Subject:Terratec Phase 26 USB

Posted by: booda

Date:9/1/2004 6:15:52 PM

Sigh.....

So here it is. I have a Pent 4 3.06 GHZ laptop with 1 gig of ram. I am using the Terratec Phase 26 USB card with all the latest drivers. I have been adjusting my Virtual Memory to different sizes to no change of performance.
The Laptop comes with an Advance AC'97 internal card that I have tried to disable and leave enabled to no change in performance. Latest Direct X and all of that.

The problems I am having are first skipping during playback of anything. Even 1 track of audio or preview of a sample will make the program skip and stutter.

The worse is the program freezing up on random - it does this when recording MIDI - I adjusted the FlushonStop in my WIndows Registry to 500, like it says Acid is allowed in the help file. Sometimes the program freezes when I hit record.

I also have the problem of my MIDI going out of sync - it sounds like it is playing it back much faster - like an audio file playing back at the wrong samplerate.

I set all my programs to start at 48KHZ-24Bit.

I am at a total loss - I get roughly 20 mins to the hour of work done and the rest trying to get the program to work or restarting and all of that. I am in the middle of a score and have no one to ask and hope that some of you good people can help me out. I've written Terratec and they said to check my Chipset and see if there is a firmware update but I don't know where to find out which one I have.
I know it most likely isn't Acid Pro - I am not good with the OS stuff like setting my virtual memory right and tweaking my machine so Acid will run smoothly with my machine as well as my USB soundcard.

Anybody help?


Thanks!

www.boodaphonic.com

Subject:RE: Terratec Phase 26 USB

Reply by: MyST

Date:9/1/2004 6:29:25 PM

Couple bad news for you I'm afraid.

First, USB is not the best way to go for an audio interface,so I've read on these forums.
2nd, I couldn't get anyone to recommend Terratec as a Pro quality soundcard.
I was actually looking at the Phase28, but after nobody from the Sony forums, or resellers recommended it, I went with the M-Audio Firewire410.

I really hope someone can help you get it sorted out though.

Check out www.musicxp.net
They have some Tuning Tips for audio work using XP.

Mario

PS: How is it at 44.1/16?

Subject:RE: Terratec Phase 26 USB

Reply by: booda

Date:9/1/2004 6:53:30 PM

Mario -

Thanks for the reply -

I was wondering as much about the Terratec - I am sort of stuck with it, at least for the time being but will take a look at the M-Audio. My card isn't that old so could prob sell it to get another one. For now I am in the middle of a project and it is either this one or nothing at all unfortunately so will have to live with it for a while longer.

USB definitely is not tops I am finding out - it seems like the signal gets trapped sometimes between acid and the card. Each time I have to reboot, reinstall the driver for the Terratec - pain in the arse!

Thanks for the XP link - check that out right after this post -

Since I got the Terratec for the 96/24 and have only kept it somewhat stable on 48/24 - I can't go back down to 44.1/16 - The sound becomes almost 3d at the higher rates, especially since I do everything MIDI. I will definitely replace the card as soon as I am able - it has been nothing but a pain in the $350 arse!

Thanks for the post and the good words :)

Josh

Subject:RE: Terratec Phase 26 USB

Reply by: coolout

Date:9/2/2004 3:27:55 AM

don't blame terratec.

i've been using a terratec pci card for about a year and a half and it works great. it's the 4th or 5th sound card i've used.

i've actually heard from sony folks on this board that the m-audio interfaces don't work as well with acid anyways. m-audio is too busy pushing abelton live and merging with digidesign.

what you didn't mention is your actual settings such as what driver are you using in acid, what your latency is set on, what the clock and DMA buffer are set to in the terratec contol panel, what you cpu usage meter reads...you know the things that would NORMALLY affect your audio performance. did you try to record with another app? download a demo version of another sequencer and see if you get the same problem.

you shouldn't be messing with your registry or virtual memory. you probably did more damage than good. if you follow the musicxp.net settings and give your drivers some room everything should work okay.

Subject:RE: Terratec Phase 26 USB

Reply by: DKeenum

Date:9/2/2004 6:19:17 AM

I think you can get to the bottom of this. Don't give up.

What about chip set conflicts?

Subject:RE: Terratec Phase 26 USB

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:9/2/2004 10:50:57 AM

I haven't had any outstanding problems with M-Audio's USB Duo; the only thing that limited me was the fact of USB 1.1's limited bandwidth. It's way too small for full-duplex, 24-bit/96 kHz digital audio.

Since the Phase 26 USB also uses USB 1.1, ensure that it's the only device on the USB controller it's connected to.

Typically, a USB controller contains two USB ports. Any two devices on this controller have to share bandwidth. Disconnect any devices that the Phase may be sharing with and put them on another USB port on another USB controller if possible.

Similarly, be sure that the USB controller itself isn't sharing any resources (IRQ's) with other devices.

Are you recording digital audio via S/PDIF?

Iacobus
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