Problems with Windows, sample rate above 88.2KHz...

[Dimal]

What did the Mytek guys have to say about this?

Hi again Hanuman...

I've only just received the ST192 ADC back yesterday afternoon but the upshot is, the Mytek unit is fine after being thoroughly tested and put through all of its I/O possibilities.

Comes back to a Windows (7) related problem by the look of it - Maybe the Win7 Drivers (of the M-Audio card and the Asus D2X are very flaky) ....

Have you tried the analogue input of the M-Audio?

No I haven't tried this as my preference was to use the ST192 ADC.

Well, I've just finished setting up a WinXP Pro X32 partition and after installing everything, and using the WinXP M-Audio Drivers, everything is working fine.

Looks like it's definitely a Win7/Vista (driver) issue as there's just no way that I can get anything higher than 88.2KHz sample rate to sync and lock. With WinXP, it just worked properly straight up and immediately locked in at 192KHz. I checked the resulting audio test file in iZotope RXII and it's definitely been recorded at 192KHz 24bit.

So, it would seem that I'm going to be shuffling between O/S's to get my project started. Not a biggie in the overall scheme of things of course.

Thank you everyone for your help . Hope this outcome is helpful to anyone else contemplating using Windows and an external ADC for their Ripping projects.

Cheers All,
Mal.

[b-side]

Hi Dimal,

I don't think you are looking at this from the right angle.

Did MyTek test your ADC192 and test recording digital >88.2KHz on a Windows 7 64 bit machine?

Any testing they did short of your exact use case is irrelevant to addressing your issue. I/O or other electronic testing is great but if the driver they wrote for your OS is junk all those tests mean nothing. For the price of the unit THEY should be writing a custom driver for YOU to get this to work, not the other way around.

The earliest Tascam and E-Mu 64 bit drivers all had sync or dropout issues until they fixed them. Sounds like MyTek may be in the same boat. If this were truly a known MS 64 bit issue, you can bet there would be plenty of discussions about it on MS and recording forums. But there aren't, other than this one. MS is an easy target.

[Hanuman]

Did MyTek test your ADC192 and test recording digital >88.2KHz on a Windows 7 64 bit machine?

Any testing they did short of your exact use case is irrelevant to addressing your issue. I/O or other electronic testing is great but if the driver they wrote for your OS is junk all those tests mean nothing. For the price of the unit THEY should be writing a custom driver for YOU to get this to work, not the other way around.

Not exactly Mytek's problem is it? Their's is a box that converts analogue input into standard AES/EBU or S/PDIF output which might (or not) go into a sound card. This is Avid's (and possibly Microsoft's) issue.

[Dimal]

Hi Dimal,

I don't think you are looking at this from the right angle.

Did MyTek test your ADC192 and test recording digital >88.2KHz on a Windows 7 64 bit machine?

Any testing they did short of your exact use case is irrelevant to addressing your issue. I/O or other electronic testing is great but if the driver they wrote for your OS is junk all those tests mean nothing. For the price of the unit THEY should be writing a custom driver for YOU to get this to work, not the other way around.

G'day "b-side"...

I'm very happy with the response from Mytek. They went out of their way and purchased the same hardware I have, assembled it and ran it with the same setup I have. I don't think you can ask for anything more than that.

They proved, without doubt and to my satisfaction, that the ST192 ADC is producing an exceptionally reliable clock pulse at all sample rate frequencies the unit is rated for.

Essentially, the ST192 ADC is nothing more than a Sig-Gen in this situation, it is not a comm's device sending and receiving data, only sending. It works without fault on a current Mac and now on my machine running WInXP - It's the receiving end of the data stream that needs to be up to the task, not the other way around, in this case...

The earliest Tascam and E-Mu 64 bit drivers all had sync or dropout issues until they fixed them. Sounds like MyTek may be in the same boat. If this were truly a known MS 64 bit issue, you can bet there would be plenty of discussions about it on MS and recording forums. But there aren't, other than this one. MS is an easy target.

Actually there are plenty to be found - I've been searching for solutions for months and there are hundreds of Win7 X64 instances of failure with this sort of combo and not Mytek in particular.

It is definitely a Windows 7 or Win7 Drivers issue and I'm not going to waste my time trying to differentiate between them.

Mal.

[ripblade]

Glad you got your problems sorted out, Mal. The Myteks are top quality and I would be very surprised to learn that they could be responsible for any issues.

Now that you have the recorder up and running, please let me know if you experience any corrupted (ie distorted) files written to the drive. I have an issue with this and am trying to pinpoint what the problem is.

Glenn

[Dimal]

Glad you got your problems sorted out, Mal. The Myteks are top quality and I would be very surprised to learn that they could be responsible for any issues.

G'day mate....

Must admit Glenn, sending the Mytek off to be tested was just about the last straw, as I too had serious doubts that it was contributing to the problem in any way. Wasn't my call though, Mytek's rep here in Oz insisted that I return it so they could thoroughly test it out. Worth doing in my opinion.

Now that you have the recorder up and running, please let me know if you experience any corrupted (ie distorted) files written to the drive. I have an issue with this and am trying to pinpoint what the problem is.

