strctr_k's troubleshooting thread

[strctr_k]

(Note from Valis, I have split this off from the masterverb thread and retitled the topic to give strctr_k his own thread)

personally, i've moved my 3x scope pci cards rig back into a xw4600, from an asus tuf-h310plus (3x pci slots) / core i5-8600 system / win10, because i was still getting 1 or 2 stutters per hour / 2 hours, after thinking everything worked ok and messing a few recordings =P (all good, my responsability!)

i've spent the last 2 weeks recording 5+ hours a day of 20hz sine wave from various sources (control room, modular, virus ti, axoloti core, mi shruthi-1), then checking for discontinuities using a custom python script + confirmation in a daw, and ended up with all sorts of weird things: a stutter 3 minutes in, then 2 hours 20 minutes clean; 1 hour 30 minutes clean, then 2 stutters; 1 hour clean, then 6 stutters in 10 minutes, etc. using asio2 source/dest, both integer and fp versions, with 16 or 2 channels, even at 24ms latency.

by stutter, it seems to be "the last asio buffer is repeated instead of containing what it should": parts of the sine wave is repeated, and what should be there is missing, then the sine wave continues normally. since i use 20hz sine waves, i can match the missing, or rather the repeated part to the asio buffer size. it's never drop-outs (one whole asio buffer is missing), or broken single samples.

i can't figure out what isn't right, win10 version? tried 1909, 2004, and 2009, all the same. went through the bios several times. all 50+ pages of it! learned several new acronyms along the way! impeccable latencymon performances (sub 200 us while recording 16 channels.) removed all the wn10 stuff, careful not to turn off anything that can break things. carefully went through all the devices to turn off "power savings" for usb devices (going from win10 1909 to 2004 reset all these things!) amd hd audio and on-board audio deactivated. asio driver? maybe but doubtful.

i think it's either win10 being broken (i found an hilarious post on ms's own forums about how respecting dpc (or other) latency isn't part of the acpi standard, according to the body governing the acpi standard, which would explain a few things!,) or the pci-over-pcie thing being overloaded by the nvme drive, but there's no way i could find to measure pcie-bus usage per device or at all, so it's back into the xw4600!

it works great over tightvnc and spdif anyway, so i can just do everything on the xw4600, and move things over to the faster system for the final eq/limiter! i moved the xw4600 out of its original case (keep the motherboard on the platter), silent seasonic power supply, only ssd drives, it's really silent and very pretty!

[valis]

NVMe is too much for a xw4600 era system, but I doubt that’s the sole issue. In that era there were no direct to CPU PCIe lanes, there are 2 16X connections (PCIe 2.0) direct to the x38 chipset, and all else including PCI and PCIe will both share the system bus connections between the south bridge and north bridge. So what PCIe slot you put an NVMe adapter in will be part of the concern, but my concern would be the core2 era machine in general. The APIC controller (which is what the ACPI tables are handled by on that era) was more fixed both electrically and in terms of addressing (memory hole, IRA sharing etc). There’s really too much there for one post, but suffice it to say any system from the Nehelem era on had a markedly different way of implementing ACPI & DST tables via virtualized addresses layered on top of the PCIe lanes electrically. “South bridge” chipset issues plagued systems off and on across the years while bringing them in line with this, and as of about 2014 or so the entire ACPI stack is 100% virtual and run by the CPU’s subsections themselves. So aside from PLX chips and bifurcation issues when overloading PCIe devices (like adding an NVME drive to a loaded consumer system), slot sharing and IRQ sharing is a thing of the past.

For this era of machine you still have an APIC controller mapping out hardware and memory tables, so I always mapped out slot sharing (with onboard devices) PRIOR to even having an OS installed. Win7 took a few hoops to disable the ACPI machine and set it to MPS Multiprocessor Machine for the system HAL so that the BIOS values assigned for devices propagated to Windows kernel, Win10 has no such capability as its really meant for everything from Nehelem onwards. Meaning, I boot to an ancient Linux kernel or UltimateBootCD live image from before 2009, and map out hardware sharing WITHOUT ACPI tables “steering” every to virtual IRQs to mask the sharing of resources and IRQ interrupts. Some boards will simply document the slot sharing but even the the ability to make that info out after translation of the manual to your language will vary from board to board let alone maker to maker. Long story short, if you can eliminate sharing FIRST for essential components like Scope, dealing with bus saturation issues like your NVME drive will pose becomes
Much easier. What Scope cares about is not so much bandwith, but other things just staying out of the way when it needs to handle delivery of a time slice (buffer) and so your repeated samples are the result of another device not letting go even though DPC results seem otherwise good (leave it running when the system is under load to document these drivers).

