Eugene Gavrilov

hello, 3538-hunters

I've decided to release 3538g for beta-testing. this release includes any pre-3538g fixes (3538f, 3538d, ...)

Installation:
if you don't have 3538c, go and install it first
download, install

changes: (compared to 3538c):
Initial GSIF2 support (without recording and/or MIDI-In/Out)<br>
Fixed issue with invalid icons in Speaker Test applet<br>
Fixed issue with Audigy2 AC-3 passthru for certain decoder models<br>
Added additinal ASIO performance tweaks for SMP/HT machines<br>
(see 'driver compatibility' window)
Fixed issues with ASIO control panel not saving changes<br>
ASIO sync code moved to kernel level<br>
Improved 'Driver Compatibility' window<br>
Changed default peak meter mode<br>
Fixed issue when renaming plugins (spaces)<br>
Fixed issue with kX Mixer handling multiple Surrounder instances incorrectly<br>
Improved SoundFont support for looped samples<br>
Fixed issue with 3538d...3538f with Audigy1 passthru

known issues:
when opening asio control panel, changing latencies, exiting asio host, you may experience system freezes (short-time) -- please report

please check:
audigy1, audigy2 ac-3 passthru
ac97<->i2s switch
soundfont loops [two types]

if you have HyperThreading-based Intel CPU or an SMP configuration, try enabling HT/SMP optimization (Driver compatibility -> SMP/HT ASIO Optimizations) -- let me know if you manage to get good results.

Non-SMP users: do NOT set values lower than 2ms -- your system may freeze! HyperThreading-only users: (without SMP): ASIO HT/SMP optimization might not work for you (system may freeze).

All ASIO users: please note that there should be performance boost [or at least is expected] for ASIO. Please report.

the link:
http://www.kxproject.com/kxdrv3538g-update.exe

Eugene

thomasabarnes

Great! Gona try it now. 3538f did improve my ASIO latency a bit. Thanks for your work, and for sharing it with us all, Eugene Gavrilov.

thomasabarnes

__________________

May a song always touch you in a positive way.
SONAR X1D Expanded, Windows 7 Pro 64Bit, MOTU UltraLite MK3, 150 GB HDD, 250 GB HDD, 1 TB x2 HDD 7200 rpm

My Music Production: Top 40, Contemporary Christian, Pop/Rock, Decent Rap, Inspirationals, and Children Songs

Samir

>> check: ac97<->i2s switch

Works smooth as milk on Audigy2! Good work on these vertical bright green Peak meters!

>> SMP/HT ASIO Optimizations

0.67 ms latency

Eugene, are you crazy?

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MU3NKA 3A HAPO6!

nakamichi

Hmmm...I can't manage to install this update at all without a mouse
I will have only a keyboard for now for a couple of days,so....

Also,do I need to uninstall 3538f to install 3538g,or I can install over it without removing anything?

Robert McClelland

No you don't need too it's an updated there not a full updated yet.

__________________
"XTREME AUDIO IS CRAP!" "There no support for it. It's crapist card on face of the earth it should be throw into the sun"
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1949536385.png

nakamichi

System may freeze under 2ms? Hmmm...just for curiosity I tested with the lowest 1ms latency on a non HT machine with 3538f and it didn't freeze at all. But the sound was awful,no pops at all,but it sounded like something you've never heard before (strangely,the sound was somewhat similar to the sound distortion I was talking about before when I was running FL Studio using ASIO with the kX manager not active in the system tray)
You can try and record this weird sound just for fun...the noise - it's so weird and fascinating

dj_stick

does it sound like everything is playing back slower than real time?

i have experienced that before when trying 2.66ms


any basic testing of AC-3 passthrough/decode gives me nothing

i can't get either card in use to give any sound when ac-3 decode is in use (disabling this causes the speakers to play the high frequency ticks that ac-3 is when played as normal s/pdif)

spdif bypass works fine however.

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Eugene Gavrilov

>> any basic testing of AC-3 passthrough/decode gives me nothing

I've tested AC-3 passthru - it works on my a2ex... unfortunately, I cannot test ac-3 decoding at the moment...

any other AC-3 - related reports?..

E.

nakamichi

No,that's not the kind of sound I get.I get 100% heavy high-frequency distortion.Everything sounds like like pure metallic trash.Nearly nothing of the original sound is there. Really weird.

