well a link in German that explicitly declared its research area being the music production on Windows environement I, not knowing your native language, tried to decipher its revelations through a couple of online translations ... unsucessfully, such a pity as it seemed to be a good guide.

I stop here ... Just thank you very much again for your dual-reply and , please, forgive my bitter words ... I'm obsessed with this as I spent all my money in this 4th or some try at getting an stimulating and trusty Audio Home Studio ( steppin' for the first time in my life, tempted by FNAC comercials, on the dangerous world of credit cards and credit purchases - only some 15% of my total investment on this, yet still a haunting novelty ) ...

I'm done ... I haven't neither sleept or eat anything all through the day and the night ... At least I'm comforted you cared .. smile

Schönen Gruß / Best regards

Igor

  • Registered: 2012-03-07
  • Posts: 16

Re: New to RME

Hey Igor,

you have NI stuff...:
Check NI knowledge base for Windows7 optimisation.

It is better and shorter than the tweakhound's confusing x sites.

I think of hardware->devices->USB-> (@ some hubs) selective energy saving off etc. ..read it up.

gl