Firewire issue affecting all the Dell Core Duo notebooks

I just bought a dell m90 precision laptop with the core 2 duo about a month ago. I was looking into getting an RME fireface 800. After scanning through this monstrous thread, I am still unsure of the verdict. Did the BIOS update resolve the issues? I have a Sony DVDR/CDRW and am unable to tell if my firewire port is Ricoh or not. Please let me know if u have any idea, as I was planning on ordering the Fireface this weekend. THANKS!

 

Glad the latency checker helped you!

Got my NEC drive from Dell today so i'm gonna see if that causes latency probs over the weekend.

 

Ok, Sony NEC DVD drive confirmed - no latency/interferance problems compared to the toshiba TSST-corp!

forty6n2 - if you have the same laptop as myself and Sam - the Konnekt 8 or 24d will work in the firewire port with no problems, not sure about the RME has someone confirmed this works in this thread yet?

The Konnekt IS NOT COMPATIBLE with Sonar yet. I called Konnekt myself to confirm this and they said there are issues with compatibilty which are being addressed.

I have tested the Konnekt with CUBASE SX 3 and NUENDO, Sony Vegas 7 all working great with no probs.

PS Sam thanks for your help and contributions to this thread - without your experience I would not be making music right now with my M90

Brad

 

meanDaddy - exactly what model number did the NEC drive have? It would be great information when I contact Dell next week for a replacement.

Regards, MrYatzy

 

Sony NEC - model no. AD-5540A

When I called them I just said that the drive is interferring with my soundcard therefore making it incompatible with my new expensive Dell - I mentioned this forum and that it's been proved that the Sony NEC drive does not cause interference with the firewire.


Good luck

Brad

 

Glad to help, Brad!

MrYatzy, mine is NEC ND-6650A

 

hey guys. i have just bought a m-audio firewire solo soundcard and i`m so stressed because i have installed its drivers for 2 days with no result. i have a msi 945 chipset intel duo core T2060 1,6 gb, 1 gb ram 100 gb hdd 7200 rpm. is there a chance to update my bios and solve the problem? my music stops randomly, just freeze the mp3 song in about 2-3 minutes. sometimes it stops for good and have to reboot. in cubase same problem, i work for about 2 or 3 minutes and again this problem. please, help me people.

 

Hi,

I finally purchased the SIIG FW-800 Expresscard for my Dell Inspiron. It doesn't work. After numerous hours with tech support and trying different things yesterday, I heard back from tech support today---no solution unless SIIG releases a new driver.

I'm hoping there may be another way forward, so I thought I'd email here, to see if anyone has any advice.

---My setup is one FW-400 drive and one FW-800 driver, each connected to one of the ports on the SIIG card.

---If I use the Unibrain drivers, the FW-400 drive becomes "invisible", as I can't see it in My Computer.

---If I use the Unibrain driver for the FW-800 drive, and the Microsoft driver for the FW-400 drive, then after 5 minutes of use I get a blue screen saying my computer has crashed.

---If I use only Microsoft drivers for both hard drives, then I cannot copy files from one external drive to the other. The computer crashes.

---If I enable "Write Caching", then I get a "Delayed Write Failed" error. (And the file I was transferring gets corrupted.)

I could use both these drives via USB 2.0, but I bought them in order to use their Firewire 400/800 connections.

Any advice HUGELY appreciated.

Thanks,
Dt

 

Re. SIIG Expresscard

Turns out that Unibrain had a more updated driver than the one on the SIIG website. It is running OK, but transferring files between the two firewire drives is still a bit slower than I would expect.

I have not tried enabling write caching, ye, but I will and will report back...