S_Milton

>> check: ac97<->i2s switch

As Samir point, it works well now (including AC97 Reset)
Just for reference look at:
http://www.hardwareheaven.com/showpost...2&postcount=14



ASIO

With 3537
5.33ms Rock Solid- Bullet proof performance
2.66ms Stable performance but could manage to overload under heavy polyphony heavy apps like Arturia CS80

With 3538f
(Tested with Chainer and Arturia CS80)
2.66ms (128 samples) Rock Solid ? Bullet proof performance
100 samples, just a Grrrrrrr when a key is pressed
80 samples, worked well, just one click each two-three minutes (more or less) on fast sequences on keyboard
Less than 80: unusable.

With 3538g
(Tested with Chainer and Arturia CS80)
2.66ms (128 samples) Rock Solid ? Bullet proof performance
96 samples Rock Solid
Less than that: unusable, but very interesting sound effects.

Behavior:

When launching Asio apps, there is a small delay (3-5 seconds more than normal), but no freeze of the screen.

When opening ASIO control panel and closing it there is no freeze if no changes are made to settings

When opening ASIO control panel and closing it there is a small freeze if changes are made to settings (5 seconds). Window of host app is freeze but cursor is not, nor other windows or apps.

This is when you open ASIO panel from within host app.

When ASIO panel is opened from KxManager there is no freeze, just a warning to restart ASIO apps.

Athlon 2000, VIA KM266 chipset, 768 MB ram Unoptimized for sound system (but lean anyway)
Audigy1 Platinum EX

Well, good night is very late here in Venezuela, tomorrow may be I tell you a funny thing of this testing.

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MS

Robert McClelland

Very well job I notice improvements on 5.1 speakers sounds

__________________
"XTREME AUDIO IS CRAP!" "There no support for it. It's crapist card on face of the earth it should be throw into the sun"
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1949536385.png

Robert McClelland

quick questions higher the better or lower the better in buffer setings? right now I got 8.70ms 65536byes 16buffers and 4096samples?

__________________
"XTREME AUDIO IS CRAP!" "There no support for it. It's crapist card on face of the earth it should be throw into the sun"
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1949536385.png

dj_stick

ok further comments on AC-3

passthrough appears to work when spdif bypass is active, i get the AC-3 decode tooltip popup in the corner, but no sound…

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Robert McClelland

I also notice that MediaPlus dancers don't work with line in even with patch updated installed (:P

__________________
"XTREME AUDIO IS CRAP!" "There no support for it. It's crapist card on face of the earth it should be throw into the sun"
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1949536385.png

thomasabarnes

Ok I tied out 3538g with Sonar 4. I was running 6 Audio tracks, 4 softsynths, and Amplitube in 1 track.

8 ms latency stable
5.xx ms latency has some pops clicks, but useable

great work!

I thought my PC was messing up til I read a post above reporting the same problem I was experiencing:

-When I push play in Sonar, there is a 3-5 second delay (freeze) before the project starts playing. The project also freezes for 3-5 seconds when I press stop.This delay (freeze) also occurs when I change the ASIO latency setting via Options/Audio in Sonar. Yet, as stated above by another user, the freeze doesnt ocurr when the ASIO Latency setting is changed by using the ASIO control Panel via the kX icon on the taskbar outside an ASIO program.

This ASIO driver makes lower ASIO a reality for me with my 1.3 GHz, 512 MB DDR system specs. Other system specs are in my signature. I have an older system, so this is exceptionally good ASIO performance for my system specs in my view. I can only get a useable 20 ms latency with the Creative ASIO drivers.

Thanks for the work you do, Eugene!

__________________

May a song always touch you in a positive way.
SONAR X1D Expanded, Windows 7 Pro 64Bit, MOTU UltraLite MK3, 150 GB HDD, 250 GB HDD, 1 TB x2 HDD 7200 rpm

My Music Production: Top 40, Contemporary Christian, Pop/Rock, Decent Rap, Inspirationals, and Children Songs

Rogacz

When using ASIO playback (Foobar2k) any other sound sources have huge lag (even clicks in iexplore, and I can`t run any audio processing program. What`s more, after quitting playback, computer freezes for few seconds. I`m using Audigy 2 (SB 0244)

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fvi

hi all,

I installed 3538g, and use it as is (no tweaks)
-No Asio boost for me (compare to 3537), i'm still stuck to 5.33ms.
-with 3538, though the sound seems to be as usual, everything in GUI is slow down :
* in Cubase
* in the kx mixer (the sliders take age to refresh)

it looks promising anyway, great job !

