Is this a PC power supply issue?

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

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Nick Sevilla
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Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun Jan 15, 2012 9:04 am

The only time I used. PC it was with a fully blown out Motu pci system

Motu 2408 mkiii and two 24 ios.

I built the PC myself, using W2k pro, service pack 2.

The install was MINIMAL. Just after installing the w2k I removed A LOT of it, to make it run smoothly.

I remember removing :

NETWORKING software. All of it, except the basic drivers for the card.
VIRUS software. All of it.
Internet Explorer. No use for it here.
Messenger. Again, no use for it.

Also, I had to hack the winblows registry, to remove ANY automatic processes that randomly used either RAM or the CPU, even if for a split nanosecond.

The reason all this stuff was removed, is that at least with this configuration, ANY DAMN software that ran in the background, when it activated, it FORCED the cpu and ram to obey it at 100% capacity. This would invariably cause EXACTLY the kind of stuff you are experiencing, as well as random crashes and freezes of any DAW.

When this background software takes over the CPU and RAM, any peripheral device attached to the computer is disconnected momentarily, to give priority to whatever damn software "needs" the resources at that moment.

I also do not discount the possibility that your FireWire card inside the Pc and/or the Motu may have become broken because of this shitty OS.

Cheers, and good luck.
Remember, Windows is really WinBLOWS.
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

williamsongs
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Location: Upstate, NY

Post by williamsongs » Sun Jan 15, 2012 4:18 pm

Man, I gotta tell you...
110 things I've done to make PC recording feasible! I did the same minimal install of XP and removed everything unneeded first thing as well. Worked pretty fine for a while too. Technically, still works fine, except this current missing MOTU midiport thing.

This PC is used only for this one function, so there is no internet, networking is shutoff (except the 1394 card) there's no antivirus, nothing running, only 15 processes running total (beyond the DAW itself). DPC latency checker shows great performance, no spikes, no CPU spikes in task manager or the DAW meter.

The fact that only the MIDI port is a problem right now, and that this is a new development on a system that has been unchanged for going on 5 years, never updated, never internetted, leads me to believe there is an ex-girlfriend curse that was set to go off in 2012 and so this is how it is manifesting.

Seriously, I actually have very tolerable audio-only functioning at this point, all outboard mixing with buffer sizes at 64 and no more clocking issues. Stellar for a PC, in my opinion, however this persistent and stupid little missing MIDI port problem makes external sync impossible, with no more MTC input.

I'd love to get it sorted, and have posted at the MOTUnation forum and put in a "techlink" at MOTU.com, but those are both kind of a joke in my experience. Like, they'll read it in a month or two and ignore it because it pertains to a discontinued product.

Anyway, thanks for the advice, it's all true. unfortunately this little effed-up scenario is still a puzzle with none of the right pieces on the table that I can see.
"Sounds to me like you're just a little bit cranky"

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