My Lynx L22 issues...I think

[Bman]

Hi.

I thought some of you might be interested, or at least hold some wisdom on my Lynx ASIOStop() issues, and pauses in audio. That is I think they're Lynx related - these things are hard to track down. I've been corresponding with David Houtson from Lynx on his support forum here (http://www.lynxstudio.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2749) if anyone is interested.

Vin, I know this is something we've loosely discussed in the past. I hope you don't mind me continuing our discussion here as someone else might have some insight.

A detailed description of my hiccups are in the above link

Cheers - Brett

[The Guru]

IMHO, this is normal behavior in Cubendo. I run a Presonus Firebox and if I change latency or the samplerate with Cubase open the audio engine loses connection. I think this is due to the fact that Cubase initializes the ASIO device at startup only so when a change is made with the program open, it loses sync. Same goes for MIDI controllers. They load at startup so if you didn't turn it on, you have to restart the app..

Make the change via your soundcard's control panel with the app. closed and then open it. The change should be reflected with no errors.

[Bman]

Hi Nate. Yes, you are of course right. I tend to close the current project, restart Cubase and open a blank project, change the latency then reload my current project. Of course this means that changing the latency quickly on the fly for tracking v mixing, and waiting up to 20 min for my template to load is not terribly practical. It would be great if everything worked as it should. Still, I've been living with it for this long...

Now it only I can solve the audio pause probs...

Brett

[Bman]

I'm beginning to think that the Lynx isn't to blame for my problems, but Cubase 4 is and perhaps even my video card. Read on if interested.

The ASIOStop() issues I guess I can live with, although David Houtson of Lynx says hasn't seen this message for years. He says "Several years ago we noticed some applications not shutting down properly on ASIOStop() so I put the message in to alert the user. As long as you close the application after you see this message it should be fine. I haven't seen any app that had this message in several years (I talked with all the major app developers at the time and they all fixed the issue)". Still, I'm not the only one with this problem as a quick survey or newsgroups found, but OK, so I can't switch latencies in the middle of a project.

However, as I mentioned in the Lynx thread and above, ever since I upgraded to Cubase 4 about 6 months ago, I get an intermittant 'break' or 'pause' in the audio stream that occurs every hour or so where all sound stops including audio tracks and vsti tracks for about 0.5 to 1 sec then begins again from where it left off. The transport, and video within cubase also stop at the same time which is why I had up until now blamed Cubase 4 because I didn't have this problem in Cubase SX3. However, in an effort to troubleshoot this problem I upgraded my L22 drivers from 13k to 16 and instead of the 'pause' I getting rapid stuttering of the audio - like that buzz effect in RMX. This is apparently normal - "It is normal that pre-Build 16 would stop audio and Build 16 would stutter. That is part of the design of Build 16 that audio cannot stop even if you get a CPU too slow problem" (David Houtson again). However I was getting crashes when the audio stuttered (freezing of the computer, or automatic reboots). While I originally suspected the Lynx driver I have since traced the crashing to an upgraded Video Card driver (NVIDIA Quadro - I upgraded the driver in a vain attempt to improve video handling in Cubase...stupid). I've rolled back to the earlier driver and there are no more crashes, although the audio pause is still there of course. It makes me wonder if the pauses (or as David Houtson suspects, CPU bursts) are related to the video card. However as I mentioned it didn't happen in SX3.

thus it continues....

[TerryG]

I don't think this is an Cubendo issue...

I can make instantaneous sample rate and buffer changes inside Cubendo with my RME. No restart required.

[TAFKAT]

While I originally suspected the Lynx driver I have since traced the crashing to an upgraded Video Card driver (NVIDIA Quadro - I upgraded the driver in a vain attempt to improve video handling in Cubase...stupid). I've rolled back to the earlier driver and there are no more crashes, although the audio pause is still there of course. It makes me wonder if the pauses (or as David Houtson suspects, CPU bursts) are related to the video card. However as I mentioned it didn't happen in SX3.

Hey Brett,

Those drivers I use are very specific builds of the Quadro drivers for AV use, changing to the regular driver on that specific card would have caused all manners of grief on your particular system. There is a little more method to the madness in what I actually do behind the scenes on my DAW's , than I let on publicly :-)

I have an idea, and its very specific to your configuration, give me a call.. :-)

[Bman]

FWIW I have just realised that the Lynx v16 driver builds are at least 1 buffer less efficient than the 15b builds and earlier.

Perhaps this was already known. I read there was something happening with respect to the AES16 but didn't realise it affected my L22 also.

I've uninstalled v16 and gone back to v15b and can now drop the soundcards latency down one buffer setting.

Brett

[Vinark]

In the past I had the same issue with the 1 sec pause and it was caused by intel AHCI for the sata HD's. If disabling AHCI (or raid) in the bios helps you know this is the issue. Strangly enough there is one intel driver that fixes the issue here but a later driver breakes it again (here at least) If you need the version no I will look it up.
Good luck
Vincent

[Bman]

Thanks Vincent. I'll take a look

Cheers

[TAFKAT]

FWIW I have just realised that the Lynx v16 driver builds are at least 1 buffer less efficient than the 15b builds and earlier.

Perhaps this was already known. I read there was something happening with respect to the AES16 but didn't realise it affected my L22 also.

I've uninstalled v16 and gone back to v15b and can now drop the soundcards latency down one buffer setting.

Brett

Hey Brett,

Are you meaning that the playback buffer is almost double the input as per the earlier drivers ?

That padding has been added to resolve some issues specific to the later PCie AES card , but it seems to be throwing out the baby with the bath water to me after all of the work I did to spread the word of their low latency performance on the PCI cards.

To say I am a little disappointed with Lynx of late is an understatement.

[Bman]

Hey Brett,

Are you meaning that the playback buffer is almost double the input as per the earlier drivers ?

That padding has been added to resolve some issues specific to the later PCie AES card , but it seems to be throwing out the baby with the bath water to me after all of the work I did to spread the word of their low latency performance on the PCI cards.

To say I am a little disappointed with Lynx of late is an understatement.

Hi Vin. Not sure about the input. All I know is that when playing back VSTis I can drop the buffer down a notch with v15b compared to v16 and not get any crackles. You know the ASIO light flashing on the VST performance meter that started to appear with C4 particularly with lower latency? Interestingly, at a given buffer setting, with v16 the crackles coincide with the ASIO light flashing, but with v15 the L22 just sails on through ignoring the flashing like it's not even there.

Brett