What sort of distortion are you referring to Glenn? Data stream corruption of some sort?

Mal.

[ripblade]

That's correct, Mal. About every 8-10 recordings the waveform will contain numerous tiny spikes spanning 3 samples each at 24/96. These are not audible during monitoring but are as a high pitch buzz during playback. I'm not certain what the I/O data path looks like, or why they are not audible during the recording, but it is a nuisance wasting 45 minutes and having to redo it.

I thought it might be the software I was using since it uses MME to communicate with the soundcard. I changed to a different program, one that allows the option to use DirectX. This seems to have helped but the problem ultimately still exists.

I've tried various drivers but they all behave the same way. I could replace the MAudio card but there's no guarantee that another will eliminate the problem. It could be as you have found that this is a WindowsXP issue.

It's a pain troubleshooting an intermittent problem. For me even moreso as I'm not really that familiar with what goes on under the hood of a computer. I'll take any help I can get.

Glenn

[jiiteepee]

...
I thought it might be the software I was using since it uses MME to communicate with the soundcard. I changed to a different program, one that allows the option to use DirectX. This seems to have helped but the problem ultimately still exists.
...
Glenn

If that's true then try ASIO (native)/WASAPI(exclusive mode)/KernelStreaming (WDM/KS)/Asio4all drivers. With those you'll get bit-matched path (S/PDIF). There are plenty of recording/playback software which supports these driver APIs.


jiitee

[ripblade]

Worth a try, jiitee. What programs use ASIO for recording purposes(keeping in mind they must be <$100)?

Glenn

[Dimal]

Worth a try, jiitee. What programs use ASIO for recording purposes(keeping in mind they must be <$100)?

Glenn

G'day Glenn...

There are quite a few true 24bit recording/editing app's as alluded to by "jiitee". Sonar have one called "Pyro Audio Creator" that has a number of modules to take care of most needs, except perhaps, decent audio restoration tools but then there are specialist app's for that purpose....

I tried recording from a different album today and that oddity where the negative half of the L/H channel and the positive half of the R/H channel seem to get attenuated, occurred as before. I've thoroughly checked out all external hardware including the Tonearm/Cartridge setup, and it's as good as I can humanly achieve, and then tests out extremely well.

While recording and monitoring the incoming audio (as it's displayed on the software), the incoming signal is perfect with signal values above '0'db (positive and negative) being almost perfect mirror images. However, at the completion of recording when the software saves the data to a file, the above attenuation is very noticeable and very discouraging.

There is very definitely some sort of distortion/corruption going on but am at a loss to know its origin. Looks like more research and trawling through the Web in the hope of identifying what is going on. Starting to think I should have just bought an Apple Mac to start off with, as most of all of these headaches seem to be related, in some way, to Windows idiosyncrasies....

Mal.

[jiiteepee]

Worth a try, jiitee. What programs use ASIO for recording purposes(keeping in mind they must be <$100)?

Glenn

VSTHost (free), Reaper (fully working shareware), Kristal (free), Mutools (free), Audacity (need to build ASIO compatibility by your self), ASIOHost (free), Wavosaur Audio editor (free) there are few more as freeware ... and ofcourse commercial low budged ones.

jiitee

[Whitneyville]

My AVID audio/video card will support 192K/32 bit on Win XP Pro on ol' Frank here fine, but I find no reason for the mega-size files. AVID made NO support for my card and Vista, because Vista couldn't handle video properly in editing or authoring (time base issues). Few Win 7 machines use the type of card slots (SD) ol' Frank has, so you'd need a "later generation card", but mine has an oven for the crystal controller on it for stability, and two fans for the processors. 192Mhz can be dead stable in cop car radios from -40*F to 180*F in Motorola and Yuasa trunked sub-banded radios, and that's a thousand times the frequency we work with. Look at the new cell phones working in the 900MHz band. I think it's a software problem that no one will admit to. That's NEVER happened before....

[Hanuman]

That's NEVER happened before....

HaHa, yes what a surprise!

Mal, in all seriousness having a locked-in OS configuration just to run your DAW is not a bad way to go anyway. Windows XP is a good old workhorse for the job. Once it's happy leave well enough alone and even keep it disconnected from the internet if that's possible so that you don't have to tempt fate by installing a security patch or service pack not to mention not having to run an Anti-Virus program all the time. I'm in the same situation with my relatively ancient Pro Tools LE setup (7.4.2) which is on a bit of a mac "time-capsule": Leopard 10.5.4 - the last OS certified for the DAW and plugins.

[ripblade]

Worth a try, jiitee. What programs use ASIO for recording purposes(keeping in mind they must be <$100)?

Glenn

VSTHost (free), Reaper (fully working shareware), Kristal (free), Mutools (free), Audacity (need to build ASIO compatibility by your self), ASIOHost (free), Wavosaur Audio editor (free) there are few more as freeware ... and ofcourse commercial low budged ones.

jiitee

Thanks gentlemen, will look into these as time permits. I did take a quick look at Wavosaur. Since it needs no installer I downloaded it and took a look at the device configurations. It uses MME or DirectX for recording...no Asio. It also has some very interesting analysis tools so it's still worth keeping.

Thanks again.

Glenn