Remember: SoundBlaster Live Problems?

[Jerry Jones]

Does anybody recall -- as I seem to remember -- lots of discussion on this board about problems with the SoundBlaster Live card?

If so, please refresh my memory... were there any solutions provided?

I'm hearing reports of crackly audio from a couple of MediaStudio Pro 6 users and I'm wondering if the fact they both have SoundBlaster Live cards has anything to do with the problem.

Thanks.

[This message has been edited by Jerrold Jones (edited 02 March 2000).]

[DrMordrid]

SBLive!, and most other PCI audio cards, are pretty much PCI bus hogs.

SBLive! does some weird stuff. For one it continuously polls the keyboard interrupt controller for timing. This takes up precious PCI bus cycles. For another the ISA emulation is a huge drain on resources, as it is with most other PCI audio cards. New drivers have helped, but not eliminated, these problems.

Since capture cards and display adapters also use the PCI bus extensively, as do other PCI devices like drive controllers, LAN cards and of late modems and USB controllers, you can run into serious bus contention problems when all this stuff is active and competing for PCI bandwidth.

This is a particular problem on Super7 boards because they have poor PCI performance to start with. Also systems with heavy duty video capture & editing hardware (you know what they are) can fall victim to PCI hoggitis on the part of the other devices in the system.

One such problem PCI contentions can cause are the green lines often seen in video playbacks. Other problems can include audio synch or quality issues.

In most cases these issues can be helped by reducing the load on the PCI bus. This can be done by setting up an editing-only profile with some non-video related PCI devices disabled. Turning down the bus utilization on Fasttrak cards is another way to reduce the PCI load without much of a performance hit.

IMHO one of the best ways around this is to use a simple ISA audio card like the AWE64. It's totally off the PCI bus and it doesn't do any of the funny stuff you often see in the PCI cards. Also no ISA emulation is necessary for DOS software. Just make sure to turn off the spatial, reverb and 3D audio.

Dr. Mordrid



[This message has been edited by DrMordrid (edited 02 March 2000).]

[Jerry Jones]

Great info, Doc! Thanks!

[Brian Ellis]

Doc

Whereas I agree with you in principle, I must disagree with you over the question of SB16 emulation. This can be totally disabled, freeing up the resources.

You make it sound like using an SB Live! card is a total no-no. This is not the case. As you know, I had a helluva job with it - and an ISA SB16 card - until I discovered it was the Asus P2B m/b I had which was causing the problems, not the sound card. Since changing the m/b, I've hardly had a frame drop or any other problem, while happily running Marvel G200 and SB Live!, as long as they are on separate IRQs.

Other point: I believe (although open to correction) that on many modern m/bs that the only busses addressable by the CPU are the AGP/PCI ones and that the ISA legacy is actually translated down from the PCI. This means that using an ISA sound card will actually use more resources than a PCI one as all the signals will be passed to PCI, in any case. This apparently is easier than providing a separate bus.

And what do you do if your m/b does not have an ISA bus? Nearly half the modern cards do not, now, and I forecast that ISA will be as dead as EISA, COM port mice, ISA 8 bit, 5-1/4" diskettes and all those other things "we couldn't live without" just 2 or 3 years ago, within 2 years. My crystal ball also says that USB will be replaced by IEEE-1394 within 5 years. I'll also make another forecast: that the CPU, L1 and L2 buffers and fixed RAM will be supplied on a single MCM (multi-chip module) within a couple of years, when the memory bus will be working at 500 MHz to cope with 1500 MHz CPUs. Why? Because it will be essential to have a reflection-free transmission line between the different chips, with a fixed characteristic impedance. The current system with the CPU/cache module plugging in and the memory plugging in will be far too reflective. The only alternative that I can see would be to use COB (chip-on-board) techniques, where the CPU, cache and memory chips are mounted straight on the m/b and wirebonded for the connections, but this would lack flexibility. In addition, it would constrain the m/b makers to design transmission line boards which would not be easy and to equip themselves with expensive chip mounting and wirebonding machines.

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Brian (the terrible)

[brendin]

Brian, What mother board are you using now. I may be looking to replace my p2b. I was thinking of going with the p3x variety from ASUS.

[dchip]

Brendin, thought I would offer that I have ASUS P3BF, PIII 450, 128MB, Promise ultra 66, Marvel G200TV and, oh yeah, SB Live. Anyway, the P3BF has been great. A breeze to install and set up and gets along fine with whatever I throw at it. My Western Digital 18GB Ultra ATA-66 benchpresses about 9-12 MB per second according to Matrox utility. I got the P3BF with 2 ISA slots. Wish I had gotten the 1 ISA slot model because I do need another PCI slot.

[DrMordrid]

I've got a P3B-F 6PCI/1ISA/1AGP and it is a darned nice board. As far as sharing IRQ's go it's one of the best I've used.

Dr. Mordrid

[Brian Ellis]

Brendin

I am now using an obscure Bravo Baby board for video. It is great.

I have had so much trouble with Asus-boarded computers, I have now replaced all of them in all computers in my company, as well as at home. To be quite fair, I only tried two with video, the P2B with PII/450 and 128 Mb and an earlier one with the PentiumPro 200 and 64 Mb. No Asus board (five altogether) has given good results with speech recognition, with either SB16 or SB Live! (in two of them). I would therefore conclude that there is something really wrong with the way sound is handled (at least up to my early P2B). I have been running SR apps since 1992 and have tried four makes. Only the old IBM Simply Speaking Gold would even run in the Asus P2B, with reasonable results, but not outstanding. I recently converted to IBM ViaVoice Millennium but in a machine with a PIII/550 and another obscure m/b (Shuttle) which works OK but I would not specifically recommend, as I found out it does not have the thermal management of the CPU that other boards have.

What is important, so I discovered, is to have an Intel chipset. I did try an identical board with a Via chipset and the performance was ludicrously poor. Happily, the quotation specified a BX chipset, so the supplier changed it for me. Performance increased nearly threefold, even though the two boards looked the same, except for the ICs.

Hope this helps.

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Brian (the terrible)