[strctr_k]

i'm not sure you understand, the xw4600 system works fine, the nvme drive is in the core i5 system with an intel 300 chipset, built late last year.

the core i5 had no apparent problems: no shared irqs with the scope cards, pristine latencymon performance, nothing causing cpu spikes, no network (yes sometimes for windows update etc. gawd please)

you seem to know a lot about pcie/pci buses, but can't seem to point to software or tools to figure wether the nvme drive is causing spikes that might cause this problem, since it's the only thing i can't verify. i don't think it is the case, because this would cause dropouts (missing frames), and not stutters (frame gets duplicated.) the simple i/o display in processexplorer don't report anything untowards either.

and from doing my own research, i'm pretty sure no such tool exists, unless it's internal to hardware developers. so you have to understand, interventions like yours aren't useful in figuring out what is wrong. the loop-jumping you describe is symptomatic of a very simple situation: a broken sytstem, getting more complex and more broken. it's been like this ever since the press-f5-at-install hidden key for xp to install in standard pc mode instead of acpi. it didn't get any better! pc hardware simply isn't built for realtime performance, and looking at any other hardware or software support forum, it's not like 0 person report problems either.

this is the first scope system i have had issues with since 1999 though, i expected it to happen at some point, so it's no big deal, but one click PER 2 HOURS is so close to working that it makes me wonder, is all.

[garyb]

whenever win10 is involved there is always the chance for nonsense, but the h310 system should work. i'd bet it was the nvme.
i have seen more and less advanced systems work without stutters of any kind. there are too many variables to say much about what the issue is, compared to another machine entirely. i'm glad that you have a working system now.

[strctr_k]

i'd ask for more precise specs for those working stutter-free systems (exact win10 version, nvme drive model if any, etc) and full testing protocol, but i'm getting anxiety bursts just thinking about asking someone to list all their bios settings and full system configuration.

not ALL current motherboards with pci slots have worked well though =P

[Bud Weiser]

... i've moved my 3x scope pci cards rig back into a xw4600 ...

I have a xw4600 too meanwhile and I´m about setting it up w/ SCOPE 32Bit after I installed Win7 Pro SP1 x86 and some other software.
Because I need to save time,- may I ask for what´s the very best PCI slot for a single Creamware Power Pulsar PCI card ?

the xw4600 system works fine, the nvme drive is in the core i5 system with an intel 300 chipset, built late last year.

Is the NVME drive in your Core i5/Intel 300 chipset system the bootdrive and is it a SATA or PCI/M.2 NVMe x4 ?

Just for the case,-
there were users reporting occasional clicks and pops caused by trim function randomly kickin´ in, WHEN the fast (32GB/sec) NVMe drive was the bootdrive w/ the OS installed.
It was simply because the OS activity on that FASTEST drive hogged the PCIe bus while recording or playing back audio.



Bud

[garyb]

i'd ask for more precise specs for those working stutter-free systems (exact win10 version, nvme drive model if any, etc) and full testing protocol, but i'm getting anxiety bursts just thinking about asking someone to list all their bios settings and full system configuration.

not ALL current motherboards with pci slots have worked well though =P

what the heck do i know? i'm not asking questions or trying extreme tweaks, either.
the version of Windows10 does not matter, in my experience, and the bios settings are pretty basic. turn off EIST, hyperthreading and turbo. the other tweaks are not mandatory. why is an nvme so important? a regular HDD or SSD is plenty fast enough for a C: drive. an nvme is only needed for extreme sample streaming, but unless you are running your rig as a live synth, you won't really need one. if you really want to use the machine as a sample donkey, then just keep Scope in another computer. i cannot stand to spend ridiculous amounts of time making the computer do things it really is not made to do.

there are thousands of Scope systems out there, and only a couple have stutters. in fact, stuttering is not a normal Scope problem. that sounds like an overloaded system, but again, i'm not there. i don't know what is overloaded.

as far as Scope goes, i have not seen any problems with current motherboards, since socket 1155.

