Licho

I'm experiencing this problem that is driving me CRAZY.
When I play specific soundfonts on sonar, or any other program, my PC becomes inestable, and after that It freezes and I have to reboot.
It happens with some soundfonts that I've downloaded from internet, but also with ones I made myself.
I would like to know If some one else has the same problem, or If anybody can receive a 1.5 mb soundfont file from me to test it on your system.

My PC is an AthlonXP2000, 512mb ram, APS card.

----Hardware / Software configuration---------------
Driver Name:kX Audio Driver (Debug)
Driver Date: Mar 27 2003 00:01:41
Driver Version: 5.10.00.3531 - debug
DB Name:none
EMUAPS [dc00]
PCI Information:
Device: 21102 Subsys: 40011102 ChipRev: 5
Card has MPU device
Card is EMU APS
Card HAS NO AC97 codec
Port: dc00 Irq: 5
Playback buffer: 20a0
Record buffer: 4000
Number of AC3 buffers: 8
Tank memory: 256 kb

Eugene Gavrilov

could you pls make the test soundfont smaller (perhaps by shorting the samples?)

/Eugene

Licho

Hi eugene. Thanks for having me in mind. I will make the sound font smaller so I can send it to you.
Where should I send it, and wich is the maximum size of the file?

Licho

Eugene, I've been crying the whole day (literally).
I have to make a music and It's impossible because my PC hangs every 5 minutes of being playing with sound fonts. It's driving me crazy. I would like to know if I am the only one that is having this problem. It might be my $%#$% via chipset mother, or my APS. I don't know if it's a driver problem, but my PC only hangs when playing sound fonts.

The problem is not with ALL soundfonts, but with speciffic ones. I really don't know what they have in common. I really don't find anything in common on these soundfonts.

I've been testing the whole day and this sound font I send to you, is driving me crazy. If some one can download it, and play for a while with sound "Fill sulky 02" or "sulky kit" it would be very helpfull (they are instuments number 2 and 3)
I notice many "clicks" when playing them. They are NOT on the wav files (it's obvius because they appear at different positions everytime I press a key).

One last thing: when the PC hangs, I notice a sound comming from inside the CPU. It's very low sound, so I can't realize from where it's comming, BUT, it could be the CD Recorder, because once the PC freezes, I can't open it anymore (with the eject button). The other CD drive, keeps opening if I press eject. They are in the same IDE.

The sound font is here:
www.puzzolo.com.ar/untitled.sf2

Thanks in advance:
Lisandro Puzzolo.

Eugene Gavrilov

hello

I've tried your soundfont -- I've been playing the instruments 2 & 3 for >5 minutes (on E-mu APS) and found no problems or clicks..
it seems that your Via chipset is responsible for the hangs

pls re-read our 'Via 686B' article

/Eugene

Licho

Hi again Eugene. Thanks for your testing.
Tomorrow I will move my APS, and other stuff to my old PII, and see what happens.
I've read all the stuff about my #$·#|@# via chipset, and done everything in my hands. But the problem is still there.
Here is an mp3 with the noises I get:
www.puzzolo.com.ar/noises.mp3

Thanks again:
Lisandro Puzzolo.

Licho

Hello Eugene. I've updated my motherboard bios. I've installed the VIA Hyperion 4in1, installed George's latency patch, and I still get my computer hangs when playing specific soundfonts.

If it's a motherboard problem, and I have to work (in order to keep eating) I should change it. Can you tell me wich motherboards doesn't have problems working with soundfonts, audio, etc?

Thanks to everybody that can help me, or telling me their experience.

Lisandro Puzzolo.

Licho

Thanks to everyone that helped me. And I hope I can help some one else posting my solution.

I've updated my BIOS, but I think that didn't make any difference.

What really did, was taking off all the cards from the PCI slots, and put just the APS card in one. Install the drivers, and test it. I did it until I found one slot where there was no noises like before.

I left it, and let Cakewalk running for the whole night, playing a song that when I played before, after a couple of measures it hanged my PC.

At morning, I went to see my PC, and it was still playing the song. So I put back toguether all the other cards on the pci slots. It's working TOO much better now.
There are still little issues, but never comparable with the ones I had before.