 

Great news, people. Thanks to this forum, I managed to convince Dell to give me a new DVD burner, a Sony Nec instead of my original TSS corp. Havent installed it, it just arrived in the mail. Dell service Europe is great, they said I could keep my TSS Corp as well.
So, now I am back to music production.
Have a listen to www.myspace.com/AchternStyg

Good luck to you with your issues.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gear: Dell Core 2 Duo T5200, 2 Gb Ram, 7200 rpm 100 Gb sata HDD
Audiophile Firewire, BCF2000, Microkorg, KP3, Soundcraft Compact 10 mixer
Running Ableton, rewired Reason and a lot of VST's.

 

I'm confused, I have the NEC as Sam. You replaced yours with the Sony? The AD-5540A is an NEC drive; an update to the NEC ND-6650A?

Ah, OK I see now where Sony and NEC merged..

 

I wouldn't say that's the truth, and nothing but the truth...

I also got a new DVD from Dell, a DW-Q58A. Thank you, Dell.
And yes, it solves the DPC latency problem, but not necessary the FireWire problem.

There are, for a fact, a lot of people in this thread that already have a NEC installed but still have problem with almost every audio interface on the market.

We should do a quick poll:
Did the replacement of the TSSTcorp drive solve all your audio interface problems?

I cannot answer yet since I haven't tried my FireBox after the drive-swap yet.


Regards, MrYatzy

 

That's true. The drive swap solves the "latency" problem that is caused by a faulty DVD drive. I had the NEC drive from the beginning and the only thing that works with my system is the Konnekt sound card.

It doesn't solve the Firewire or Expresscard issue. I don't know a solution for the expresscard, but some sound cards (like the Konnekt) work with the built-in firewire port of the Dells.

 

I have a Dell e1505, 1gb RAM, Windows XP Pro SP2.
I just got an Alesis iO16 firewire interface and Cubase gives an error when I switch it to use the alesis. Alesis's control panel interface works fine with it and shows level meters. I have it connected via a 6-6pin firewire cable through a SIIG Firewire800 expresscard. The Alesis doesn't even show up when I try a 4-6pin cable to the built-in firewire.

Neither Audition nor Sonar recognize it either.

Has anyone tried the Cardbus 2 Expresscard converter, and if so, which cardbus firewire cards work?
( http://www.duel-systemsadapters.com/)

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

I have a Asus Z96Jb and have the ricoh chipset, you guys have got me worried. I'm planning on buying the Ecler Evo 5 or Korg Zero8 mixers when they're released they have on board firewire soundcards. As the Z96Jb is an oem verified by intel notebook, i tried emailing asus who said to email intel (how the hell do you email intel there's no way i found) i ended up emailing intel software development support.... Ricoh are no help either... these companies take your money quickly and don't deliver on support... hope the mixers will like my notebook otherwise i've spent money for nothing.

Hope you guys get a response

 

Hi all

I have read all 42 pages, and thanks to all for usefull tips. I thought I was alone with this problem.. silly me.

I have a inspiron 9400 and m-audio 410 and I am experiencing the same problems as everyone else.. Using the 4pin built in 1394 my 410 works for a random amount of time.. So I bought (should have read this tread first)an expresscard 2X 6pin - not shure of the manufactures - "best connectivity"? Yeah right..
Well it didn't work. The dealer actually is sending me a new one - (I know it won't work eather) so I think I'll probably just return it unopened.

But guess what.. I'm up and running!! The thing with disabling the DVDr really helped! Now the M-audio 410 workes perfectly with Sonar 5 through the inboard 1394 4pin.
It didn't fix the expresscard issue but I'm not worried as long as the inboard works.

Thanks again - specially to the that french dude who came up with this fix.

BTW - asio4all also worked fine with my internal sound card. It even works with m-audio 410 in Sonar 5, as long as you check the box "Use hardware buffers". But it doesn't work in winamp and such.

Just to clearify: I am not using asio4all anymore and it still workes flawlesly with original drivers. (exept Sonar 5 is acting kinda strange - it sometimes crashes when i open old projects.. Think I'll have to upgrade to Sonar 6..)

