Audio Card problem... I'm Stumped

[Bob Romano]

Recently i built a new computer with an AMD Eight core chip and 16GB of RAM using an Intel SSD.

I have installed everything that I wanted from my old computer here in the new one but a problem arose. I have an M-Audio Delta 1010LT audio card that worked flawlessly in my old computer. Now, when playing back audio using the analogs, I get popping and clicking mostly in the front right speaker but occasionally from all of them.

I am using Windows 7 Ultimate.

Several things that I have tried include:
Adjusting the buffer size on the card
Adjusting the buffer size in the programs (Foobar, Wavelab, Nuendo)
Uninstalling and re-installing the card.
Uninstalling and re-installing the software for the card.
I have moved the card to a different slot - however - when I do that the card is not seen in the device manager. The card is a PCI Card and when I swap it with the I/O card that is in the other PCI slot I can see that card. If I take the other card out completely I still cannot see the M-Audio card in the other slot. If I put it back in the original slot it shows up again.
I have swapped out cables.

What I really don't get is why I can't see the M-Audio when it is in the other slot or even where to check to see if it has some sort of conflict with something else on the same IRQ.

Any ideas???

Also... the pops and clicks do not record. They are strictly heard during playback.
The click and pops are only heard from the analog and not the SPDIF out.

Thanks!!!

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

I had a similar issue when I built a new machine last year. I was only able to fix it by moving it to another pci slot. I see you tried that, I have no idea why it wouldn't recognize it there if other devices work in that slot, but I would keep playing around with trying to get it to recognize it in the other slot.

It is some sort of IRQ conflict, which is something I was never able to get much information about or find much in the way of info on resolving such issues. I was even getting bluescreens periodically from the issue.

One thing I tried that didn't work was using msinfo32.exe to determine the irq that the sound card was using, and then modifying the registry to set that irq to the highest priority.

Maybe someone that knows more about irqs could chime in? A friend had mentioned something about forcing a different irq on the card, but he never got as far as explaining how to do that before I resolved it by moving it to the other slot. Hmmm....let me reach back out to my friend and see if he can suggest how to do that.

 

[skindzier]

Was the old computer Win 7 as well? Did you install the correct Win 7 driver (32 or 64 bit) and did you pull the latest one from their site? Curious what you think of that card (other than the fact that it pops in your new computer ). I was kicking around maybe getting one to see if I could create some 5.1 flac files from my Surround Master...

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

Just to add more info since I previously had the same issue......my previous machine and new machine were both running windows 7 64 bit. The old machine never had a problem with the card. I've been using the most up to date driver, although I did experiment with older drivers to see if that would fix the clicking and popping. I found one of the older drivers appeared to be working better, but then when using google + to do a youtube hangout broadcast, the audio going out to that was all crackly, worse than the clicking and popping I had been hearing. Plus, with any driver, the popping and clicking would be there some, it just seemed with one of the older ones I could get it to work for a while with a reboot.

Other than that issue, the card has been great. I recently picked up a 2nd m-audio card, this one a delta 44 which has a breakout box with 4 ins and 4 outs, to put in the old machine which is now hooked up to the home theater, so now I have something that I can easily record records on without having to move the turntable into my office.

 

[steelydave]

I had exactly the same problem too when I added a second M-Audio Delta-66 card to my main system. I can't find the link I found the information on, but I believe it was at the official M-Audio/Avid forums, and the solution was changing some BIOS settings to do with CPU throttling and power management. I basically had to disable all of them and the clicks went away.

 

[skindzier]

Is it only popping when moving the mouse around or typing (ie if you go completely hands off while a song is playing does it still pop)? If that is the case, that sounds similar to what I went through with my Asus card. Try setting the Windows sound scheme to No Sounds. That solved my crackling & popping problems.

 

[Bob Romano]

Well it seems that going back to an older driver has done the trick - or so it seems for now. I unsinstalled the old driver and installed the previous one and it sounds nice and quiet right now.... maybe that will change but for now all is good. Thanks to everyone. Really not sure why that worked. The latest driver worked like a charm on my last computer.

 

[JonUrban]

Hey Bob. Sorry I missed this whole thread in real time. Sounds very frustrating.

One thing I've found on newer motherboards with respect to PCI slots is that there are suddenly many varieties of PCI slots. Some are backward compatible to older boards, others are not. I would guess it might have to do with the speed of the slot, but I am not sure. It has driven me crazy a few times.

Glad you got the driver issue straightened out. It could be related to the USB hardware interfering with the driver for some reason. I have noticed strange USB mysteries in the past. I used to be up on the PC front, but lately I have let that first-run knowledge slip away a bit. Time is starting to pass me by!

 

[Bob Romano]

Guess i was wrong. I started listening again today and there were the clicks again. Going to go to the place where I bought my components and see what they can tell me about my PCI slots. I sure cant figure out what the hell is going on.

 

[steelydave]

Did you try altering you BIOS settings? My M-Audio card did exactly the same thing!

 

[Bob Romano]

Im not really sure that I am able to do that or where it is in my setup. I went into the bios settings last night but couldn't really see where to change anything

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

Bios settings is one place to check thoroughly.

My friend's suggestions "Usually if you open up the device in device manager and then go to the resources tab you can force it. Sometimes the BIOS will allow you to lock an IRQ for a PCI slot as well. He may want to check if it’s a new motherboard, they LOVE to share on board components with PCI slots. So for example on my M/B if I enable eSATA ports on my M/B my bottom most slot goes disabled."

I checked the resources tab for the m-audio card on mine, and those options were grayed out for me....but, I figured it wouldn't hurt to suggest seeing if you can do anything with that. If I think of anything else I'll chime in with more.

 

[steelydave]

Here's a knowledge base article with some suggestions from M-Audio:

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.faq&ID=52a6b73edc5d8b61031108d44dd9078f

If you restart your computer and take a note of what brand and version of BIOS your computer is running, I'll see if I can find it online and give you some suggestions about what menus you need to go in to disable the things that need to be disabled.

 

[Bob Romano]

Here is a screen shot of my BIOS info and my motherboard info. Thanks for your help!!

 

[Bob Romano]

I disabled C1E which is one of the tweaks that they suggested.... we'll see. That's the only i could find that I have. I do have Ai tweak but there isn't much you can do in there.

 

[Bob Romano]

So some further updates.

Asus says that the way my motherboard works is correct and the specs say that the bottom PCI slot is the only one that will work with the M-Audio card. When I showed them the suggestions from the M-Audio site they said to go into the EZ Bios settings and change it to "Performance" mode and that would shut down all the CPU throttling. Same crap!!!.

 

[JonUrban]

I knew these new motherboards did strange stuff to the legacy PCI slots. Damn.

That's why I switched to an external box a few years ago. (Sorry, I know that does not help you Bob)

I really don't know what to suggest. You've tried old and new drivers. I wonder if that board is looking for a reserved IRQ. Remember when they were few and far between? Then they went to what amounts to virtual IRQ's.

Maybe there is a way to assign an exclusive, legacy IRQ to that board. Does that make sense?

 

[Bob Romano]

I asked that as well. IRQs are set and supposedly cannot be changed. I may have to invest in a different motherboard.

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

I've been told gigabyte mobos are good. If I didn't get the m-audio card working good in the current mobo, I would have tried trading it in for a gigabyte.

 

[Bob Romano]

I will probably wind up buying a Gigabyte mobo. I'm going to call them and see if I can speak to tech support and ask the about the PCI slots. Luckily I can just swap everything off the board I have now to the Gigabyte board. Pain in the ass.