Windows 10 is NOT like earlier versions of Windows. you cannot simply choose which version of win10 to use and then never update it. this will make some serious problems as win10 will stubbornly attempt to update. win10 MUST have an internet connection, if you want it to work correctly. otherwise, the constant attempts to update will lead to clicking and popping and other issues. win10 is considered a SERVICE by m$. is is not a PRODUCT. it expects to be managed by m$ until m$ decides that you must replace it.

[valis]

i'm not sure you understand, the xw4600 system works fine, the nvme drive is in the core i5 system with an intel 300 chipset, built late last year.

the core i5 had no apparent problems: no shared irqs with the scope cards, pristine latencymon performance, nothing causing cpu spikes, no network (yes sometimes for windows update etc. gawd please)

you seem to know a lot about pcie/pci buses, but can't seem to point to software or tools to figure wether the nvme drive is causing spikes that might cause this problem, since it's the only thing i can't verify. i don't think it is the case, because this would cause dropouts (missing frames), and not stutters (frame gets duplicated.) the simple i/o display in processexplorer don't report anything untowards either.

and from doing my own research, i'm pretty sure no such tool exists, unless it's internal to hardware developers. so you have to understand, interventions like yours aren't useful in figuring out what is wrong. the loop-jumping you describe is symptomatic of a very simple situation: a broken sytstem, getting more complex and more broken. it's been like this ever since the press-f5-at-install hidden key for xp to install in standard pc mode instead of acpi. it didn't get any better! pc hardware simply isn't built for realtime performance, and looking at any other hardware or software support forum, it's not like 0 person report problems either.

this is the first scope system i have had issues with since 1999 though, i expected it to happen at some point, so it's no big deal, but one click PER 2 HOURS is so close to working that it makes me wonder, is all.

You're right, i misunderstood your last post and haven't tracked this full discussion (this is a long thread so I don't always watch it). My mistake =]

... i've moved my 3x scope pci cards rig back into a xw4600 ...

I have a xw4600 too meanwhile and I´m about setting it up w/ SCOPE 32Bit after I installed Win7 Pro SP1 x86 and some other software.
Because I need to save time,- may I ask for what´s the very best PCI slot for a single Creamware Power Pulsar PCI card ?

the xw4600 system works fine, the nvme drive is in the core i5 system with an intel 300 chipset, built late last year.

Is the NVME drive in your Core i5/Intel 300 chipset system the bootdrive and is it a SATA or PCI/M.2 NVMe x4 ?

Just for the case,-
there were users reporting occasional clicks and pops caused by trim function randomly kickin´ in, WHEN the fast (32GB/sec) NVMe drive was the bootdrive w/ the OS installed.
It was simply because the OS activity on that FASTEST drive hogged the PCIe bus while recording or playing back audio.



Bud

It's possible that NVME is still an issue, but for a different reason.

NVMe will also present a case where you can choose from the default MS drivers, AHCI mode in the OS (which puts the NVMe drive into a state where it might use the SATA protocol), or 3rd party drivers. In some cases the 3rd party driver can provide better compatibility, but multiple NVMe drives from different makers in the same system will make this situation problematic, which is why Windows defaults back to its normal state. In general AHCI rather than SATA mode for your m.2 NVMe slots will make things perform better and pass through SMART recording and so on as well. But if you're having issues, do some reading on the various drivers available, and ensure that your system isn't using an extra bridge chip (PLX typically) or Bifurcation mode when you use NVMe alongside PCIe GPU's and other PCIe devices. Making these changes willy nilly however can certainly adversely impact system performance, so proceed carefully and do testing & measurement with every change.

[Spindrift]

I'm using Asus Prime B460 with i5 10600k and M.2 NVMe as system drive. With PCi cards I had to run at medium latency to be completely glitch free, Xite I can run at minimal latency without a glitch. Even wave drivers are solid.

