I just got a new 1212m, mainly for hi-fi music listening and some recording stuff as well. I installed it seemingly without a hitch. I'm using the analog outputs.
There is a persistent problem though. I hear intermittent beeps in the audio, and sometimes light clicks, that disrupt the playback. They are very short, and happen around 10-15 times a minute.
This happens in foobar, winamp, all software I've tried.
I made sure to manually uninstall my old card's stuff (Echo Mia) before installing the new card. I tried reinstalling the Emu drivers, but it didn't help. I tried using the "patches" from the Emu website, but they are dated 2005 and my CD-ROM says 2006, so I wasn't sure if they were updated at all. It didn't matter though, when I tried to run the patches it says "Unable to detect supported product" and exits, as if the card isn't even there.
I did all the other standard troubleshooting stuff...Windows update, spyware search, etc.
I have a feeling it has to do with ASIO drivers, which I know nothing about. I see the ASIO strips in PatchMix, but don't know how to make the software use those outputs rather than the normal WAV outs. I haven't really messed with PatchMix DSP much, besides the volume levels and trying out some effects.
I did put in a request to Emu support, but it could be a while, the holiday weekend and all. I know a lot of people here use the 1212m; if you've run into this problem or have any ideas, I'd really appreciate it. The card sounds fantastic and "works" basically, I just need to get rid of these damn beeps!
There is a persistent problem though. I hear intermittent beeps in the audio, and sometimes light clicks, that disrupt the playback. They are very short, and happen around 10-15 times a minute.
This happens in foobar, winamp, all software I've tried.
I made sure to manually uninstall my old card's stuff (Echo Mia) before installing the new card. I tried reinstalling the Emu drivers, but it didn't help. I tried using the "patches" from the Emu website, but they are dated 2005 and my CD-ROM says 2006, so I wasn't sure if they were updated at all. It didn't matter though, when I tried to run the patches it says "Unable to detect supported product" and exits, as if the card isn't even there.
I did all the other standard troubleshooting stuff...Windows update, spyware search, etc.
I have a feeling it has to do with ASIO drivers, which I know nothing about. I see the ASIO strips in PatchMix, but don't know how to make the software use those outputs rather than the normal WAV outs. I haven't really messed with PatchMix DSP much, besides the volume levels and trying out some effects.
I did put in a request to Emu support, but it could be a while, the holiday weekend and all. I know a lot of people here use the 1212m; if you've run into this problem or have any ideas, I'd really appreciate it. The card sounds fantastic and "works" basically, I just need to get rid of these damn beeps!
What is the rest of the hardware and software we're talking about?
Though I've not encountered any pops and clicks, it is possible to get clicks on the 1212 by running on older hardware (even if it is within the recommended spec).
Also if you have other software running in the background (antivirus, messengar, downloaders) which you can't disable (most of us are running dedicated systems AFAIK), then the thread priority for the playback program has to be set at 'realtime' or 'highest'. Foobar allows me to do this from within the software.
Though I've not encountered any pops and clicks, it is possible to get clicks on the 1212 by running on older hardware (even if it is within the recommended spec).
Also if you have other software running in the background (antivirus, messengar, downloaders) which you can't disable (most of us are running dedicated systems AFAIK), then the thread priority for the playback program has to be set at 'realtime' or 'highest'. Foobar allows me to do this from within the software.
I am running an older system, a Dell Dimension 8200 (5 years old), 1.7 Pentium 4 with only 256MB RAM. I was planning on getting more RAM soon--but it's RDRAM, very expensive, so I'll probably only be able to double it to 512.
I have Windows XP...not sure what else would be helpful. I have tried closing every possible process except the audio player, but it doesn't help.
Dedicated system? I'm not that rich. I use the computer for everything. I tried setting foobar priority to "Realtime", but it didn't help.
I'm just hoping it's not a physical problem with the Emu cards themselves.
I have Windows XP...not sure what else would be helpful. I have tried closing every possible process except the audio player, but it doesn't help.
Dedicated system? I'm not that rich. I use the computer for everything. I tried setting foobar priority to "Realtime", but it didn't help.
I'm just hoping it's not a physical problem with the Emu cards themselves.
