why is my onboard audio better than dedicated sound card???

[mte]

Hello,

I have a Terratec ewx24/96 (very similar to audiophile 2496) and on the old computer it worked ok. Well now it also works quite ok. BUT today I tried the onboard audio on Abit NF7-S motherboard and at same latency I get more stable audio signal! When I ran The Grand through the Terratec on 5ms latency there was some harsh sound, occasionally some barely-audible pops and clicks. Nothing too serious, but far from real clean. And now I ran it through onboard audio's ASIO drivers also at 5ms and there were NO pops and the signal was clean. Why the hell then I have the Terratec?? I mean - it's meant to sound good, right? And it has its own IRQ, so this isn't an issue.

Anyone has any idea?

Thanks,

Matej

[zeronyne]

I think you are dismissing the whole issue before you've gotten to the root of the problem. The fact that the Terratec card has a separate IRQ doesn't mean that there won't be any issues.

 

Have you written to Terratec or looked for any driver updates?

 

And, by the way, clicks and pops are different than a card "not sounding good". It's a case of the card or motherboard "not working correctly". Just a quick clarification!

[mte]

Well I totally understand that the Terratec is better and the problem is surely connected to bad motherboard handling and that something's not working correctly. But until the problem's solved, the onboard sound card will be better than Terratec. That's what I wanted to say.

I submitted a "support form" on Terratec website but I doubt I'll get an answer. I just have a bad feeling about this. So I turned to this forum if maybe someone is/was experiencing some similar problems.

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by mte:

Well I totally understand that the Terratec is better and the problem is surely connected to bad motherboard handling and that something's not working correctly. But until the problem's solved, the onboard sound card will be better than Terratec. That's what I wanted to say.

I submitted a "support form" on Terratec website but I doubt I'll get an answer. I just have a bad feeling about this. So I turned to this forum if maybe someone is/was experiencing some similar problems.

You might try disabling the onboard sound card in the BIOS. Perhaps there is some strange messing up of system parameters when both are enabled.

[mte]

Nope. I have disabled a bunch of stuff I didn't need (onboard audio, com, lpt, firewire, additional usb ports...). I suspect the SATA hard drives mess with it, though (I suspect the onboard sata controller messes up pci bus?) Is this possible? Any other idea?

[The Magician]

J8st out of curiosity, have you tried a different PCI slot? Even though Windows XP ignores IRQ settings, Some motherboards still share IRQs on their PCI slots. For example one board I have shares PCI1 and AGP, PCI4 and Onboard RAID. Your Motherboard should have documentation regarding this.

 

Andy Eakin

The Magician

 

P.S. I may be able to give you some better Tech support over chat if need be. I deal with this kind of stuff for a living. Just shoot me aPM after you check on the PCI bus thing.

[Byrdman]

Originally posted by mte:

Nope. I have disabled a bunch of stuff I didn't need (onboard audio, com, lpt, firewire, additional usb ports...). I suspect the SATA hard drives mess with it, though (I suspect the onboard sata controller messes up pci bus?) Is this possible? Any other idea?

If its the drives it would be because they are turning off interrupts for too long. This used to happen when IDE drives were read in PIO mode but that went away years ago.

 

Some video cards used to speed up video by turning off interrupts for long periods - to wait for a vertical refresh. There used to be work-arounds for this.

[mte]

Well I was aware of that and I put the card into a slot that shares irq only with another slot which is empty. Meanwhile I got a reply from Terratec but still it didn't solve the problem.