Anyway, it's all joy for me

 

Hello all, like many others I just finished reading all 42 pages of this thread, and have come upon a solution for my situation (well at least I'm going on 11+ minutes with no pops, which is about 10 1/2 minutes longer than before). My setup:

Dell e1405 - Core 2 Duo 7200, 2gig RAM, 160g serial ATA, Intel Integrated graphics, TSST-LS32D DVD Combo, A10 Bios (released today)
External USB 2 Hard Drive
M-Audio Project Mix I/O
Sonar 6 & Soundforge 8

I was having the same issues as most, couldn't record for more than a minute without pops and cracks. Tried all of the advice on the first 30+ pages before I even read it... of course nothing worked.

Following the DVD disabling advice, my system worked without a problem. No pops or clicks. I decided then to try the firmware update for the burner, even though the update is said to control "noise" issues with DVD playback. Rebooted, and I have been happily recording two tracks at the moment for now over 20+ minutes with no pops or clicks.

I'm trying 5 tracks (all the lines & mics I have at the moment to test with) and will see how long I can record without incident.

I'll let you now how it goes... Thanks for all the advice!

Brian

 

Thanks for the info guys. I updated my first post in the thread so people don't have to go through 42 pages in order to read about the DVD drive solution!

 

Sam,

Thanks for posting that stuff to your original message, though Google always seems to bring up page 13 first

Spoke too soon... still had issues after the firmware update, after about 30 minutes. Disabling the drive let me record over an hour without problems. Been on tech support with Dell for over an hour trying to explain this problem to them... even after directing them to this forum, they reluctantly agreed to ship a Sony drive. FYI they asked me about my support experience, which was of the typical flow-chart style, which doesn't work in this case! When they told me this was not a known issue, I said mybe they should actually look into their old cases... and not just flow chart. 42 pages of "user blogs", in their words, does not hold water with them. Oh, well. At least I'm getting a new drive. If anyone wants a reference number in trying to get a different drive, I'd be happy to forward. Thanks all!

Brian

 

I have a VAIO laptop with 945 chipset. IRQs are automatically assigned. There are 5 things on IRQ 16 including firewire, USB host controller, PCMCIA...I need to assign the firewire to a different IRQ, but need to get past the automatic assignment of IRQs. There are IRQs available. Does anybody know how I can manually assign an IRQ to a system that wants to automatically assign IRQs? I simply need to change the IRQ of the firewire from IRQ 16, which has four other things. Please advise.

Sony VAIO VGN-FE880, Win XP Pro SP2, Presonus Firestudio...

 

Got my new drive last night and had a chance to test it out this afternoon. It didn't say Sony on it anywhere, but here's what it reports as in the Device Manager:

HL-DT-ST DVD+RW GSA-T11N

Haven't had a single pop or click in over the hour I've been testing it. This may not be an anwser for everyone, but it works in my situation. Thanks!

Brian

 

Hitachi-LG Drive

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/P127026/en/spec.htm

 

I run a Dell Inspiron 6400 with a Motu Ultralite.

The Motu works a lot of the time but I get an intermittent screaming sound. When this screaming sound occurs I lose all connection to the Motu. Sometimes I will simply hear a sharp ZAP sound and again, I've lost connection to the Motu.

I also get the hideous amount of crackle and pop when running particular plugins in Nueondo, to be precise, any Camel audio plugins, and any Rob Papen synths.

One thing I've noticed, is that the screaming sound and the sharp zap occurs when I click on something with my mouse. I never know when it will happen, perhaps it wont happen all day but then all of a sudden, bang! I'm surprised it hasn't blown my monitors.

My intuition started telling me that the graphics card was related to this issue, as always seems to happen when something graphical was happening.

After reading this entire thread, and many others, I tried disabling the ATI Mobility Radeon x1400 altogether. And the problem seemed to disappear completely. The only downfall is that the consequence is a low res screen image, and of course I lose my 256MB graphics ram.

