Audio Multimedia Devices Compatibility

[admin]

Creative Labs Soundblaster Live card - This PCI-bus card appears to generate so much noise on the PCI-bus that Krystal cannot operate reliably. Trying to run Krystal with a Soundblaster Live card installed and active will typically cause a system bus lock-up within 20 seconds. This requires a power down and reboot to clear. The Krystal PC Board Rev-D artwork has been shipping since 09/96. We added 35 noise suppression parts from Rev-C to D for super reliability. We have never had a problem with any other PCI-bus card. Based on our findings, Soundblaster Live should be removed from the market!

Other Audio Cards - So far, we have not documented any other card that will not work with Krystal. We will post these in this Thread as we discover them. Anyone else using a card successfully or not is encouraged to post their findings.

Motherboards with On-board Audio Functions - We have had some difficulties with the audio drivers for on-board audio on motherboards conflicting with other device drivers (such as ATI 8MB, 16MB and 32MB graphics cards). It is clear that THE MOST UP-TO-DATE driver is required for each device. If it doesn't work, plan on spending much time on the phone and their website to try to get the latest as soon as it is released.

[geezer]

Thanks...This is quite clear.

[Hessel]

My Pentium 133MHz with Sound Blaster PCI 128, Krystal card with ME5.2c has worked fine in my studio for years.
Now I built a Pentium 800Mhz, 256Mb ram, Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X motherboard, Sound Blaster PCI 128 and ASUS AGP V-6800 32Mb video card system with updated bios and drives. The Krystal card crashes, the PCI word speed is 0.179usec and ME5.2c freezes! When I push the record command, a error message #39 comes. Can someone help me?

[Bill Odom]

what does the 39 error say, and does it play fine but only in record if freezes?

What interupt is the krystal set for (check with device manager) and is any thing else on that interupt (it sound like an interupt problem to me)?

Bill, BillOdom@wintrak.com

[Hessel]

Message(39)- Do you wish to use the recorded material in spide of the error that occurred?

The interrupt is 00 for Krystal.

The software runs about 1 sec. and freezes (sometimnes dont run). What you think about the low transfer speed?
Today i will to run a system diag software like SANDRA Pro 2001.

Thanks by your care Bill.

Hessel, Brazil

[Bill Odom]

What slot is your PCI Krystal card in on your motherboard and what does the bios say in relation to the irq for that slot?

00 is not an acceptable interupt for Krystal. It looks like you need to set that slot to reserve a specific interupt in your Bios to resolve the problem. If your bios doesn't allow that, it may allow you to set a priority of free interupts ie 10 ,11, 9, 5.

How comfortable are you setting bios information? Let me know I will try to help. You need to resolve this befor we dicuss transfer speed.

Bill

[Hessel]

Sorry, the IRQ 00 was in the Device Manager/PCI Multimidia Device/Properties/Resources and click "Manual config". I was mismatch.
The Card was in the PCI 3 slot, IRQ 05. Now i change to PCI 2 IRQ 05 and disable the USB manager than use IRQ 05.
IS WORKING!!! Thanks my friend!
Now i can record and play without crashes.
You have some tip about the low speed transfer?

Hessel

[Bill Odom]

Glad to hear it worked! It's always nice to be up and running.

Dont worry about the slow transfer speed. Bryan in MTU Support told me when I built my new 900MHz system and my board tested slow that the test was not valid for newer motherboards.

What kind of recoding do you do? Do you have alot of overlapped segments?

Bill

[Hessel]

Hi Bill. I do location recording for audiophile labels of acoutical groups (early music, classical, folk music, etc...) stereo direct to DAW. So, I do few overlapping (3 stereo segments max) to add ambience when i need and alot of edit notes.
MTU says than my motherboard just wouldn't work at all with Krystal. I will try to work with Giga cause now is working.
What MB you use? I choose that one cause a post than read in the DAW forum. It says than Chipset Intel 815 have bugs with Krystal and VIA not admin note - VIA has problems also at this time. Well, i don't know what to do.
If you have some idea...

Best, Hessel

[Bill Odom]

i am confused is it working or not? I use an epox motherboard with via-kt133 chipset on 2nd system so far its ok!

What problems are you having now? I heard from Brian about different boards they were testing and decided to stay away from the 815 chip set also.

let me know

Bill

[Hessel]

Sorry Bill, my english is poor.

My system is OK now. I'm a bit unsecure about what MTU says about my motherboard... But it is working very well now.

thanks, Hessel

[admin]

Gentlemen. Here is the current facts on motherboards. Krystal with Microeditor uses bus mastering DMA to transfer some data from the Krystal back to the host computer. It appears that this is no longer acceptable with the timing on the new Intel 815 and VIA chip sets that control the motherboard PCI-bus timing.

Currently, we are shipping new systems with the Abit BX133-RAID motherboard with the older BX chip set. We DO NOT RECOMMEND using the Intel 815 or VIA chip sets. You run the risk of not being reliable and crashing at random times.

Larry is rewriting the Microeditor software driver for Krystal to remove all use of bus mastering DMA transfers. We hope to have code to test this week. If this works, we will be able to ship workstations with VIA and/or Intel 815 chip sets. If not, we are in trouble!

Larry tried to get Microeditor V5.3 to work with the Sound Blaster Live card, but that test failed. Looks like Krystal won't work with the SB Live card. :f

[Bill Odom]

let me know when code is ready to test

Once IO set my memoy timing right i have had no crashes on my via chipset but can't see everything and glad you have told us which board you are shiping for now.


thank you for the explination on Dma timing

Bill