Old Creamware Pulsar II in a new machine - will it work?

[rodos1979]

Hello my fellow Pulsarians!

Wow... it's been a looooong time I've been away!...

I have 2 Creamware Pulsar II cards sitting in my old P4 2.4GHz DAW. I have a new DAW now, which is a very powerful machine and I am tempted to move both my Creamware cards, or maybe one of them to the new one.
The specs are:
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
Intel i7 920
6GB RAM
512MB Gainward G 210 NVidia GPU
Dual partition, one Windows XP Pro and one Windows 7 Ultimate

My question is: will they work? I don't want to open both machines, go into all the trouble of moving cards around just to find that they don't work! So, if anyone is using them in a similar machine, please tell me if they work ok or if there are any issues!

Thank you very much for your help!


P.S. and O.T. ...I don't know how the PlanetZ is nowadays, since it has been years that I have not been here.. but back in the "old" days it was the most awesome forum with the most helpful and knowledgeable people!

[Sounddesigner]

I used 1 6dsp Project card in the Gigabyte X58 UD4P i had with no problems before switching to a Asus X58 Motherboard. Yours should work fine aswell. SCOPE works with modern computers.

[at0m]

Hey rodos1979, welcome back!

As long as you have a 32bit OS (XP?) and a free PCI slot, I don't see why it would not work eh It's just a 5minutes job to swap the cards, so go ahead!!

Congrats on your new beast

[rodos1979]

Thank you both for your replies! I am happy to be back!

The Windows 7 partition is 64bit. So I guess there are no 64bit drivers yet.. BTW, I have Scope v4. When 64bit drivers come out, are they going to work with version 4? Or will I have to update to version 5? (I don't want to spend another 200 euros )

[garyb]

the driver and program are one and the same. you will need v5 with win7/vista 32 or 64bit.

[next to nothing]

If i remember correctly Scope 4/4.5 works on win7 32-bit (Vista doesn't work, but win 7 does). For 64-bit you need a not-yet-released scope 5 64-bit version.

Also, to utilize 64-bit, make sure you have a 64 bit sequencer. A regular 32 bit sequencer (in example Ableton Live) wont see, and therefore wont be able to utilize, a 64bit plugin. There are workarounds such as JBridge that supposedly allows you to use a 64 bit plugin in a 32 bit sequencer, making you able to utilize yup to 4 GB of ram for a single VSTi within a 32 bit sequencer.

[rodos1979]

the driver and program are one and the same. you will need v5 with win7/vista 32 or 64bit.

So, no Win7 unless I pay another 198euros?... not nice!

I am going to swap the cards from one DAW to another tomorrow and see how it goes.

[next to nothing]

read my post above. You can run Scope 4 fine on win 7 if you choose to stay at 32 bit.

For 64 bit support you need to upgrade. And you probably also need to upgrade your sequencer and your VST plugins.

[astroman]

So, no Win7 unless I pay another 198euros?... not nice! ...

well, fyi... I paid 248 Euro for just the Plate and Ambient reverb
back then from STW - and would still call this a steal any day

cheers, Tom

[rodos1979]

I swapped the cards into my new machine. (I have a Creamware Pulsar II and an XTC card connected with two STDM cables)

I can hear occasional clicks and pops in the sound even when I play a simple mp3 file in Windows Media Player..

What can I do? I hope that my cards have not started to die after so many years!.. (they are both made in 2001)

[Sounddesigner]

I swapped the cards into my new machine. (I have a Creamware Pulsar II and an XTC card connected with two STDM cables)

I can hear occasional clicks and pops in the sound even when I play a simple mp3 file in Windows Media Player..

What can I do? I hope that my cards have not started to die after so many years!.. (they are both made in 2001)

I would start with turning off Turbo boost mode, Speedstep and all C-states in your Bios. They can cause problems for Audio-Production from what i've read. Here is the link to a couple threads documenting the problems - http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=28812

[rodos1979]

Thank you for your reply!

Will this be helpful for XP too? Or does it apply only to Win7? I am using the XP partition at the moment as my Win7 is 64bit and have no audio programs yet installed there.