I'd be very interested if others could confirm that the problem goes away when disabling the ATI graphics card. Its not a proper solution, but it is a clue.

Somehow the graphics card is interfering with the firewire.
Perhaps, as the firewire is already performing poorly, the graphics card uses some of the same resource and tips it over the edge.

I'm not about to give up on this.

I have an NEC DVD drive which, when I disable it, makes no difference.

I noticed someone mentioned that the Belkin Firewire 800 Express card may have solved their problem. Can anyone confirm this?

 

hey guys, i read through all 42 pages... my head hurts, but i'm in the same position as many - need to get firewire (400 or 800) working through the expresscard slot...

i bought my inspiron 9400 last july-ish i think, and had no problems running my RME Fireface through the internal firewire connection... then I stood on the firewire cable slightly and it ruined the connection, so I was hoping to get a firewire expresscard... until I read this thread

To add to the list - the St Lab firewire expresscard doesnt work either. But as the above post says, did someone try the Belkin 800 and get it working ok?

That's my last hope... that or spend £300 to replace the motherboard...

firewire is an awful connection - its so flimsy and weak... and unstable. If there was an AI as good as the fireface but via usb, I'd get it right away...

 

Hi people! I'm in the same crap with m90.. has anyone tried that expresscard to pcmcia adapter thing yet? i'm desperate enough to give a try.

 

AFAIK there's no working expresscards out there yet.

 

To jump in...

I have a working FW 800/400 SIIG expresscard connected to two hard drives.

Someone sent me a PM, asking about how I set it up. My response is below.

I have not tried connecting my audio interface (a TC Electronics Konnekt unit) via the SIIG, as it's working fine via my on-board firewire port. However, I can give it a try and report back, if anyone would find it helpful. Let me know.

I believe I am getting 'full' speed from both drives. (I put full in quotes, as no drive/connection will get full sustained max.) I tested the speed of both drives using two different utilities---numbers looked good, and indeed I get a good performance boost now (with audio recording) with the FW-800 connection.

The Lacie issue I mention at the bottom my PM response is actually a "Delayed Write Failed" error. It occurs once in a while---very inconsistently---if I leave the drive idling for more than an hour or so. As it's a minor issue, from my point of view, I've not bothered investigating too much. That said, in the few searches I've done I'm starting to conclude the problem is with Lacie and not the SIIG card, as others have experienced similar problems with the Lacie under different setups than mine.

Also, I want to add that I'm living in the US at present and purchased my Dell laptop via the Dell US site. I'm not certain, but I believe the innards may differ slightly depending on what continent you ordered from, despite the model name and year being the same.

I almost returned the SIIG card. It took me a week of hard effort getting it to work. I spoke for hours--hours--with tech support. Nothing doing. Naturally, I was elated when I finally got the bloody thing working!

Cheers,
Dt

---------------------------------


Hi there,

What devices will you be connecting to the SIIG?

I've got a Lacie FW-800 drive and an AcomData FW-400 drive, each connected to one of the ports on the SIIG card. Also, I've got a Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop, Core2Duo, with Windows XP. An audio interface (TC Electronic Konnekt) is connected via the onboard 4-pin firewire port.

The setup is quite simple but was a pain to figure out. The Unibrain drivers that SIIG supplied were problematic---crashed my system once in a while, caused driver read errors. I even got the update from the Unibrain website, and no luck. I don't know whether they've been updated again recently, but I don't have any need for them, frankly. I am using the standard Windows Firewire Drivers, and they're fine. In fact, I'm not using any of the software that SIIG provided. However, do make sure that you've installed all of the firewire-related patches from Microsoft.

After you install the SIIG card via Windows, go to the device manager and make sure that everything looks OK. There's a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that can show you how to view "hidden" devices. Refer to it, if need be. In particular, you might notice after installing the expresscard that there is a new RAID Controller entry in the device manager. Disable it. Also, if you see any other extraneous firewire ports, then either delete them or disable them.