And while gary is right you will not need the performance of an NVMe drive to keep up with audio recording/playback, it does make the system much more responsive. Takes about 2 seconds to load a Scope project.
They are weird since they don't show up in bios, and had some issues in the beginning to get it up and running. But I can vouch that it doesn't cause any issues on the B460.

[strctr_k]

what the heck do i know? i'm not asking questions or trying extreme tweaks, either.
the version of Windows10 does not matter, in my experience, and the bios settings are pretty basic. turn off EIST, hyperthreading and turbo. the other tweaks are not mandatory. why is an nvme so important? a regular HDD or SSD is plenty fast enough for a C: drive. an nvme is only needed for extreme sample streaming, but unless you are running your rig as a live synth, you won't really need one. if you really want to use the machine as a sample donkey, then just keep Scope in another computer. i cannot stand to spend ridiculous amounts of time making the computer do things it really is not made to do.

calm down, i was just wondering wether it could it a problem or not, a simple yes or no would suffice. if you don't know wether nvme drives can cause clicks, just say so, and if you know for sure that some scope systems have nvme drives and are click-less, just say so too. "more and less advanced systems" is rather ambiguous.

in my experience, windows 10 version certainly did make my ni komplete audio 6's asio driver more stable and less clicky, so who knows, i was simply wondering.

i use the nvme drive because there was a slot for it on the motherboard and the drive as cheap, seriously. it's great for video editing, in fact amazing, but hardly necessary. why could it cause problems though? none of the scope 7 documentation mentions any.

i can link you a thread where petal had similar issues as mines and moved back to an earlier system, so that's at least 2 instances of newer systems with pci slots "that don't work". none of your thousand of scope system's users seem to post here so it's hard to judge from a user's point of view.

[strctr_k]

I have a xw4600 too meanwhile and I´m about setting it up w/ SCOPE 32Bit after I installed Win7 Pro SP1 x86 and some other software.
Because I need to save time,- may I ask for what´s the very best PCI slot for a single Creamware Power Pulsar PCI card ?

oh i have no idea! i have 3 pci cards so all te slots are full. on my install, none of the slots share an irq with the graphics' card slot i think (vanilla install.) i can check which pci slot has the least usb slots shared with it, if that's of any use. i never had issues with that with mine though, even with 4-5 usb midi devices in use.

the xw4600 system works fine, the nvme drive is in the core i5 system with an intel 300 chipset, built late last year.

Is the NVME drive in your Core i5/Intel 300 chipset system the bootdrive and is it a SATA or PCI/M.2 NVMe x4 ?

Just for the case,-
there were users reporting occasional clicks and pops caused by trim function randomly kickin´ in, WHEN the fast (32GB/sec) NVMe drive was the bootdrive w/ the OS installed.
It was simply because the OS activity on that FASTEST drive hogged the PCIe bus while recording or playing back audio.



Bud

ah that might be it. it's pcie/m.2 nvme x4, on the core i5, and yes it's the boot drive. i kept my scope install intact on my main machine, so i might try and swap in a single card and see if it works. many thanks for the suggestion!

[strctr_k]

It's possible that NVME is still an issue, but for a different reason.

NVMe will also present a case where you can choose from the default MS drivers, AHCI mode in the OS (which puts the NVMe drive into a state where it might use the SATA protocol), or 3rd party drivers. In some cases the 3rd party driver can provide better compatibility, but multiple NVMe drives from different makers in the same system will make this situation problematic, which is why Windows defaults back to its normal state. In general AHCI rather than SATA mode for your m.2 NVMe slots will make things perform better and pass through SMART recording and so on as well. But if you're having issues, do some reading on the various drivers available, and ensure that your system isn't using an extra bridge chip (PLX typically) or Bifurcation mode when you use NVMe alongside PCIe GPU's and other PCIe devices. Making these changes willy nilly however can certainly adversely impact system performance, so proceed carefully and do testing & measurement with every change.

my nvme drive vendor doesn't offer drivers sadly (only a dashboard-type app), so i use the default drivers. if anything i'd want things slower for audio!

