Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: earman Feb 26 2010, 06:38 AM

Ok GMC I need your help. Every since I installed my Pod GX with Pod Farm, I've had an annoying problem with it. My sound (no matter if I've got Pod Farm running or just iTunes) will start 'skipping' in sync with my hard drive LED light that blinks on my computer case.

The two solutions I've tried are:

1) adjusting the Pod buffer size in my computer's control panel
2) running a disk defrag (seems to help a little)

I'll admit, my computer is a little old and outdated, but I feel it is still plenty powerful enough to run this GX hardware. I've got a Pentium 4 processor with 2.87GB of RAM.

My computer speakers are connected to my Pod GX output, and while I have a Soundblaster Audigy 2 soundcard, I have the GX running as a USB soundcard so I can hear my guitar and .mp3's at the same time.

If it helps I can record a video of the skipping sound that occurs so you can get an idea of what I'm dealing with. This problem is driving me insane!! It doesn't happen on my laptop..

Posted by: Fran Feb 26 2010, 09:01 AM

The light of your hard drive blinks when it's working storing/moving data. And that's when the skipping happens. That points to the hard drive.

As you have enough processor and RAM, once again it makes me think of the HD. I guess it might be too old/over burdened or just too slow.

Check that there aren't any extra apps running in the background that make your hard drive do an extra job, if you have something auto-updating, or your antivirus running an scan, or whatever that is an extra load to the HD.

Posted by: MickeM Feb 26 2010, 10:40 AM

Make sure you're using the ASIO sound driver and not the one from your soundblaster card. That Soundblaster hardware maybe you even could turn off?

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Feb 26 2010, 12:29 PM

If the skips are happening at the rate of the HDD LED, there is definitely a connection there. I would check the HDD first. What is your HDD configuration, and what is their current state?

Posted by: earman Feb 26 2010, 06:07 PM

Ok I'm running two separate HD's. One 80gb and one 20gb (both Western Digitals). I just downloaded Data Life Guard software from Western Digital to see if it could help anything. One thing I did find out is that it told me my 80g was my 'secondary master' and my 20gb was my 'primary master.' Windows and all my system/program files are all on my Drive C:, the 80gb HD. Shouldn't this be my Primary master? I'm not sure if this could be a problem or not but I can try swapping pins around and seeing if that helps...

Oh and the 80gb uses NTFS and the 20gb uses FAT32 file systems.

Posted by: jafomatic Feb 26 2010, 06:21 PM

What's the RPM speed of those drives? Are they 5400rpm or 7200 or 10k or what?

Posted by: earman Feb 26 2010, 06:46 PM

5400.. I'm pretty sure. They're not Raptors I know that.

Posted by: tonymiro Feb 26 2010, 07:14 PM

A lot of HD activity is sometimes a sign that the platter is about to fail. Again, it may be an indication that there is not sufficient room on the HD for the swop file. However HD isn't the only possible cause here - just the most likely. Another is that your pc is struggling to stream the data across the FSB. Just to be on the safe side back up any essential stuff on your HDs asap.

Primary/secondary - depends on how you have the jumpers set but the configuration I'd have expected to see would have been the 20GB as the primary drive and C partition with Windows and the 80 as the secondary for data...

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Feb 28 2010, 04:55 PM

5400rpm is relatively slow, and if you are doing audio projects, HDD must perform many read & write functions simultaneously. To simply put, for your current use, it's not going to cut it, upgrade is needed very soon.
My advice to you would be to buy bigger HDD unit that has at least 7200rpm. They are very cheap these days, I believe 500GB internal one can be found for ~50$.

Posted by: earman Mar 1 2010, 05:29 AM

Ok guys thanks for your advice. I'll probably get a new hard drive. I really need to give in and build/buy a complete new desktop and start my home recording rig

actually Ivan I think I'm running at 7200RPM on this hard drive. Here's a link to it on newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822135106

I guess the next step up would be a 10,000 RPM one. While I know it would increase my overall performance, I'd be really upset to spend ~$80 and this not fix my problem. I'm wondering if I should invest in an internal soundcard interface or EMU box..

Posted by: Fran Mar 1 2010, 12:45 PM

I'd say that 7200 rpm should be enough. I have no problem running it on 7200 HDs.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Mar 1 2010, 02:00 PM

If it is 7200rpm, you shouldn't have any problems. If the discs are full (less than 15% of space available on them), and if you run system files, vst processes and audio files from same discs, this is where the problems occur.

