Strange "skipping" during recording

[Beat Productions]

I just tried a live recording last night using a Phonic Helix Board 24 via firewire into a Dell Vostro 1510 laptop (I'm using Cubase LE4 and then importing the tracks to Nuendo 4). Everything seemed to be fine but on playback after the first 5-10 minutes, there is this strange skipping happening in all of the audio files, fairly regularly, all the way through. This is a new laptop, core 2 duo 2.0 gig, 4 gig ram Vista 64 etc., and it's been tweaked for audio. The firewire is built in and I have no idea what the chipset is. Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

[The Guru]

:piss2:

[Beat Productions]

I've looked everywhere to try and find the firewire chioset to no avail. I'll try and contact Dell tommorrow...

[Vinark]

What is listed in device manager?

[2407WFPHC]

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

See what you get

[Sound Drifter]

Fore wire chipset info???

Post # 17:

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3873

From what I have thumbed through taking a peek on laptop FW chipsets, finding a laptop with a TI FW chipset is pretty hard, let alone finding out what chipset a laptop has for FW.

Good luck.

You could try a PCMCIA TI FW card perhaps??

[Beat Productions]

I think the laptop has a Rioch firewire chipset which I gather isn't that great and could be the problem. Is it worth it to get a expresscard TI chipset firewire card or should I just ditch the laptop?

[Sound Drifter]

Entirely up to you. New macbooks/pros are out. I think I'm gonna get one.

I don't know for certain, but the FW issue seems like it's pretty popular. If you're happy with the overall performance of the processing pick up a firewire card they seem pretty cheap. Just get the type that matches your laptop PCMCIA/Express, etc...

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&safe=active&q=pcmcia+firewire+card+texas+instruments&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=gX8uSoObHJKEtweHtIiODA&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title

Hopefully it will cure your problem. As the others have suggested here and Cnet, have you checked the dpc latency? I think it is pretty important to check that first before you start spending more dosh or return the lappy. At the minimum, it will give you results to compare another lappy or FW PCMCIA card to.

good luck

[TAFKAT]

From my experience, TI Express cards will not always resolve the issue on many notebooks unfortunately.. :-(

FWIW: Finding working notebook solutions has always been a moving target even for the DAW builders as well. I am constantly needing to search out, test and qualify notebooks at an alarming rate. Recently I qualified a unit that worked with all interfaces except Digi on a TI Express card, decided to run with them with a caveat , before I could get my second unit for a sale the particular model that I had spent all of the time qualifying were pulled by the suppliers , the replacements altho looking identical have changes at the BIOS level that has rendered them useless for audio, and you cannot backflash to the previous BIOS.

Back to the drawing board again.

I have another option now with the help of Scott from ADK.

Not sure what country the original poster is from , but if he is in the U.S, it would be worth giving the guys a call and at least discussing the options with them. At least you will get to chat to someone who knows their arse from their elbow in regards to what interfaces actually work on what..

We need to remember that our specific market would not even register a .01% on total units sold , so to say its not a priority to notebook ODM's is un understatement.

I can't wait to see the back of Firewire for audio interfaces to be honest, most manufacturers bar a select few use 1 of 2 cheap and nasty OEM firewire controllers that to curt a long story short, are less than stella , I am not overly surprised there is so much inconsistency with compatibility and performance. Hopefully now that RME is making the move to USB 2.0 - with equal performance I am lead to believe , we could be seeing a shift , fingers crossed..

[Beat Productions]

I just found out it's a 02micro firewire chipset, is that any better?

[Jcschild]

in 2 words "you're screwed"

[Beat Productions]

in 2 words "you're screwed"

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Any point in getting a TI chipset expresscard?

[Beat Productions]

I ran the DPC checker and got (unacceptable spikes (supposedly) and then I went into bios and turned everything off and STILL got the spikes. I even turned off all usb devices and CD Rom in device manager and still no change. Does anyone know what's causing theses spkies?

[2407WFPHC]

Try to disable your LAN and WiFi adaptors, Card Readers, and even try swapping Video Drivers (try older and newer versions as well as generic Microsoft drivers). This could also be BIOS related. Some computers do not make good DAW's