No, it's pretty much your PC. 256 MB RAM is way too low for Windows XP, it runs best on 1 GB but nothing less than 512MB is advisable.
The way soundcards in a PC work is by streaming data from your hard disk into memory and then read from there. If the memory is so little, it's going to suffer delays as buffers fill and empty, which causes the pops and clicks.
Try maxing out your buffer sizes in Foobar - move the slider to the rightmost setting. That may help slightly. Also shut down Antivirus scanners, and disconnect the PC from the 'net. You don't save a lot of memory with all of this, but every little bit helps.
Try XPLite, which will disable some background services for XP that you may not need.
FWIW, I run a Soundblaster in a machine with 512MB memory and XP, and when I hit the disk with some heavy data transfers, I get pops and clicks myself, on a less demanding soundcard in a machine with more memory.
The beeps however are totally new, but may be artifacts from the popping.
To activate ASIO you have to use ASIO plugins for Winamp and Foobar, they're quite easy to turn up with a search. Then you've to set up the player outputs and assign the ASIO streams, those streams will then appear on the mixer strip in Patchmix.
Most decent recording/tracking software will be able to work with the ASIO out of the box. However I doubt using ASIO will help, it's generally more demanding on resources as it uses smaller buffers. Your problems may escalate, but there's no harm in trying I guess.
My advice would be to dump the machine a and pick up a new one. It doesn't have to be cutting-edge, and you can reuse the monitor, keyboard and mouse of the old Dell. I suspect that upping the RAM to 512MB will be disappointing as the CPU itself is very old and not very good, and the upgrade may be no good at all.
512MB of RDRAM costs about $175 (it's criminal, these prices!). For that money, you can get a completely new PC (only the box) with 1GB DDR2, an AMD X2 3800+, a nice everything-integrated AMD690G board and a new 120GB SATA 2.0 hard drive, plus a case. And you might even get 30 bucks for the sale of this old box on ebay or something.
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145573 , $30
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819104005, $35
Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130068 $49
Hard disk: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148161, $48
And I'm just pulling items off pages, Newegg has got some nice offers on bundles which can save you enough to accommodate a case and supply, and you can good stuff if you're willing to try out refurbs and open box items - I've seen boards for as little as $25.
The only thing that isn't included here is the optical drive, which you can pull from the Dell, a new one costs about 20 dollars which you can buy once you sell the old box.
The way soundcards in a PC work is by streaming data from your hard disk into memory and then read from there. If the memory is so little, it's going to suffer delays as buffers fill and empty, which causes the pops and clicks.
Try maxing out your buffer sizes in Foobar - move the slider to the rightmost setting. That may help slightly. Also shut down Antivirus scanners, and disconnect the PC from the 'net. You don't save a lot of memory with all of this, but every little bit helps.
Try XPLite, which will disable some background services for XP that you may not need.
FWIW, I run a Soundblaster in a machine with 512MB memory and XP, and when I hit the disk with some heavy data transfers, I get pops and clicks myself, on a less demanding soundcard in a machine with more memory.
The beeps however are totally new, but may be artifacts from the popping.
To activate ASIO you have to use ASIO plugins for Winamp and Foobar, they're quite easy to turn up with a search. Then you've to set up the player outputs and assign the ASIO streams, those streams will then appear on the mixer strip in Patchmix.
Most decent recording/tracking software will be able to work with the ASIO out of the box. However I doubt using ASIO will help, it's generally more demanding on resources as it uses smaller buffers. Your problems may escalate, but there's no harm in trying I guess.
My advice would be to dump the machine a and pick up a new one. It doesn't have to be cutting-edge, and you can reuse the monitor, keyboard and mouse of the old Dell. I suspect that upping the RAM to 512MB will be disappointing as the CPU itself is very old and not very good, and the upgrade may be no good at all.
512MB of RDRAM costs about $175 (it's criminal, these prices!). For that money, you can get a completely new PC (only the box) with 1GB DDR2, an AMD X2 3800+, a nice everything-integrated AMD690G board and a new 120GB SATA 2.0 hard drive, plus a case. And you might even get 30 bucks for the sale of this old box on ebay or something.
Memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145573 , $30
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819104005, $35
Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130068 $49
Hard disk: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148161, $48
And I'm just pulling items off pages, Newegg has got some nice offers on bundles which can save you enough to accommodate a case and supply, and you can good stuff if you're willing to try out refurbs and open box items - I've seen boards for as little as $25.
The only thing that isn't included here is the optical drive, which you can pull from the Dell, a new one costs about 20 dollars which you can buy once you sell the old box.
Believe it or not my PC has held up pretty well, as deficient as it is. It's been running XP with 256MB RAM for several years, mostly without any issues at all. I had an Echo Mia sound card before the Emu, which I used with Cubase as a DAW. I couldn't use many effects before it got bogged down, but it worked well enough, and I never had this problem of beeps and clicks with the Mia.
I was actually in the process of building a new PC...I have a nice aluminum case, good power supply, and newer optical drive already. Just need the mobo/cpu, hard drive, video card (I play games somewhat, I'll skip the on-board video)...and another copy of XP or Vista.
I'll probably be spending about $350-400, and get a low-end Core 2 Duo and decent video card.
In a way I'm relieved to hear it's probably the PC, I've been putting off getting a new one for a long time but I guess the time has come. Thanks guys, I'll be checking out Newegg's deals...
I was actually in the process of building a new PC...I have a nice aluminum case, good power supply, and newer optical drive already. Just need the mobo/cpu, hard drive, video card (I play games somewhat, I'll skip the on-board video)...and another copy of XP or Vista.
I'll probably be spending about $350-400, and get a low-end Core 2 Duo and decent video card.
In a way I'm relieved to hear it's probably the PC, I've been putting off getting a new one for a long time but I guess the time has come. Thanks guys, I'll be checking out Newegg's deals...
Hi,
I had the same problem with my EMU card: pops and cliks regardless how I played music, through ASIO or KMixer (btw, I am using SPDF out, not analog).
Malfunction started when I decided to play with pro-audio software like Sonar LE and Qubase (both are included in EMU software package). I believe some add-ins were installed which screwed up the system.
The only cure was to uninstall all EMU drivers PROPERLY, THOROUGHLY AND MANUALLY and reinstall card form the scratch.
After that I never touched SONAR LE.
AND please get at least 512MB RAM for your computer.
Irakli
I had the same problem with my EMU card: pops and cliks regardless how I played music, through ASIO or KMixer (btw, I am using SPDF out, not analog).
Malfunction started when I decided to play with pro-audio software like Sonar LE and Qubase (both are included in EMU software package). I believe some add-ins were installed which screwed up the system.
The only cure was to uninstall all EMU drivers PROPERLY, THOROUGHLY AND MANUALLY and reinstall card form the scratch.
After that I never touched SONAR LE.
AND please get at least 512MB RAM for your computer.
Irakli
I put a 1212 in this computer about a year ago. Playing music (Windows Media Player) worked fine, but I did have trouble with Sonar (producer edition). It would pop, or suffer short dropouts on playback. The Sonar defaults were not ASIO. Switching to ASIO drivers solved all of the problems.
I run XP on a core2 duo, but I have 2 gigs of ram. 256 megs may have been enough if your old card was 16 bit. A 24 bit card will need more memory to keep it well fed.
I run XP on a core2 duo, but I have 2 gigs of ram. 256 megs may have been enough if your old card was 16 bit. A 24 bit card will need more memory to keep it well fed.
hello guys, your not alone with this problem.
i have the same clicks that sound as TICKS..
my computer is very new, dual core, enough space and memory
in every aspect, and running xp.
but the same ticks, even when i do nothing, no music program or whatever program at all they show up from time to time.
crazy is what i become.
but i found something, the card exualy are two cards and in my computer they put one card in a slot and the other richt below the first one, so in between the 2 cards was only 1cm space, then i was thinking of interference,
so i put the cards more out of each other, like 2 slots down (more space in between).
i hope everyone can follow, my englisch is very crappy.
the result of doing this was like 80% less ticks and clicks, they are not all gone but i can live with this, i am less crazy and still can make music.
where i am very sure of is that this has nothing to do with buffersize in some programs or asio buffers.
