I’m hoping for some guidance on paying back audio in Cubase 6.
I have a dedicated audio PC built in 2008 by specialists Red Submarine in York, UK. Then the operating system was Win XP. The processor is an Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2180 2 Ghz and the motherboard is an Asus P5K-VM. Recently I upgraded to Windows 7 64 bit and increased the RAM up to 6 Gb. I also changed the audio interface from M-Audio Delta 1010LT to Yamaha Steinberg’s firewire interface, the MR 816x.
The new installation seemed fine but I straightaway noticed some drop-out when playing back audio along with the occasional crackle. This sounded like a wordclock synchronisation issue. I have checked the manuals for Cubase and the MR 816x and think that I have set them correctly. I have the MR816x running off its own internal clock and have set Cubase to be externally clocked. So the MR816x is the master and Cubase is the slave. I have the dedicated MR816x driver installed – this is the Yamaha Steinberg FW Asio.
I’d much appreciate feedback on these two questions:
• Is the playback issues being caused by some wrong settings to do with wordclock?
• Have I been over ambitious in installing such an upgrade into a machine designed to run Win XP
I was hoping someone who had a similar situation to your situation would advise, but no one has yet. You did two things at once, either of which could lead to your symptoms, from what I have read and experienced.
First, you went from the Delta 1010 to the MR816x. People have reported that the MR816x is more sensitive to the device environment than some other interfaces. I am using the MR816CSX. In my case, I found that I had to turn off the wireless device to get rid of the dropouts, when I was on XP. I have also read about problems with other devices. People advise using the DPC Latency Checker to see if devices are slowing down the firewire driver. Also people report that some firewire devices (with TI chips) are far more stable than others, and affecting the MR816x much more than other audio interfaces. I have not experienced this one personally (my XP machine had a card with a TI chip set, and my new machine has a Via chipset but it works fine).
Second, you went from XP to W7. I’ve also moved to W7, but to a new computer at the same time. You can definitely get audio dropouts under W7 if you have not set the power profile to high performance. I also experienced some audio dropouts when my dongle was plugged into a USB 3.0 port, and nobody else seems to have commented on that issue. I guess that won’t be your issue. Again, DPC Latency Checker can be a help.
On your questions, I haven’t seen anyone complaining about wordclock settings and dropouts, so I can’t help you there. I haven’t used anything but defaults in my case. As for W7 on your machine, I don’t have any experience upgrading on the same machine, but from what I’ve read, there is no reason to expect W7 to introduce problems.
Sounds to me like the old firewire problem again. If your IEEE1394 (firewire card) is not using a TI (Texas Instruments) chipset you will get these symptoms. As far as Windows 7 64bit goes basically if it loaded and ran you should be fine. I would double check my drivers for my busses are up to date but they should be, 7 is very good at these types of things. I am running 2 MR 816 CSX units at low lattency and having no problems. Good Luck and Good Music.