problems with E-Mu 1212m card in vista X64

[bill15142]

Hello all.

I wonder if anyone might have any suggestions of how to address the following problem.

I have been using an E-mu 1212M soundcard in my old Windows XP machine for a few years without problem. I have just installed it into my brand new Vista X64 machine, and although sound playback via the jacks is working fine, any attempt to record on the PC, either from the external jack inputs or from internal wave sources results in severe audio glitching on the recording. The glitching sounds like a high speed series of clicks all through the audio varying in intensity with the audio signal level, and appears in the waveform as a series of tiny high-speed drop-outs to zero signal level.

The problem is usually severe but somewhat variable, sometimes it is so bad that literally only clicking can be heard, sometimes it's a mix of clicking and audio, just a couple of times I have managed to get a few minutes with it seeming to work fine before the problem then re-occurs without warning and without having made any setting changes in either patchmix or the recording software.

I have tried this with at least 3 different pieces of recording software (Sonar 8, Soundforge 7 and Audacity) and they all display the same problems, and usually to the same degree at any given time (i.e. if it is really bad on one of them, then it will be bad on the next one if tried just after, and similarly, on the rare occasion that it worked ok, it worked ok on all 3 for just a few minutes, before it then went wrong on all of them again.

I do not get this glitching at all if I use different input hardware and drivers. I have recorded with both the PC on-board standard jack inputs and with a USB external device (zoom H4) and these work consistantly fine into any recording software. Only when using the 1212M and patchmix software does this occur (and to my knowledge the 1212m cannot be used without patchmix so I can't identity which part of the hardware-driver-application chain might be at the route of this).

Playback of on-board sound out of the 1212M jacks works fine all the time, and external sound sources routed into the input jacks and back out again in real time also works fine all the time. Only when actually recording sound in the PC does this problem occur (it is not heard while recording, but is clearly heard and present in the recorded waveform upon playback) and it occurs on both recording external sound coming in through the 1212m jacks, and also if recording any PC internally generated sounds in real time (such as sounds streaming from a website or media player for example).

I carefully followed the software installation instructions for this device as per the E-Mu website. First disabling all on-board sound devices and drivers, then updating to the latest version of DirectX, then installing the most recent driver on the site version 2.1, and then installing the most recent version of patchmix DSP version 2.1, and ensured that I completed each step and restarted the system before moving on to the next.

I have spent several days trying to find the source of the problem without success. If anyone has any advice / experience in solving this (before discarding the whole soundcard and having to buy something new) it would be very much appreciated.

Yours

William Burnett.

System.

OS: Vista X64
Motherboard: Asus PQ5L
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550
Memory: 8GB
Soundcard: E-Mu 1212m
Soundcard Driver: E-Mu digital audio system driver V2.1
Soundcard Application: E-Mu Patchmix DSP V2.1
Related recording software: Sonar 8, Soundforge 7.0, Audacity 1.2.6

[brandondrury]

Vista X64 machine

Vista was bad enough. Not the issue of bitrate adds a whole new mess to contend with.

It's fairly clear based on your post that the issue is the audio interface and how it works with Windows. I'm positive this is a driver issue. You mentioned updating some things, but you didn't mention of E-mu makes any claims to be compatible with your operating system. 64-bit drivers are really just now being fully released, so it wouldn't surprise me if some are lagging behind.

Brandon

[bill15142]

Hi there

Thanks for the reply. Yes, E-mu specifically state that these latest drivers are for 64bit as well as 32bit Vista. it was something i checked out before even deciding on my new machine. I have of course written to E-mu directly as well, null response thus far although it's only been a couple of days.

Cheers

William.

[fortyseven]

The only benefit you'll get from a 64 bit setup is the ability to add titloads of memory. Besides that, I cant think of anything good to say.