Daft question about DMA

[Smelly-Finger]

OK here it is I have a CL Soundblaster live 5.1 Plat and I have been advised if I want all the pops and crackles to stop I need to DISABLE DMA on my HDDs. I was under the impression that if I do that then the disk performance will go down, is this true or am I being totaly thick ???

I have tried all the moving the card to different slots routine but it still sounds like crap and OFP still BSD's with ctaud2k.sys as the reason.

Somebody please help I'll try anything (Within reason)

I have
MSI KT4V-L Mobo
xp2000+ cpu
512Mb 266
GeForce 2 MX
Realtek 10/100 5 port PCI hub
XP Pro (SP1)

 

[Zedric]

That sounds like a really bad idea. Disabling DMA will cause significant perfomance loss. I don't really see how it will help either.

Some trick I do know of is to disable the blind buffer overwriting of the PCI bus that is sometimes used to increase performance a little (very little). This can cause pops if audio data is overwritten. There's a "PCI wait" or something somewhere, don't remember.

Maybe it won't help, maybe it's only an issue with PCI graphics cards. But that's what I can think of anyway.

 

[Taurus]

okay, mr. finger... listen up.

visit http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/ . first you'll want to try the "PCI Latency patch for VIA chipsets". the problem you seem to be having is somewhat common with creative cards and via chipsets. the latency patch should help. i don't have the problem, so i'm not sure.

if it doesn't do anything for you, then try the "Patch for Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! and Audigy-series drivers".

between these two patches, you should come out ahead. good luck.

 

[BonyTony]

Originally posted by Smelly-Finger
OK here it is I have a CL Soundblaster live 5.1 Plat and I have been advised if I want all the pops and crackles to stop I need to DISABLE DMA on my HDDs. I was under the impression that if I do that then the disk performance will go down, is this true or am I being totaly thick ???

I have tried all the moving the card to different slots routine but it still sounds like crap and OFP still BSD's with ctaud2k.sys as the reason.

Somebody please help I'll try anything (Within reason)

I have
MSI KT4V-L Mobo
xp2000+ cpu
512Mb 266
GeForce 2 MX
Realtek 10/100 5 port PCI hub
XP Pro (SP1)

I too have had the crackle & pop sounds with my live 1024 card (on a Shuttle SS51G Pc....using a SIS chipset) so the latency patch is no good for me.....but it does work for some Via peeps (i had via chipsets untill they finally drove me insane!).

What finally stopped it for me was a version of the creative driver which was posted here...i think by me and it stopped the pops.

Found the thread Here

 

[Smelly-Finger]

Fast or what !!

Cheers Lads/Ladets

I'll have a bash at those

taurus thanks for the link and Zedric cheers for the info but I'd done that already and when I enabled it the pops and crackles weren't as bad.

My biggest problem is I'm unfamiliar with the VIA chipset as I only upgraded 2 weeks ago from a PIII 500 so I'm still trying to get to grips with the new hardware.

All the hairy chest

Smelly

 

[Smelly-Finger]

Minor update - I was messing about with powerstrip and noticed I could tweak the PCI Latency of the graphics card through it. I've now been playing for 4 hours no BSOD and no pops or crackles !!!!

I haven't tried the VIA patches for the SB Live coz they don't support the K7-KT400 chipset yet

Anybody know what the ideal latency would be or is it going to be a case of trial and error

just thought I'd pass it on