Posted by: earman Mar 3 2010, 09:41 PM

Ok so I enabled my Soundblaster Audigy 2 internal soundcard (I had it disabled in case it was causing a conflict between my Pod GX). There is zero skipping in my sound with this soundcard running now.

With this being said I don't think it's my hard drive that is the problem. Also, when I run my Pod GX on my laptop, there is no skipping problem to speak of (so it can't be a defective unit) . Maybe my desktop just doesn't like the GX!?

I might have to start doing all my recording on my laptop, which is much newer and has better components than my desktop, but I still feel that home recording is better done on a solid desktop than a laptop which is made for portability if that makes any sense....

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Mar 3 2010, 09:49 PM

Ah so you have an Audigy, this completely changes the problem!

As a matter of fact, I had very similar problem with both of these devices before. The solution for me was to remove the Audigy from the system completely, and removing all the drivers. Also, make sure the POD is working on 44.1 or 48K resolution, because Audigy works on 96 by default.

Posted by: earman Mar 3 2010, 11:45 PM

Ok I removed the Audigy and reinstalled the Pod. It seems to have helped a bit, and I thought my woes were completely gone until I tried to preview a timeline in a Sony Vegas project, and bam, my skipping came back.

I am not sure if I have the 44.1 or 48 K resolution though. Is that the same as Default Sample Rate? Mine's at 48000 Hz right now.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Mar 4 2010, 12:01 AM

Have you deinstalled the drivers for Audigy completely?

Posted by: earman Mar 4 2010, 12:20 AM

Yeah I did, everything. As I said above I'm not sure if I have the resolution set correctly as you mentioned. Do any of these processes seem out of place (hogging too much ram?). This was taken after I rebooted my computer, sitting idle on the desktop.

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Mar 4 2010, 12:33 AM

What is TeaTimer.exe ?? Its eating A LOT of ram!

Posted by: earman Mar 4 2010, 12:49 AM

It's Spybot - Search and Destroy's background process that scans for spyware and stuff from what I understand. It is eating up a ton of ram though.

Posted by: jafomatic Mar 4 2010, 02:04 AM

It appears that teatimer has a checkered (or chequered) history with some updates including poor performance. I'm also getting the impression from the SB forums that it may be monitoring your temp space for potential threats. If your temp space has some large audio files, or many small files of any kind getting left in there, it may be best to clear that out.

This is also a process I wouldn't even want running if I'm going to tax my machine with audio and video software at the same time.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Mar 4 2010, 02:32 AM

I don't think teatimer is the problem, I use Spybot all the time and never had any issues with it.

Have you checked the buffer slider in Line 6 control panel?

Posted by: earman Mar 4 2010, 03:03 AM

Yeah multiple times. I think it's time to label it an unsolved mystery. I'll call Line 6 customer support and see if they have anything to say. I will do my MTP recordings on my laptop for now.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

Posted by: Bogdan Radovic Mar 4 2010, 02:59 PM

If its not a big hustle you can always format your PC drive and install fresh copy of the Operating system and software you need. Problems with performance should disappear.

Posted by: earman Mar 4 2010, 10:08 PM

I never thought about doing a format. It's been awhile and I'm about due a fresh start on this PC. I should have time this weekend so I'll let y'all know if it fixes the problem.

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Mar 5 2010, 02:35 AM

I hope it gets cleared soon mate. Let us know how it went.

Posted by: earman Mar 5 2010, 03:25 AM

If you don't hear from me after a week or two.. something went horribly wrong during the format and I've lost the internet forever! Keep rocking without me.

Haha, joking.


-Brandon

Posted by: Ivan Milenkovic Mar 5 2010, 05:14 PM

Heheh, hope it will not happen

Posted by: earman Mar 5 2010, 11:47 PM

Well it looks like the problem is solved. I formatted my hard drive and did a fresh install of Vista Ultimate (not liking having to go to Vista really but it fixed the problem) and I'm going to now keep my OS and data on two separate drives.

C: 20gb drive with Vista only on it
E: 80gb drive with all my old data on it (still has Windows XP files and I need to clean it up still)

But so far everything runs smooth, many applications going at once and ZERO skipping. Now I can actually get something done without wanting to break everything in my room!

Thanks for the suggestion to format and all the other tips