The End of my CW Excursion

coc999 · Post by **coc999** » Wed Jan 21, 2004 1:30 pm

Hello Gonzoft , sorry for your problems , but you should consider this :next time before to choose a computer choose the card you like first and after the computer

Even if i know nothing about computers i don't believe in the legends , just plug it and it works...
When i read threads here i have never seen a configuration problem that has not been solved (i think it is rare)...lot of people here know their system and more , with About 2000 users of this forum it is strange that nobody was able to help you ?
I think you will miss a constructive platform .
In term of synths quality and "operative functions" you will not have a big choice and at this level of work (cw is a "BIG SOUND" pro plateform and also "BIG SOUND" amateurs plateform ).
Music has a part of technic that we all should accept ...
Good luck with the next card (put some songs) in the music forum when you will achieve a track ...
ps:All i say is not technical and not helpfull but maybe useful to hear...

GonZoft · Post by **GonZoft** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:16 pm

I have an Asus mobo with intel P750 chipset, P4 cpu, certified RAM, etc. No IRQ conflicts. This is what is supposed to be the best for CW cards anyway. Running the CW cards in XTC mode with HT on does not make any problems, Cubase SX seems to handle HT good and pass it well to the CW cards. But as soon as I launch SFP, I can be sure that 10 minutes later I'm going to have a crash. Disabling HT helps, but what the hack, you know? I am not going to disable HT or go back to an old P3 without HT only to make SFP happy. It's up to CW to modernize SFP and make it compatible to new things. But they don't. They never did, actually. So I'll be off as soon as I decided what new sound card to buy.

Cheers.

GonZoft

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 5:10 pm

Well Gonzoft, my own position on the subject of 'innovation' is probably completely contrary to yours

I certainly do appreciate any technological progression, but my observations over the years have told me a different story.

Modern CPUs aren't exploited very much due to badly programmed operating systems (and often applications as well).
Hyperthreading possibly uses the CPU a little better, but properly written software would achieve speedups way beyond that.
Still industry sticks to buzzword marketing without actually solving more important issues - simply because time is money and numbers are easier to advertize than facts.

Imho the approach of CW to not just jump on any 'modern train' that comes along is quite reasonable - not very fancy though.
I don't think they should ignore everything for all times, but focus on the main features.

It's up to M$soft or Apple to provide proper multi-CPU support in their OSes - yet they don't seem to be able to work it out.
Muliprocessor boards are available since the days of the PentiumPro but with what results for regular (non server) OS versions ?

I've installed several so called 'high-end' boards, but never found anything as solid and versatile as SFP considering the overall value.
In fact I've asked myself (for example with the Korg 1212) about the mental health of the software supplier.
I've recently aquired a 'top' package for the Mac (Unity DS1) which is intended as something like SFP in software. It is a piece of crap compared to SFP

(I only paid 50 bucks and the samples are worth that amount, but else ???)

Anyway I do respect your reasons as an experienced user, but imho you focus on the wrong part of the system.
Unfortunately my 2 Pentium 4 servers aren't ready yet, (so I could add some real world numbers) but I certainly will check HT's capabilities and bench them.

cheers, Tom

Post by **hubird** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 5:41 pm

I never ever had a system crash caused inside or by SFP.
Only Cubase in combination with ASIO did crash regulary, which obviously has to do with the limitings of the CPU.
(I say did crash, coz I learned a nice trick here: I now disable audio in Cubase/Options before changing to another ASIO program or things like that).
SFP is really top relyable, can't say nothing else

Wish you luck anyway

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 6:28 pm

Gonzoft:

You say you have no IRQ conflicts. One thing I learned early on is that not all IRQ conflicts show up in the device manager. That's right it sometimes lies!

GonZoft · Post by **GonZoft** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:49 am

If my problem was IRQ conflicts or any other known misconfiguration, then I would have crashes also in XTC mode and in SFP mode with disabled HT. But I don't. I only get crashes in SFP mode with enabled HT.

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 8:45 am

I would remove every pci board except the CW board and see how well it works. Maybe you already tried this.

valis · Post by **valis** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 3:09 pm

There are various levels of HT support across the different P4 core versions. The early Xeons (which I have) that first had HT enabled showed little gain and often as much as 10-15% performance hit, even on a system designed with multiprocessing in mind. As they have updated the P4's core so has HT improved. Meaning, perhaps you have an older P4 core that somehow has an HT conflict with your particular choice of software and hardware? Also, the latest win2k service pack enabled it for win2k but winXp pro sp1 is recommended for OS (or linux but that's not SFP related

Honestly, all the claims for performance improvement via HT in cubase etc. I find hard to believe, as HT only double schedules SOME simple integer arithmatic. I run a dual Xeon box here and have put Nuendo and Sx through their paces many times (I own nuendo 1.x & 2 but not Sx) and I can say with quite a bit of confidence that not only is that option often less than stable with SFP but you also don't see the 30%-50% performance improvement that Steinberg promised me.

sandrob · Post by **sandrob** » Mon Jan 26, 2004 5:44 pm

On 2004-01-19 17:14, thorkell wrote:
PS. I just want to warn you so your disappointment will not be endless - in my personal experience both the UAD1 and powercore cards have some issues with with HT as wellas with PCI bandwith and yes my UAD1 card does lot of clicking and popping sometimes, so maby you should abandon computer recording completely - it is after all on the edge technology!

pulsar + uad-1 + tc powercore with HT enabled without any single minor problem.
i never had better system

Eric Dahlberg · Post by **Eric Dahlberg** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 3:58 am

On 2004-01-22 14:16, GonZoft wrote:
Running the CW cards in XTC mode with HT on does not make any problems

Why not just stick with this then? Sure, you sacrifice some functionality by doing so but you'll still be left with much more than other soundcards offer you (if you use the XTC plug-ins, that is). I only use SFP for mastering & switch to XTC whenever I'm tracking/mixing.