[garyb]

well, aside from the hijacked thread, i am calm.

if you have usb controllers sharing irqs with Scope cards, you will have trouble. you must disable usb that shares with a card, because the Scope card cannot wait for the usb controller to finish talking. usb is extremely "chatty". it is constantly announcing itself, even when it's doing nothing. there are always plenty of usb controllers available.

no motherboard will work correctly if it is not setup correctly. Scope cards are not Windows soundcards, they work in a unique way. since they are realtime devices, things in the way of realtime operation will cause problems. it can get complicated, since the computer itself is far from a realtime device.

[Bud Weiser]

ah that might be it. it's pcie/m.2 nvme x4, on the core i5, and yes it's the boot drive. i kept my scope install intact on my main machine, so i might try and swap in a single card and see if it works. Many thanks for the suggestion!

O.k.,- and just only to let you know ...

After I got this info,- I consequently used a Samsung 960 Pro SATA SSD for OS/boot drive, used another Samsung 850EVO 500GB for "DATA" and leaved the Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe x4 1TB as the sample STREAMING drive for NI Komplete Ultimate Collectors Edition and the other Patriot NVMe x2 500GB for the other samples and drum libraries which just only LOAD.
For recording of audio signals, I stll use a WD VelocyRaptor 300GB SATA HDD, preventing from trim function kickin´ in out of the blue and ruin tracks.

19" rackmount, AsRock Z97 Extrem6, Win 7 Pro SP1 x64,- SCOPE v7.0 64Bit and XITE-1.
I run Reaper, Reason 10.4 and 11.3 as well as Presonuns Studio One Pro 4.x and Tracktion 7 in addition on that machine.
Also Tone2 NanoHost x64 just only for testing a single plugin etc. ...
No clicks and pops up to now.

I don´t use a graphics card because it would share w/ the Ultra M.2 slot the Samsung 970 EVO Plus uses.
So I use the processor´s iGPU.

And the XITE´s PCIe card sits in a (blue) PCIe 3.0 x4 slot being directly connected to the CPU.
It got it´s exclsuive IRQ that way !
When I had it in one of the PCIe x1 slots,- it shared w/ several other devices all on IRQ #19 ...a no-go !



Bud

[strctr_k]

well, aside from the hijacked thread, i am calm.

if you have usb controllers sharing irqs with Scope cards, you will have trouble. you must disable usb that shares with a card, because the Scope card cannot wait for the usb controller to finish talking. usb is extremely "chatty". it is constantly announcing itself, even when it's doing nothing. there are always plenty of usb controllers available.

this thread's been dead for 5 years at least, and sadly my intervention is quite pertinent. if you want me to start another thread to solve problems, you can try asking nicely, but seeing how brash and condescending ("with is an nvme so important?? it's only good for etc." -- i don't remember you or anyone else telling people not to install them in pci rigs either!) you come through generally, i personally do not feel like asking you to help me. i've been using these cards for 21 years, and being told these are realtime devices and not standard soundcard, wow. thanks. nvme drives are hardly extreme tweakings, they are just like every other drive: you insert, you boot, you format, off you go. no need to sync to a warp drive harmonizer to get it working! just a faster ssd drive.

again, claiming that ALL motherboards with pci slots work, but not knowing at ALL if nvme drives cause problems leaves me perplex. is this people you are in contact with privately? clients? where do you get your data pertaining to newer motherboards exactly? i'd prefer real, tangible information, not "bet", or "should be". do you want to pm me holger's email so i can ask him directly? i don't want to start a fight, i just want to know since i've spent a LOT of time debugging this, and just being dismissed like this feels weird.

as for the usb controllers, i was refering to the sharing in the bios: in the hp xw4600, if you press f10 you end up in the bios. in the advanced section, there is a section where you can enable/disable devices (generally ignored by windows), and set irq values that are totally ignored by windows.

i was not refering to sharing in windows proper. i was answering bud's question about the better pci slot to install a card in, which you did not answer either.

i'll go further and adress your "it sound like a performance/overload issue" comment: this is a 6 core i5, with reaper taking about 2% processor recording 2 stereo tracks, and *nothing else* but the scope software running. what could overload exactly? normal/above normal priority: no change, clicks. with and without registered process lasso balancing load: no change, clicks. i've tried playing with i/o priority: no change, clicks. open hardwaremonitor showing 10% cpu use max. overloads tend to produce buffer underruns, not duplicated copies of the same asio buffer in my experience, but you might know more about this than me. irrelevant anyway, as there is no way to me to test, but i will repeat, there were NO underruns, nor garbled data.

sorry for the text.