__________________
Asrock 939Dual SataII / A64 x2 @ 2600Mhz / 2Gb PC3200 / Emu APS / Kx3538h

Rogacz

Yeah, refresh problem can really play on nerves.

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LuHash

no boost for me either...
and when listen something in winamp/foobar on asio plugin, wav sounds in other programs have strange reverb... when using waveout output this problem disspears :/

Robert McClelland

Oh the peak is fix too. there even now.

__________________
"XTREME AUDIO IS CRAP!" "There no support for it. It's crapist card on face of the earth it should be throw into the sun"
http://www.speedtest.net/result/1949536385.png

Toadly_Ossum

Ive had some general stabilty problems with 3538g.

A few times Cubase SX has stoped responding requiring a reboot. This happened when changing latency via cubase internal sound options, Should I be using the kX applet for that? Ive allways made latency changes inside Cubase in the past with no problem.

Also Ive had problems with using MidiOx and Midi Yoke since installing 3538g, If I start cubase with midiox running it freezes at "intializing midi" This may be unrelated but it happened right after installing 3538g.

Toad

dj_stick

restart the application each time you change audio driver settings. i think this is an issue within cubase itself

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Toadly_Ossum

Confirmed my MidiOx problem by reinstalling 3537. everything back to normal(which is awesome). I fully expect that 3538 will be even better, but alas I have too many projects in the works to continue running the beta.

Toad

JJones

'c' issue?

I noticed what was to me a new plugin called 'Dynamic Processor', I don't remember seeing it before anyway. The problem that I have us this: I set up the plug in 'normalize' preset and run an external radio feed through it so I can go to sleep with a quiet flat music, but when I wake up the plugin seems to have lost track of what should be a normalized level (the sound seems to get quieter and quieter, slowly) and I can't hear anything at all. I open up the plugin interface and it instantly readjusts and now there is sound.

I again I don't know what version of the suite this problem first appeared becaused I have not seen nor used this plug before.

not tested the 'g' release, the slider lag issue worries me!

Cheers!

dj_stick

the plug-in has been there for a while afair

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Rogacz

This is really strange, sometimes when using ASIO playback I`m experiencing system slowdown, and sometimes even program hangs. However I noticed, that only programs that play pure .wav files are affected. So when I`m listening to music through ASIO I can`t sometimes even check my mail or explore the web. Weird.

It seems like ASIO is blocking all card resources, so nothing else can be sampled through it.
Everything was allright before 3538g version.

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nakamichi

Amazing,truly amazing work Now I can get as low as 2.0 ms on my machine With 3538f it was 2.67 ms 2.66ms works very solid now for even more demanding stuff.
Also,the peak meter looks great now,just as I wanted. This driver is beginninig to kick ass now...
...but,there's still some stuff to fix or add...

Things that I would like to be fixed/added for the next release:

1.Add an instant shortcut to run the Peak Meter with right-click on the kX System Tray icon menu.Opening the mixer every time and going through it is tedious.
2.Installation cannot be completed with only a keyboard.Make the kX setup screen keyboard-friendly,by adding Alt-_ and TAB options.Also make the mixer keyboard friendly with TAB and cursor keys to access every slider and option.
3.System hang during the ASIO control panel setup needs to be eliminated.(I experienced this with only 3538g,but not with 3538f)
4.I would like the help file to be added on the kX project page for download (just the help file),or the download help file in the driver menu to be directed to download only the help file,and not redirect you to the kX download page where you can only download the whole driver package.
Or,you can add an option to the driver setup menu to extract only the help file,and not install any drivers (this is useful for those who didn't extract the help file while installing the drivers,but they need the help now).
5.Implementation of the long-awaited 24/96 ASIO support.

And,one question:

- If I don't use surround at all,only stereo,should I set the speaker settings in the Windows control panel to 5.1 or to Desktop Stereo speakers? I've set them in the kX mixer to 2.0 Stereo,but in the Windows Sound options,it is 5.1 Surround.
Do I have to change that too or should I leave it as it is?

JohnMcClane

Leave windows config at 5.1, make changes through surrounder

miguel

kxasio.dll from 3538f and previous versions run fine, a bit better than 3537. 128 samples and all 16in/16out running simultaneously without trouble.
But with 3538g even just 2 out and 512 samples it still crackes, very weird.

This happens with an AMD 900 and an e-mu APS.

Samir

Confirmed, happends to me too... 3538g only, system would freeze for 3-4 sec. In my case, it only happends when ASIO playback STOPS!!!?! It looks similar to situation when you put some CPU hungry process to High Priority, and wait for it to end...

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