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Big problem. Dell XPS M170--M-AUDIO FW Audiophile.

post #1 of 10
1/31/06 at 5:54am
Thread Starter 
Hello guys, my name is giovanni and this is my first time posting in here.
I just get a Dell XPS M170, 2gb RAM, 2.26mhz, 80gb 7200rpm.
I'm a music producer and i get this laptop to use as a movil studio and work station.
The computer is very fast and i'm happy with it, the big problem is that my M-Audio Firewire Audiophile is not working right with it. I'm using a Firewire-IEEE 1394 cable to conect the computer and the sound card. (this is the cable provided by M-AUDIO). The latency is horrible and the pops and noises are really annoying.
I did install the lastest drivers and the problem is still there.
Sometimes the sound card just stop playing sounds and the software crash. I use Reason 3-ABLETON live 5 -a bunch of vst synthesizers and plug-ins.
Is there any way to fix this? do i need to buy another sound card? do i need to buy a firewire pc card?
if you have any idea about this please let me know. i'm a little bit frustrated since the sound card works perfect with my G4 powerbook and my desktop PC. I just invest 2500 in this computer and i cant believe that dell xps m170 doenst work with my sound card.
i really need your help
thanks a lot for your time.
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post #2 of 10
1/31/06 at 12:55pm
Go over to the SOS(www.soundonsound.com) forums and go through their PC music FAQs that martin walker has set up. There should be more than a few on tweaking your computer for audio, it sounds like your computer is trying to do to much with background processes and that is interrupting your audio. I wouldnt buy another sound card until you are absolutely certain your background stuff is taken care of. The main reason why I go with Mac over windows for audio, Mac comes out of the box ready to record audio, the Windows you have to tweak for some time before it is ready to do any serious recording at low latencies.

Seablade
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post #3 of 10
1/31/06 at 12:57pm
By the way... exactly how many vst synths and plugs are we talking about? Is there a chance you are simpmly overloadding your processor with to many plugs? Your computer may be fast, but doing to much will just shut it down, and VST synths and plugs sometimes can be very intensive, both on the processor and the HD depending on what they do.

Seablade
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post #4 of 10
1/31/06 at 1:42pm
Perhaps it's Dell's bloatware? It's a huge problem on Dells.
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post #5 of 10
1/31/06 at 2:13pm
Bloatware is a huge problem for audio on most PCs

Seablade
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post #6 of 10
1/31/06 at 3:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade
Bloatware is a huge problem for audio on most PCs

Seablade
Yeah, i'd reformat with a generic winxp cd before I started returning hardware. There's no reason that the m-audio device should be ill equiped to doing low latency recordings.
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post #7 of 10
1/31/06 at 4:21pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by seablade
Go over to the SOS(www.soundonsound.com) forums and go through their PC music FAQs that martin walker has set up. There should be more than a few on tweaking your computer for audio, it sounds like your computer is trying to do to much with background processes and that is interrupting your audio. I wouldnt buy another sound card until you are absolutely certain your background stuff is taken care of. The main reason why I go with Mac over windows for audio, Mac comes out of the box ready to record audio, the Windows you have to tweak for some time before it is ready to do any serious recording at low latencies.

Seablade
hey guys! thanks a lot for your help. anyway i really dont know what to do.
everyone tells me that it should work and i think so, but the thing is i dont know how to fix the problem. by the way, im using 6 or 7 vst and 2 or 3 plug-ins (not too much, the computer show just 15% CPU usage)
if i use onboard i have no problems with sound(besides the horrible latency from my onboard sound card) but no problems with overloading this cpu.
thanks for your help, i wish i can fix this!!
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post #8 of 10
1/31/06 at 5:08pm
Well as I said before Windows really needs to be tweaked to work well for low latency audio, if you dont understand how to tweak it, that is much to broad a topic to cover here unfortunatly and that is when I would say find a friend that knows what they are doing.

There shouldnt be much of a reason with that load for you to be having dropouts at a reasonable latency, so again I would lean strongly towards you have to many background processes running(See above about tweaking) and that is part of your problem.

There is a possiblity of an incompatible Firewire Chipset, it is POSSIBLE(Read I dont know if this is the case here or not, so dont rush out to buy a new firewire card) that this may be contributing to your problem. I believe I read somewhere that people prefer the TI chipsets for audio, but since i have never run across the problem myself I cant be sure.

Seablade
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post #9 of 10
2/1/06 at 11:52pm
Afew things:

Are you running it at max processor setting? Don't use the battery save functions or anything like that.. put it on max settings.

Are you running it on ac?

Windows can stand a little tweaking, but from what you are using as far as the number of plug-ins, your set up should handle it and have a lot left over.

memory....you have 2 gigs...shouldnt even be an issue

Are you acually recording with the m-audio unit? or just using it as an audio interface/monitor...if so, disaable all audio inputs.


it's possible that there may be a firewire incomp issue or that the unit or cable is defective.

get asio4all.....................use it with your stock built in sound card and see the results. If they are better than the maudio unit, then maybe somethings shifty with the maudio unit.
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post #10 of 10
2/1/06 at 11:54pm
it looks like the on board is ok....
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