[strctr_k]

I'm using Asus Prime B460 with i5 10600k and M.2 NVMe as system drive. With PCi cards I had to run at medium latency to be completely glitch free, Xite I can run at minimal latency without a glitch. Even wave drivers are solid.

And while gary is right you will not need the performance of an NVMe drive to keep up with audio recording/playback, it does make the system much more responsive. Takes about 2 seconds to load a Scope project.
They are weird since they don't show up in bios, and had some issues in the beginning to get it up and running. But I can vouch that it doesn't cause any issues on the B460.

many thanks! mine didn't show up in the bios up-front either, but no issue otherwise!

btw i really don't know why you guys think i got an nvme drive for audio considerations, it was simply availability. ask first as a courtesy!

i will repeat that nobody on these boards or anywhere else ever mentioned that they could be a problem for pci rigs either, so i'm not sure why everyone flips. if they cause a known problem, please state it with source, proof, demonstration, etc. i've already demonstrated that they could switch power mode and potentially cause problems, i was just looking for confirmation or infirmation, that's all. it was the last thing i hadn't completely excluded in my case, that's all.

i'll damn well setup and use my computers as i damn please thank you very much, seriously, what kind of patronizing approach is this? i can multiply 3 (24 bit, 4 for 32) times 2 (stereo channel) times the sample rate to know exactly how much throughput in bytes/sec i need for one stereo channel, and the nvme throughput is something like 1000x enough or more! i should be fine, i record 2 stereo channels max these days anyway, but can never be too sure! i stream 0 samples, but like i said, for video editing and system drive, magical! an absolute minboggle. (and nothing in video editing requires a separate machine in my case, i need no additional hardware or drivers, but hey.)

[strctr_k]

ah that might be it. it's pcie/m.2 nvme x4, on the core i5, and yes it's the boot drive. i kept my scope install intact on my main machine, so i might try and swap in a single card and see if it works. Many thanks for the suggestion!

O.k.,- and just only to let you know ...

After I got this info,- I consequently used a Samsung 960 Pro SATA SSD for OS/boot drive, used another Samsung 850EVO 500GB for "DATA" and leaved the Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe x4 1TB as the sample STREAMING drive for NI Komplete Ultimate Collectors Edition and the other Patriot NVMe x2 500GB for the other samples and drum libraries which just only LOAD.
For recording of audio signals, I stll use a WD VelocyRaptor 300GB SATA HDD, preventing from trim function kickin´ in out of the blue and ruin tracks.

19" rackmount, AsRock Z97 Extrem6, Win 7 Pro SP1 x64,- SCOPE v7.0 64Bit and XITE-1.
I run Reaper, Reason 10.4 and 11.3 as well as Presonuns Studio One Pro 4.x and Tracktion 7 in addition on that machine.
Also Tone2 NanoHost x64 just only for testing a single plugin etc. ...
No clicks and pops up to now.

I don´t use a graphics card because it would share w/ the Ultra M.2 slot the Samsung 970 EVO Plus uses.
So I use the processor´s iGPU.

And the XITE´s PCIe card sits in a (blue) PCIe 3.0 x4 slot being directly connected to the CPU.
It got it´s exclsuive IRQ that way !
When I had it in one of the PCIe x1 slots,- it shared w/ several other devices all on IRQ #19 ...a no-go !



Bud

many thanks for the additional info! using the onboard gpu didn't change anything in my case re: clicks, but i don't think my pcie gpu shares an irq/slot with the m.2 slot. i'll keep that in mind if i re-test though!

i checked the xw4600, and, in the bios, all 3 pci slots share an irq with the usb controllers (the irqs change on both when you modify one or the other), but the 2 slots FURTHER AWAY from the pcie slots only share 2, while the closest one shares 3, so i'd prioritize the 2 others, but i doubt it'll change much in practice.