BTW, my PC is supposed to be optimized for audio production, has been tested to run smoothly at the lowest asio buffers with an RME card and has an excellent review from SOS magazine.

I am going to try what you suggested and see if it makes any difference..

[Sounddesigner]

Thank you for your reply!

Will this be helpful for XP too? Or does it apply only to Win7? I am using the XP partition at the moment as my Win7 is 64bit and have no audio programs yet installed there.

BTW, my PC is supposed to be optimized for audio production, has been tested to run smoothly at the lowest asio buffers with an RME card and has an excellent review from SOS magazine.

I am going to try what you suggested and see if it makes any difference..

Everytime i read up on the problems those features caused the forum threads did not say the problems where O/S specific, so i assume they pertain to all O/S's. You'll need to try for yourself to see if turning them off will work for you or not.

Also the Dpc Latency Checker may help you find the problem. If your dpc latency is spiking in a large way or simply too high then the checker will reveal this and you'll need to disable some hardware devices (such as Wifi, soundcards, etc) in your Device Manager and the bios settings mentioned earlier to determine wich one is the culprit. Then run the dpc latency checker program again. High dpc latency can cause pops/clicks/etc. Here's the link to download the latency Checker program - http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml


PS. If the problem is actually the SCOPE cards then hopefully someone else here will offer some advice who is familiar with this type of problem or have good ideas on figuring out the problem, cause i can't help much in that regard.

EDITED

[rodos1979]

Thank you very much for your help!

I checked my BIOS and Turbo Boost, C1E, C3/C6/C7, CPU Thermal Monitor, EIST and Virtualization Technology all are already disabled. I then entered into my XP partition and the clicks/pops had gone!
I did a benchmark of my system using this tool. I tried the native Cubendo plugins test with the ULLI set to the lowest possible and I could load about 85 Multicompressors. So, I guess everything is OK! (BTW, my DPC latency under heavy load never goes more than 20microseconds)

I had a look in the Device Manager and one Pulsar2 has IRQ 17 and the other one IRQ 16 (sharing it with many other things including the NVidia graphics card). Is there a way to assign both to IRQ 17? Or this is not possible with an ACPI Multiprocessor PC?

P.S. I wish the clicks and pops don't come back again tomorrow!

[garyb]

no, you casn't force an irq with acpi. you can disable uneeded devices that are sharing irqs, in the device manager. do you have an extra pci slot available? if so, i'd move the card that's sharing with the graphics card....

[kyunghwee]

As long as your main (which ever one ends up being recognized by SFP as being the primary one) Pulsar II card does not share IRQ, you're okay.

The secondary Pulsar II IRQ doesn't matter since all communication is carried out via STDM cable. PCI slot for the second card just provides power, correct, garyb?

[garyb]

i couldn't confirm that 100%.

basically, if you have no problems, it's ok.
i would always try to avoid irq sharing if possible, although with some motherboards, some sharing is unavoidable. usually, system devices such as pci-e roots and sata controllers seem to rarely make trouble. i'd always disable usb controllers sharing irqs with any of the cards though, just for good measure. i'm obviously not the be-all know-it-all in this matter, however. my experience is mainly practical.

[rodos1979]

Hello and thank you all for the excellent information!

I don't experience any problems, except that I can hear some interference with the graphics card.
I have two PCI slots in my motherboard. My main card (the one which has the output plate) is located next to the graphics card and shares IRQ with it. I'll try to swap them around and see if there is any improvement! (I guess there will be! )

OT.. Which ASIO driver do you use with Cubase 5? I have SFP running at 48KHz as a slave to SPDIF. When I open Cubase I get an error and no sound. This doesn't happen in XTC mode...

[garyb]

asio2 flt.

[rodos1979]

Thanks! I checked my old DAW and yes, ASIO2 flt was the one I was using too.
BTW, I have read in the Cubase forum that the error I was experiencing was due to a bug in the scope asio drivers. But this Sonic-Core patch fixed the problem for me!


P.S. I swapped the cards in the pci slots and I think that there is no interference with the graphics card now!
P.S. Does anyone know how can I disable the popup "XTC plugins are not available..blah blah blah"?