The next step is really just plugging in your hard drives. Once formatted they should work fine. I have 'write caching' enabled---works fine.

One problem remains with my Lacie drive, but it's so minor from my point of view that I've not really bothered trying to fix it. Namely, if the drive idles for more than an hour, sometimes I get a drive read error and have to restart it (the drive). The other drive, AcomData, runs without problem.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any problems.

What is the thread address/link again?

Cheers,
Dt

 

I just installed the BIOS 06 update for the Precision M90 and I can finally leave my expresscard installed and my computer does'nt freeze up on power up any more. I'm going to try the SIIG card tomorrow. I'll post back and let you all know.

Mike

 

Thanks for the reminder. Yes, I had to update the BIOS on my Dell before getting the expresscard to work properly.

I'm surprised there is no online scanning utility at Dell that tells me exactly what updates my system is lacking. There is a utility that came with the laptop that apparently scans for updates, but it doesn't pick up on many of them.

 

many thanks for all that great info dtmodttl - it would be great to hear if your tc audio interface works through the expresscard ok or not -

if it does, i'll order a siig card, and post back to let you guys know if it works for my setup too (i have a inspiron 9400 and an rme fireface 800 audio interface).

 

I tested the Konnekt via the expresscard, as an experiment.

Firstly, my strong advice to anyone would be to buy the expresscard and then return it if it doesn't work.

On first try, on my system, the Konnekt did not work via the expresscard. Within the 'safely remove device' menu, the Konnekt does in fact appear. However, the Konnekt control panel cannot find the device. Cubase can find it but cannot initialise it. I get "error connecting with Dice II".

That said, there are countless permutations of settings I could adjust to try and get it to work, but I'd rather not fiddle with them.

One thing is clear, so-called 'plug and play' is really a misnomer here. With the complex devices we're talking about, my experience is that lots tweaking and adjusting is usually necessary. That the Konnekt didn't work via the expresscard the first time I plugged it in doesn't say much. (I went through a minimal amount of troubleshooting, such as resetting the Konnekt, the card, and restarting the machine.)

Again, buy the card, try it out it and return it if it doesn't work.

Hope that helps---even though it probably didn't.

Dt

 

Hello!
Sorry for my poor English but I'm from Poland (UE).
My setup is: Dell e1505, Core Duo, WIN XP, Echo Audiofire4 interface.
At first, I was surprised of poor audio performance - crackles, dropouts, etc. :-(
BUT - I have done some tweaking and tests using Latency Checker (you can download it from web page) and now my audio interface works great via internal firewire (RICOH)! No crackles and dropouts anymore. No need for ExpressCard.
I made 2 hardware profiles in Windows: Standard and DAW. In DAW profile I disabled:
-TSST DVD drive (it was responsible of nearly whole poor performance - f***ing crap!),
-Ethernet
-Modem
-WiFi (in BIOS)
-some other things (which I don't remember)

Dell Inspiron e1505 is good for audio but needs maybe more tweaking than other laptops...

Best wishes,
Peter

P.S. Topic on this forum has helped me a lot! Thanks!

 

Hi Peter,

I think your English is very good.

I found some of the same things, in terms of disabling ports, although my DVD can be enabled. Unfortunately, I don't think Dell needs more tweaking than other laptops. There is an industry-wide problem where computer audio recording is concerned, in my opinion.

The best we can do is contact manufacturers so that they know the problems. Also, of course, post solutions to internet boards such as this one.

Cheers

 

dtmodttl, thanks again for trying out you AI with the expresscard. i'll take your advice i think - buy a siig card and return it if it doesn't work - i'll post back here to let you all know how it goes. fingers crossed!

damn computers...

 

Disabling some startup programs such as antivirus scanners, Internet connection also improve performance (but you probably know it).

