Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 2408 Mk

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markpar
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Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 2408 Mk

Post by markpar » Tue Jan 18, 2005 4:00 pm

Whenever I try and play back any audio from my computer via the 2408 Mk3 (even playing a simple .WAV in media player), the audio is stuttery and distorted. Not like the sound from bad clocking (even happens if I use the 2408's internal clock).

If I watch a WAV play in media player (or Wavelab), everything moves in bursts of a second or so, then a pause of half a second, another burst, pause, burst, pause, burst, etc...... But when the audio plays, it's not clear. It's all f*cked up. Not in time and distorted. It's sort of hard to describe, so I apologize for my lame attempt.

I'll call MOTU support tomorrow, but in the meantime, does anyone have suggestions for things to try? My chain is PC(w the 424 card) -> FW cable -> 2408 Mk3 -> analog out -> Mackie d8b (hmm... maybe something here, but the board & the 2408 are slaved to the same clock) -> monitors.

Haven't tried the headphone out on the 2408. I'll see what that yields.

Thanks for any suggestions you can provide!
-mark

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by b3groover » Tue Jan 18, 2005 7:55 pm

Is your buffer too low? Do you have the latest drivers from the MOTU website? Does it do the same thing without the db8 hooked up?

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by markpar » Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:01 am

Thanks for the reply!

I do have the latest drivers; I downloaded the latest installer package from their site before I got started.

Re: buffer setting. I was set to 1024 samples (2nd highest) and tried upping that to 2048 (the highest). That didn't change anything, however. Besides, I have an Athlon 2200, 1.5GB of RAM and a 7200 rpm, 8Mb cache hard drive. The machine should be plenty beefy to play back a WAV or MP3.

Re d8b. Eliminated it by monitoring through the 2408's headphone output. Same issue.

If anyone has any other thoughts, I'd really apprecate the input!

Thanks again, b3groover!
-mark

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by b3groover » Wed Jan 19, 2005 12:24 pm

Is the harddrive the audio coming off of set to PIO mode or UDMA? Right Click on My Computer ---> Properties ----> Hardware Tab ----> Device Manager -----> click on the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers and look at the properties of whatever bus the audio drive is on (primary or secondary). Or if it's on a SCSI/SATA bus, look at that. In the "Advanced Settings" tab it should tell you what transfer mode the drive is set to. It should be Ultra DMA.

If it's PIO, you need to change it. If you can't change it in the menu, you'll need to load the IDE drivers for your motherboard.

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by markpar » Thu Jan 20, 2005 4:32 pm

They're set to UDMA.

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by b3groover » Thu Jan 20, 2005 6:26 pm

That's good. Is the 2408 new or used? Was it working correctly before or did this just start?

I ask because I bought a used MOTU 24i that sounded like crap and I had to send it back to MOTU. They are really nice (once you get a hold of them) and charge $50 for all repairs.

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by markpar » Thu Jan 20, 2005 10:06 pm

Bought it used.

Looking around, I think there's an issue with Win XP SP2 and firewire devices......

I'm going to downgrade my 1394 host drivers back to the SP1 versions and see what happens. I'll let you know.

-mark

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by b3groover » Sat Jan 22, 2005 11:14 am

The 2408mkIII does not use firewire. It uses MOTU's own proprietary Audiowire format which uses the same cables but is a different format and unrelated to firewire.

I am running SP2 on my computer and a 2408mkIII with success.

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by markpar » Sat Jan 22, 2005 9:52 pm

Yeah, you're 100% right. It uses a firewire cable, so I was thinking that it used a 1394 interface. Imagine my surprise when I tried to revert my 1394 drivers back to the SP1 versions and found that I didn't have any on my machine. :)

Oh well.

Today I paved the machine, reinstalled Win XP SP1 and things seem to be working better now. I'm going to start adding things back and see if the performance degredation re-appears.

Thanks for all your assistance, b3groover!

-mark

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by markpar » Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:35 pm

And, right on cue, the stuttering playback has returned.

However, I copied the .wav file from the D: drive to the C: drive and it works JUST FINE.

I checked the D: drive and it's set to PIO mode. Well, it's not set to 'PIO only', but 'use DMA if available'. But it's using PIO mode.

Wonder what's up with *that*? I had both drives set to cable select mode. I'm trying switching the C: to master and the D: to slave. Maybe that'll help. We'll see.

-mark

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by markpar » Sun Jan 23, 2005 10:12 pm

God, I'm such a moron. The BIOS was still set to 'none' for the Primary IDE slave (which the D: drive is). I set it to 'auto' and life is good.

Man, I should have totally remembered to change that setting in the BIOS.

-mark

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Re: Distortion & stuttering playing back WAVs w/MOTU 240

Post by b3groover » Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:06 pm

Glad to hear it's fixed!

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