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BoyMambo
08-02-2004, 04:37 AM
I have been using a USB sound card by Yamaha called a UW500 and have done a few recordings and was pretty happy with it. Noticed that the latency was quite high (557 ms) so I pulled down the new drivers from Yamaha, and thought that all would be sweet and dandy. Oh no, nothing could be that simple. Found that the new drivers which had fantastic low latency (23 ms) had an issue with hyperthreading. This further revealed revealed a flaw in my BIOS, because you are supposed to be able to turn off hyperthreading in the BIOS.

So after days of phone calls, and emails with very helpful support people in Australia, UK and the US, found that the only option is to update the BIOS (the giga-bute BIOS updater does not seem to work) and switch off HyperThreading (on by default).

Can't sort this out as yet, but foolishly kept reading and also that there are design issues with the BX chipset and how it does USB that is in my motherboard. The only solution is buy a new USB card that was based an NEC chipset and has been approved and tested.

In the meantime the driver issues and sync problems from my USB had cause my software to hang and corrupt the installation. This is occuring while I am investigating the issues and put me through a ground hog day type cycle of run-corrupt-deinstall-reinstall.

Got to a point where it was being recomended that I reinstall Windows XP. More than ten days of sheer hell!

So in a state of total frustration I start reading reviews and magazine articles about soundcards and on Friday I walk in to a big music shop in town and there on special is the card that had already decided to buy if it was a relatively perfect world. So put down the luke warm, flexible plastic called a credit card and bought it.

After a relatively easy install, I am now listening to Jimi Hendrix through my new PCI-based Audio card - RME Digi96/8 PAD. This is the most basic card RME do, so I shall do a report in a few days, but at the moment the playback is fantastic!

Here is the Stereophile review. (http://www.stereophile.com/digitalsourcereviews/541/index.html) (Fixed Link.)

Regards

David

Supasso
08-03-2004, 09:38 PM
What is your PC's spec? (CPU, chipset, and etc?)

BoyMambo
08-05-2004, 02:04 AM
Surpasso,

Sorry about not replying earlier. Have have a PIII 1000 mhz, motherboard is a bx based chipset Gigabyte. It has two on board USB ports, which I think are 1.1, 768 meg ram and running Windows XP SP1. I have now updated the BIOS using the esupport flash.

I think that I need some USB2.0 ports. Not sure.

Regards

David

Supasso
08-05-2004, 02:24 AM
Pentium III and BX chipset does not support Hyperthreading. It did not even exist until late 2003. Your problem is somewhere else.

BoyMambo
08-05-2004, 03:37 AM
Thanks Supasso, you are a genius. I shall follow this up with support in London.

Hard2Hear
08-05-2004, 07:51 PM
I use the MOTU stuff myself, but I've never heard a bad thing said about the RME cards by anyone. I'm sure you'll like it alot, seems like all who buy them do.


Mike