[valis]

this thread's been dead for 5 years at least, and sadly my intervention is quite pertinent. if you want me to start another thread to solve problems, you can try asking nicely, but seeing how brash and condescending ("with is an nvme so important?? it's only good for etc." -- i don't remember you or anyone else telling people not to install them in pci rigs either!) you come through generally, i personally do not feel like asking you to help me. i've been using these cards for 21 years, and being told these are realtime devices and not standard soundcard, wow. thanks. nvme drives are hardly extreme tweakings, they are just like every other drive: you insert, you boot, you format, off you go. no need to sync to a warp drive harmonizer to get it working! just a faster ssd drive.

again, claiming that ALL motherboards with pci slots work, but not knowing at ALL if nvme drives cause problems leaves me perplex. is this people you are in contact with privately? clients? where do you get your data pertaining to newer motherboards exactly? i'd prefer real, tangible information, not "bet", or "should be". do you want to pm me holger's email so i can ask him directly? i don't want to start a fight, i just want to know since i've spent a LOT of time debugging this, and just being dismissed like this feels weird.

as for the usb controllers, i was refering to the sharing in the bios: in the hp xw4600, if you press f10 you end up in the bios. in the advanced section, there is a section where you can enable/disable devices (generally ignored by windows), and set irq values that are totally ignored by windows.

i was not refering to sharing in windows proper. i was answering bud's question about the better pci slot to install a card in, which you did not answer either.

i'll go further and adress your "it sound like a performance/overload issue" comment: this is a 6 core i5, with reaper taking about 2% processor recording 2 stereo tracks, and *nothing else* but the scope software running. what could overload exactly? normal/above normal priority: no change, clicks. with and without registered process lasso balancing load: no change, clicks. i've tried playing with i/o priority: no change, clicks. open hardwaremonitor showing 10% cpu use max. overloads tend to produce buffer underruns, not duplicated copies of the same asio buffer in my experience, but you might know more about this than me. irrelevant anyway, as there is no way to me to test, but i will repeat, there were NO underruns, nor garbled data.

sorry for the text.

This thread wasn't dead for 5 years, it has a specific purpose that we've all used it for. Since this has gone on for another page, I do think it's perhaps time to take this to another thread and continue there. So I've split this off and moved this to a more relevant forum at the same time, feel free to continue from this point.

Also, "NVMe drives cause problems" is too general a statement, so garyb's response was also generalized (if things are working fine with a system, Scope is happy). What makes things 'work fine'? Drivers in proper order, devices correctly allocated the resources they need, and bus-hogging devices are either kept away from scope (no resource or slot sharing) or disabled if unused.

As for "what would overload", the "overload" in this case is something stealing bus cycles and not releasing itself in time, it's not a "CPU overload" issue per se. CPU power state changes, USB devices, slot sharing...etc. There are many things that could cause this and we've tried to dig into this a bit.

Overall, you're welcome to continue here but please avoid a condescending tone, we've been troubleshooting this stuff for more than 2 decades and may just have some information that you could benefit from. Asking people to 'calm down' rarely works btw

[strctr_k]

my condenscending tone? i've been quite courteous actually. i'm sorry you feel otherwise.

as for troubleshooting this for 2 decades, so have i, and i'm not impressed by the complete lack of useful information so far, which makes it hard to benefit from for the moment. i mean, spindrift and bud contributed useful information and were very nice. re-read your second and third paragraph, and tell me i'm the condescending one again!

[valis]

Please let's differentiate from informational responses (NVMe related, drivers etc) and the moderation of this topic. Moderation-wise, you have your own thread dedicated to the issues you (perhaps) wish to solve, and this forum is available for you to use to this purpose. The Masterverb test thread is a bit of a special thread around here, which you likely wouldn't know as a newcomer. So let's not debate that side of things...

Informationally, I would say that the answers you're getting are generalized because you're largely discussing symptoms that can have a great many causes. I did re-read our original response and it was unclear what machine currently houses your NVMe drive, and so my response made sense with that in mind. I apologized for not knowing your current configuration outlay, and attempted to give additional information. What more could one ask for? No clue how you see my responses about NVME drives & "overloads" condescending, they are accurate and indicate how generalized the information we have at play is thus far, it's not a dig at you personally.