I even did a clean windows install. Without the George's PCI patch, there are many noises. With the patch, the noises are gone. So I suggest to do the following after a clean windows install:
1 - Install the VIA all1one drivers
2 - Install the KX drivers
3 - Install the Georges's latency patch
4 - Install other AC97 drivers than the ones in the via all1one, because they use to loose the audio input. (the combo audio from via page works fine).
5 - If you use Sonar, you should install the 2.2 patch in order to fix some midi isues (as midi delays between the key press, and the sound)

I hope to help someone else, because I really had a pain in my #$&% trying to solve this.

Licho

(without that, the George's patch have no effect on my pc)

Eugene Gavrilov

thanks for your 'investigation'
I hope this will help people fighting with VIA chipset

/Eugene

Licho

The PC is not hanging anymore, but there are still many noises when playing some sound fonts. When the noises start to sound, they seem to replicate and souns on every sound font (even when that soundfonts didn't fired the noises at first).

Eugene Gavrilov

could you give a more detailed description?
is the problem random or can it be easily reproduced?

/E

Licho

Hello Eugene. It's nice to have notices from you.

The problem is easily reproduceable, at least on my pc.
The problem is not very random...
I'm going to try to explain it better.

I start cakewalk, load some soundfonts, play some notes with my piano keyboard in order to hear the soundfonts, and when I press a key for at least 1 or 2 secconds and left it pressed, a high frequency noise appears. It seems to not happen with every soundfont. For example, I have a piano soundfont that works very good. But with some guitar soundfonts the noises are horribles. Of course, they are not in the soundfont, because they appear everytime at different positions. But everytime you press a key, (or almost everytime) you get the noise. But, if i use for example the guitar soundfont, or any other that causes the noises to appear, the piano soundfont (that was clean at first) begins to have noises too. I'm not playing all that sounds at the same time. Just first the piano, later the guitar, and later the piano.

I really don't know anything about how the drivers work, but it seems that besides the wav data of the soundfont, it's reading some garbage from memory and making it sounds (just guessing...)
Of course i will try everything in my hands that you suggest in order to find the cause of this problem, and helping to fix it.

Does anybody else has experimented noises like this? Or everybody else are getting a clean sound when using soundfonts?

Thanks to everybody again:
Lisandro Puzzolo.

Licho

It seems that the noises have a seccond of timing, I mean, ever one seccond, you get the noise. Should an mp3 with it could help to find the cause? Is there anything I can do to help you? Thanks again: Lisandro Puzzolo

Licho

I've noticed also, that the noises are processed by the soundfont filters. For example, if the soundfont has a filterQ, or a filtercutoff, the noises get filtered along with the original wav. Do you think this could be a driver problem? or a hardware problem? I have a via chipset (patched, etc etc etc etc), so I can't tell if this thing is another via problem or not.

Right now, after being playing with soundfonts, my PC is very slow, so I will have to reboot it in order to get it functioning again.

Thanks again:
Lisandro Puzzolo

Eugene Gavrilov

it seems that sample data becomes corrupted after some time
this explains the reason for the applied filters / effects / envelopes

I'll check this issue...

/Eugene

Licho

Hi Eugene. I've been reading a lot on the viaarena forums, and I found that many poeple was having problems with SoundBlaster cards. One of the possible solutions mentioned something related with the usb ports, so I decided to verify that. Well.. I've found something VERY strange. With all the usb devices unplugged, i had no noises for at least 2 hours (It's a lot of time!!!). With my webcam plugged in, there are still NO noises. But with my usb memory card reader (for compact flash, smart media, etc) the noises are BACK!!.

At first I thought it was some IRQ conflict problem, but the noises are there even If I plug my aps sound card on the 3rd pci bus (the one that doesn't share IRQ on my motherboard).

My bios is configured with the ACPI enabled, so there is still one test to do: disable it, and reinstall windowsxp. It's a little bit messy right now, because I have too much work to do, but I will try it on a future.

I've installed the via usb patch but that didn't fix anything.

Does anybody have the same problem?

Thanks in advance:
Lisandro Puzzolo

Eugene Gavrilov

hmm... sounds strange...
seems to be a PCI latency issue
I'm unsure if this problem can be completely fixed

/Eugene

P.S.
try to search the net for bios updates etc...