i have the same clicks that sound as TICKS..
my computer is very new, dual core, enough space and memory
in every aspect, and running xp.
but the same ticks, even when i do nothing, no music program or whatever program at all they show up from time to time.
crazy is what i become.
but i found something, the card exualy are two cards and in my computer they put one card in a slot and the other richt below the first one, so in between the 2 cards was only 1cm space, then i was thinking of interference,
so i put the cards more out of each other, like 2 slots down (more space in between).
i hope everyone can follow, my englisch is very crappy.
the result of doing this was like 80% less ticks and clicks, they are not all gone but i can live with this, i am less crazy and still can make music.
where i am very sure of is that this has nothing to do with buffersize in some programs or asio buffers.
sorry for that. Get yourself more knowledge. Your post's are so generalized that one is not able to provide you the right solution.
Working with EMU0404/1212 since SIS735/VIA K8T800Pro/Nforce4 and never had any problems. Right now, i've running with the EMU following in parallel: [PCI] CMI8788 + [USB]ESI U46DJ + [USB]Edirol M16DX and I've no problems with any of these interfaces.
maybe intel has something screwed up
graphic cards? PSU? My GFX-cards ever were low-end.
Working with EMU0404/1212 since SIS735/VIA K8T800Pro/Nforce4 and never had any problems. Right now, i've running with the EMU following in parallel: [PCI] CMI8788 + [USB]ESI U46DJ + [USB]Edirol M16DX and I've no problems with any of these interfaces.
maybe intel has something screwed up
graphic cards? PSU? My GFX-cards ever were low-end.
1212m problems...
hi, I wish I could help you, but I'm bad off myself. Just getting into home audio recording I have SONAR and the EMU 1212m card installed on a pentium 4 with XP. My problem is I can't access the controls for record volume and monitor volume in Windows sound&devices. It's grayed out and stuck at zero! The computer showss its running the EMU card and says it operating correctly, but still doesn't let me access it. Shouldn't I be able to control it from there? Any ideas what I should I do?
Appreciate it
Aquavenus
hi, I wish I could help you, but I'm bad off myself. Just getting into home audio recording I have SONAR and the EMU 1212m card installed on a pentium 4 with XP. My problem is I can't access the controls for record volume and monitor volume in Windows sound&devices. It's grayed out and stuck at zero! The computer showss its running the EMU card and says it operating correctly, but still doesn't let me access it. Shouldn't I be able to control it from there? Any ideas what I should I do?
Appreciate it
Aquavenus
these people might be more able to help you:
http://homerecording.com/bbs/
good luck. does the emu come with its own control panel? thats where I control some of my cards, especially with asio drivers. Often the recording software can control the card too.
http://homerecording.com/bbs/
good luck. does the emu come with its own control panel? thats where I control some of my cards, especially with asio drivers. Often the recording software can control the card too.
base level EMU 1212m problem
I'm sorry I can't help you with your problem because I'm so new at this myself, I'm hoping you can help me with this basic issue:
I'm using SONAR with the EMU 1212m cards is installed on a pentium 4 with XP. My problem is I can't access or activate the DOCK L/R ins and outs in the Patchmix. They are all grayed out, and I can only select I/O Card 1L/1R.
Similarly in Windows sound&devices I cannot access the controls for record volume and monitor volume, as they are also grayed out and stuck at zero!
It's like the computer sees the EMU but won't let me access it. Or there is some fundamental communication blockage in my system.
Does anyone have any ideas to help me with this? It's very much appreciated! - AquaVenus
I'm sorry I can't help you with your problem because I'm so new at this myself, I'm hoping you can help me with this basic issue:
I'm using SONAR with the EMU 1212m cards is installed on a pentium 4 with XP. My problem is I can't access or activate the DOCK L/R ins and outs in the Patchmix. They are all grayed out, and I can only select I/O Card 1L/1R.
Similarly in Windows sound&devices I cannot access the controls for record volume and monitor volume, as they are also grayed out and stuck at zero!
It's like the computer sees the EMU but won't let me access it. Or there is some fundamental communication blockage in my system.
Does anyone have any ideas to help me with this? It's very much appreciated! - AquaVenus
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