Since April there is new BIOS for Dell Inspiron (A14). Maybe it works better with ExpressCard firewire...
Regarding ExpressCard, you can try APIOTEK products which use the newest Texas Instruments chip. I haven't tested it yet, but maybe I'll do it in the future.

 

SIIG uses a TI chip, although I don't know which version.

I agree about disabling components for performance. Audio computers should be dedicated to audio--no games, other programs, et cetera. They eat up resources and add to the number of things that could go wrong.

I do have an antivirus program on mine called Avira Antivir. It's free, unobtrusive, and it can be turned on and off easily. If I must go on the Internet with my DAW, I turn on Antivir and enable my ethernet connection. (I have a wired network.) When done, I disable them. I have both icons in my 'quick launch' bar.

 

I just wanted to say that Pete's idea fix worked for me.

I had been trying all kinds of different stuff, and I actually thought that I had already tried disabling the DVD drive, however, I guess I hadn't. so yes.

if you're firewire port isn't working TRY DISABLING THE DVD DRIVE!

thanks a million Pete.

 

Thanks everyone for the help here.
I've just recently tried to hook up a firewire audio device (Mackie D.2 mixer) with no success to my Dell Inspiron 6400 and found this thread.
I get the same problem as others reported, no matter what buffer size I use, I get regular glitches in the audio outputwith both WDM and ASIO.

I found that doing the following in the device manager solves the problem:
1. Disable the TSSTCorp TS-L632D DVD/RW drive
2. Disable the Dell Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-card
3. Reboot

As soon as I do this I can run firewire audio rock solid at 1ms latency!
Using the DPC latency calculator confirms this also (thanks for the link).

Disabling only one of these devices does not clear the problem completely, both must be disabled. Only disabling the wireless radio does not suffice, the device must be disabled in the device manager. Also, until I reboot I still get the occassional glitch.

Well, this is lame, sure it's ok when I'm specifically doing a DJ set, but I'd like to be able to listen to music while I surf the internet also. Oh, and of course I can forget about using my DVD drive, no playing CDs...
Doesn't seem to me that this should be a problem considering I can do the same with the internal sound without getting glitches, and of course this isn't a problem on many other laptop and desktop systems.

Is there anything else I can try at this point?

Other things I have tried:
1. Closing all open processes except the essentials.
2. Checked that DMA is enabled.
3. Disabled drive auto-play.
4. Using ASIO4All
5. Adjusted the 1394bus PCI latency timer to 248. I've seen this solve problems with PCI sound cards, but did nothing in this case (it doesn't seem that the value "sticks" anyway).

Some said that they got a replacement DVD/RW drive from Dell and that at least solved the problem with the drive... I guess maybe I need a replacement for the Wireless Mini-card also?

Can anyone tell me which two devices I can request from Dell to resolve this problem without having to leave the devices disabled?

 

I had another question. Has anybody tried the firewire expresscards with vista? I've read something about advancements for pci express there.. Wanted to try out but the trial period has ended..

 

We recently bought a Dell Precision M-90. It worked fine when we were visiting someone who has a wireless system in his house, connecting beautifully to the internet, no shut downs, etc.

Now we are home - we don't have a wireless system set up - and purchased a Cingular GT Max 3.6 Expresscard. It connects to the internet for about a minute or two, and then we get the blue screen of death. Our IS person was on the phone for hours with two levels of Dell support. They decided it was the card. So we bought a new card. Same problem.

I took the laptop home with me and played with it for about six hours, going through every diagnostic I could find. I finally found something that said I should put it on "non-accelerated" instead of "accelerated". I did and - voila! It worked fine.

Until the next day. My husband took it on the road again and it does the same blue screen thing all over again. I read all the pages here of this thread. I'm only partially computer literate. It seems like most of the posts concerned audio, but you are also talking about expresscards. I also looked at the specs for my computer and it has Fireface (IEEE 1394). So I hope I am in the right place.

Can you help me solve this problem? I can't understand how it can work one minute and not the next. Thank you in advance for your help.

