• Registered: 2014-11-13
  • Posts: 5

Topic: HDSPe AIO - random dropouts in the recorded material

Hello,

I have an application that plays the music streamed from the Internet,
and I would like  to record the sound from this application.

Here is my setup and routing defined in HDSPe AIO mixer:

Application
    -> SPDIF software playback on HDSPe AIO
        -> SPDIF Output [AIO]
        -> Phones [AIO]
        -> ADAT 1/2 [AIO] with *LOOPBACK* active
            -> signal from ADAT 1/2 enters WaveLab Lite

I am using WaveLab Lite (v. 1.3) which records the sound from the AIO
ADAT 1/2 loopbacked input.

The problem is that although I can record the music, there are dropouts
in the recorded material. They appear randomly. Please, see the attached
screenshot from WaveLab that shows one of such dropouts.

I have installed the latest versions of fimrware and TotalMix.

The operating system is Windows XP.

The WaveLab version is an old one, but I never had any problems with it.

The CPU usage during recording is very low (less than 10%).

At first I thought, that I have setup the loopback in a wrong way,
so I made another test, connecting the AIO to another physical card I have
installed on this PC (trying to record the signal from the other card).
Unfortunately, there were dropouts too. But this test was only to check
if it's a problem with loopback settings. I do not want to use two cards.

Here are the screenshots of my settings:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= … sp=sharing

Please, help as I can't figure out what might cause these problems.

Many thanks in advance for any help.

Greetings,
Tomasz.

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
  • Administrator
  • Offline
  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,565

Re: HDSPe AIO - random dropouts in the recorded material

There are no obvious errors in your setup. You could try HDSP ASIO instead of WDM inb your WaveLab setup. Otherwise please check via DPCLat (Latency Monitor).

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2014-11-13
  • Posts: 5

Re: HDSPe AIO - random dropouts in the recorded material

MC wrote:

There are no obvious errors in your setup. You could try HDSP ASIO instead of WDM inb your WaveLab setup. Otherwise please check via DPCLat (Latency Monitor).

Thank you very much for your help.

It seems the problem was caused by the fact that WaveLab was writing the data
stream to a LAN network disk rather than to a local drive on my PC. This is strange
as the LAN connection is very fast. Anyway, after setting up WaveLab to write to
a local disk, there are no dropouts.

There are still some problems, though...

1)
On the list of recording devices in WaveLab, there is no "ASIO Hammerfall DSP".
The only devices available are these:
- AIO SPDIF
- AIO Analog (1+2)
- AIO AES
- AIO ADAT (1+2)
- AIO ADAT (3+4)
- AIO ADAT (5+6)
- AIO ADAT (7+8)

The "ASIO Hammerfall DSP" is available in the settings of my player application,
but it is not available in WaveLab.

2)
Another problem is that when I choose "ASIO Hammerfall DSP" device in my player
application, there is no sound at all. The AIO mixer doesn't show any signal being
sent to the sound card. If I choose some other AIO device in my player (e.g. AIO SPDIF),
it works OK (I can see the signal being sent to the sound card).

Could you please let me know which software playback device in the middle row of AIO
mixer should show some activity if ASIO was working? I'm a newbie, please correct me
if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand, ASIO is a software layer between the player
application and the sound card. If so, what is the default "playback device" (the middle
row in the AIO Mixer) that ASIO sends it data to?

3)
Could you please recommend a player application that would guarantee a bit-true data
stream being sent to the HDSPe AIO sound card? I have found JPLAY and JRiver being
recommended for best sound quality. Which one would you recommend if sound quality
is the major factor for me?

Once again, many thanks for your kind help.

Greetings,
Tomasz.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,768

Re: HDSPe AIO - random dropouts in the recorded material

stokrota wrote:

On the list of recording devices in WaveLab, there is no "ASIO Hammerfall DSP".
The only devices available are these:
- AIO SPDIF
- AIO Analog (1+2)
- AIO AES
- AIO ADAT (1+2)
- AIO ADAT (3+4)
- AIO ADAT (5+6)
- AIO ADAT (7+8)

The "ASIO Hammerfall DSP" is available in the settings of my player application,
but it is not available in WaveLab.


ASIO does not appear among the list of devices, but where you choose the actual card or driver to use (not sure wherer that is, haven't got a current Wavelab at the moment). You will be given choices like the internal card and the RME WDM or ASIO driver. All devices will appear in the list as above with ASIO, too. Chances are Wavelab is already using ASIO. Unfortunately, your screenshots appear as mini-thumbnails only here.


2)
Another problem is that when I choose "ASIO Hammerfall DSP" device in my player
application, there is no sound at all. The AIO mixer doesn't show any signal being
sent to the sound card. If I choose some other AIO device in my player (e.g. AIO SPDIF),
it works OK (I can see the signal being sent to the sound card).


Which "player applicatio" are you referring to? Again, "ASIO Hammerfall DSP" is not an alternative device along with e.g. ASIO SPDIF, it is a driver for the whole card.


Could you please let me know which software playback device in the middle row of AIO
mixer should show some activity if ASIO was working? I'm a newbie, please correct me
if I'm wrong, but as far as I understand, ASIO is a software layer between the player
application and the sound card. If so, what is the default "playback device" (the middle
row in the AIO Mixer) that ASIO sends it data to?

Any device and channel works with ASIO, and any application that supports ASIO will let you choose any device. There is no "default".

3)
Could you please recommend a player application that would guarantee a bit-true data
stream being sent to the HDSPe AIO sound card? I have found JPLAY and JRiver being
recommended for best sound quality. Which one would you recommend if sound quality
is the major factor for me?

Assuming playback does not go through sample rate conversion (as it could when using WDM drivers), there can not be any differences in sound quality between such applications. Such "recommendations" are rather dubious and not far away from those that try to tell you which Windows version will "sound better"...

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website