 

Don't know if this helps but:

I recently (last month) bought 2 focusrite saffire pro 10 i/o's, a dell inspiron 6400 (media centre, 1gig ram, core 2 duo 1.8) and a western digital 250 gig firewire My Book.

Then read these pages with HORROR.

I disabled all the uneccessary hardware and software as recommended on this page and took my gear to the venue where I work and recorded 4 local bands, half hour sets, using cubase, onto the My Book.

Recording went without a glitch, but when I got home, I listened to the recordings and there were crackles every 30 secs or so. Emailed Dell pretty pissed off but tried today using the My Book and Saffires through my desktop pc (Mesh Elite Dual core 2.8Ghz, media centre, 2gig ram) and everything sounds fine.

So......problems with playback rather than recording? Anyone else had a similar experience? I wanna know if this was a fluke. I'm very close to putting myself even further into debt and buying an alesis hd24 (which I should have bought in the first place!) but if the dell is ok to record, I was gonna mix on my desktop anyway.

What a load of hassle

 

OK ... this is a positive story , but where to begin?

I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 640m (Australia) which is marketed in the US as an e1405, I think. I bought for only one reason: to replace existing tower PC used for both audio recording and everyday use.

Planned on buying an M-Audio 1814, but during research (and after purchase of Dell), came across this forum which scared the living sh*t out of me. Read all posts carefully and noted the "disable your TSST DVD drive" posts for Dell users.

Here is the setup I settled on:

Dell Inspiron 640m with "crappy" Firewire chipset, probably Ricoh
7200 RPM SATA HDD
1 GB RAM
Some Dual Core CPU at 1.8ghz (Can't be bothered looking up the actual spec)
Echo AudioFire 4 (Firewire)
Windows XP Home SP2

Results:

Plugged in condenser mics, line inputs, everything. Recorded 5 minutes of audio in Cubase SX and then Cubase VST with 4 simultaneous inputs active.

No glitches, pops, crackles or dropouts.

And this with EVERYTHING enabled.

I went gung-ho. I had wireless connected to the 'net, my DVD drive enabled, my Firewall running (Comodo), Antivirus running (NOD32) ... no drops, no pops, at 9 ms latency.

Had another glass of wine and decided to listen to the playback and turn on the Cubase Performance (CPU/Disk) meter for the hell of it.

After about 1 minute - big CPU peak - and audio dropped out during playback. I went back several times over the file to check that it wasn't on the actual recorded WAV. It wasn't. This was happening only during playback.

So, I disabled the DVD drive, turned off (but NOT hardware-disabled) the wireless adapter, rebooted, and listened again - perfect playback.

I don't know what to tell you. I have had a totally pleasant experience with my Dell and AudioFire 4.

All I really wanted is 4 working inputs and 4 tracks recording, so maybe I'm being a little too pleased with myself.

But from this point on, I would really hesitate to blame various Firewire chipsets. Why the DVD drive would screw with things so badly is beyond me, and in my opinion very unfortunate, but for all Dell users, all I would say is: please consider disabling it!

The things I did were:

1. Uninstall all Dell bloatware (a given)

2. Disable ALL unnecessary services and startup applications and keep the OS totally clean and lean

3. Defrag HDD whenever possible

4. Use 7200 RPM HDD

5. Take a Ghost image of the OS whenever things were going well!!!

6. Partitioned my HDD into OS/Applications/Data/Audio

7. Disabled the DVD drive

8. Use DPC LATENCY CHECKER utility to confirm the DVD drive as the cause

9. Drank red wine

10. Bought an Echo AF4

I would like to try the M-Audio 1814, as that is what I really intended to buy. But as my current system does what I want, and does it well, I have no further needs.

Hope this gives some support to any troubled Dell (and other brand) users out there!

 

With the release of new models shortly I was thinking of grabbing a cheap core duo unit as a backup and for audio purposes. Now I have a USB M-Audio unit, so fine there (I hope)...however I do use firewire a great deal for both external HDD and DVD-RW use. Should I steer clear?

Cheers..

 

To all thoes lucky bastards who don't get problems with the dell laptops and firewire i can say only one thing - it's because you are using/choosin simple interfaces that dont require too much data bandwidth.. But when it comes to DAW or something serious - kaput! I still wish somebody would sue dell or intel or anyone responsible for this.. My hands unfortunatley are too short...

 

Totally agree, but it's the nature of the hardware. Serious about gaming? Get a desktop. Seriously want to record? Get a desktop. My only fear was that a Dell laptop wouldn't be able to do even the most simple recording task - and I'm pretty pleased I was proven wrong.

So, has anyone got the prized Texas Instruments chipset running with some serious multitrack madness?

 

Hei, people. I'm back with some problems.
Successes:
Manged to run Ableton with 20 tracks at 24 bit 48 kHz and record another 3 stereo tracks on top of that ( maximum on Audiophile Firewire ) , with Reason rewired and few VST tracks as well , without a problem, while other things ( Firefox, msn, virusscanner, etc) were working in the background. This works great for buffersizes of 256.
Insuccesses:
When I switch to buffersize 128 or 64, the M-audio card keeps on playing fine but stops responding to the front buttons ( which are soft driven ). Sometimes, the inputs ( analog and midi ) cut off in the middle of a recording, but this happens 2 times an hour , during heavy duty. Sometimes it goes away by itself, othertimes I restart the DAW. The DPC letency checker says everything's fine, no red spikes. I tried to disable every possible thing that I am not using, from the net cards to each hdd component that I dont use ( Express port, all cardreader ports, net, virus scan , etc ) and it seems the problem stays. Should I blame this on Ricoh, like everyone else, or should i look further? I am going for a new soundcard, a Firebox, following some of the posts here. Please let me know if you had similar experiences or eitherwise any expertise on this issue.

Cheers


System: Inspiron 6400, hdd 100 Gb@7200rpm, 2 Gb RAM@533, T5200, nice videocard.

 

Back with one last piece of information ( read post above ).
One way to fix the m-audio card problems in ableton is to disable the dual core processor support ( in Ableton ).
But i decided to move on. I have sold the m-audio and got an Echo Audiofire4, following this post, and it works great. No interruptions whatsover, running on large projects ( 20 wav tracks 24bit/48kHz ) with lots of effects at 128 buffersize while recording 4 tracks at the same time and running even at 32 buffersize on simple projects ( 4-6 tracks ). Actually, the Echo card has an amaizing driver with lots of options and an asio analyzer that reports where packets are delayed and how the total latency breaks down.
So, i guess some Ricoh chipsets work fine for home stuff and for gigs.

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Dell 6400 T5200 2Gb 100Gb@7200rpm Ricoh chipset

 

There's a new bios out for 1505/6400 which apparently addresses non-post issues with firewire expresscards, might be worth a go if anyone still has the SIIG kicking around.

I have a saffire 26io which almost works if you disable everything other then the basics needed to make the computer function. Using that dpc latency checker it's obvious there is something intermittant which causes spikes/crackles, but it's really intermittant (like once every 5/10 minutes) so i'm not sure what it could be. The only thing which is guarenteed to cause clicks is taking the power supply out or putting it back in - Makes me wonder if the power saving stuff has anything to do with it. Also has problems in linux under freebob so it's defo not a software thing..

 

I am buying an external hard drive in the next day or so for my E1505. I was originally going to buy one with firewire. Should I scrap that idea and just get one with usb 2.0? I will be using it to store my music collection in FLAC, video, and other documents.

 

What about the DVD drive? Is that one disabled? Try disabling different components from the Device Manger until the lantecy checker graph looks fine. It worked for me in this way ( I got dell to replace my dvd drive for free due to this forum).