RME Digiface and Pyramix Native?

[Daniel Kemper]

Hi everyone,

I´m having some serious trouble to run my Pyramix Native with RME Digiface. The Digiface is recognized correctly in VS3 Control Panel, and I can define it as ASIO device for Native. When I connect my headphones to the Digiface´s phones output I can clearly hear the input signal without any problems (depending from my mixer settings in RME "TotalMix"). But as soon as I launch Pyramix I hear some heavy digital noise, which sounds like a mixture of wordclock sync problems and other distortions. The loudness of this noise is variable, it corresponds to the input level. When I open the Digiface control panel and change the ASIO buffer size, the noise is gone for a short time, after that it comes again. When I deactivate ASIO in the VS3 Control Panel and choose the Direct Sound driver mode instead, there are no problems (but then it seems that I cannot use all ADAT inputs, and the word length seems to be limited to 16 bits, so this is obviously no option to work with). So I suppose this seems to be an ASIO problem.

I tried the latest version 5 (5.1.13 SP3) and for testing purpose I also tried version 6 (6.0.16 SP2) in "Evalution Mode", but both versions show the same problems.

I found out that the RME Digiface does not appear on Merging´s list of recommended ASIO devices, nevertheless I would have expected it to work, at least with the new version 6, as this is an ASIO device like any other one. (BTW, I don´t have any problems to use Pyramix Native with my old RME Digi 96/8 PCI card, which is even older than the Digiface. And the Digiface works perfectly in Sequoia, even in quite old versions.)

Does anyone have experience with RME Digiface and Pyramix Native? Is there a way to let it work which I haven´t found yet? If it definitely doesn´t work, will this be fixed in future Pyramix versions?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards
Daniel

[fl]

I´m having some serious trouble to run my Pyramix Native with RME Digiface.

You didn't detail which computer you're using, but it sounds a lot like you're experiencing latency issues much like the ones I encountered, and explained in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4111

You should run the DPC Latency Checker software found here: http://www.thesycon.de/eng/free_download.shtml
and see if you have any spikes above 500 micro-seconds. Test it when no other program is running, with Pyramix idling, and then with Pyramix Playing. If you see any yellow or red bars, or even any tall green ones, they probably will correspond with clicks and static-like bursts of noise heard over your speakers. If that is the case, then you need to try some of the optimizations I outlined in that other thread.

If you don't have latency issues, and these suggestions don't fix your problems, then you may have a defective unit which you should probably send to RME for repair while it's still under warranty.

[Ricardo Ryan]

Hi,

Also have a look at this one
viewtopic.php?t=3765


Best Regards,
Ricardo

[Daniel Kemper]

Many thanks to you both for your answers. Unfortunately, up to now I only had time to "scan" both threads quite quickly, and I will read more carefully tonight when there is more time - nevertheless I would like to point out two things which I think I can anticipate already without having read the two threads: As I said, there are absolutely no problems with the Digiface when using Sequoia (same notebook), only with Pyramix Native, so I definitely don´t believe in any kind of hardware problem. And concerning latency, I have already tried all different ASIO latency settings in the RME configuration dialog, but the disturbing noise remains the same. And also here, there are absolutely no problems within Sequoia, which also uses ASIO driver communication.

Regarding my system: I use an Asus notebook from the M6000N series (Centrino, single core Pentium M CPU, 1 GB RAM) under Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 3). The Windows Task Manager is well cleaned up with absolutely no redundant tasks running in the background. The problems are not depending on the number of recorded tracks in the project - the noise starts as soon is Pyramix has been launched (without any project opened).

Regards
Daniel

[Daniel Kemper]

Hi,

I finally had the chance to check both threads carefully and try some more things, sorry for the delay.

I ran DPC Latency Checker, and there doesn´t seem to be any latency problem. The latency display is always green, far below the 500 microseconds line. This is the case when Windows is running idle, when Pyramix is running idle, and when there is a project opened within Pyramix.

But I can reproduce exactly now when the noise problems occur, I will try to explain in detail. As I mentioned in my previous thread, the RME Digiface contains an internal mixer application called "TotalMix". There you can define what signal you would like to listen to on the Digiface´s headphones output. TotalMix is able to send the Digiface´s ADAT inputs to the headphone output ("Input" section"), and it can also playback the tracks coming from the harddisc recording system ("Playback" section).

Now, when you have all "Input" faders closed in TotalMix and when there is no application open to playback any tracks, there should be no signal on the headphones output. It should not matter whether the TotalMix "Playback" faders are opened or not as there is no playback application running. And indeed, everything quiet when Windows is idling - nothing to hear. But as soon as I launch the Pyramix application, the noise starts which I described in my opening thread. It is only gone when I mute all playback faders in TotalMix.

So as far as I can see, Pyramix seems to "playback" some noisy signals via the playback tracks as soon as it´s been launched - even though there is no project running where Pyramix could get any audio data from. I have no idea about the reason for that, but it still looks like an ASIO driver issue to me, as the problem disappears when I remove the Digiface as ASIO device in VS3 Control Panel.

Any hints on this?

Regards
Daniel

[Daniel Kemper]

No reaction... Nobody out there with a Digiface and Pyramix Native? Is there any support from Merging to this problem?

Actually I wanted to upgrade to Pyramix Native 6 for several reasons, but if there are still these serious problems with ASIO support I will be forced to revise my decision and stay with Samplitude/Sequoia. Replacing my audio hardware is not an option.

[fl]

No reaction... :-( Nobody out there with a Digiface and Pyramix Native? Is there any support from Merging to this problem?

Actually I wanted to upgrade to Pyramix Native 6 for several reasons, but if there are still these serious problems with ASIO support I will be forced to revise my decision and stay with Samplitude/Sequoia. Replacing my audio hardware is not an option.

You may find more help in the RME Fora found at http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/index.php, even though your problems seem to occur only when running Pyramix. From that forum, I've learned that there are some issues with recent Firmware updates to various pieces of RME gear, some of which result in noise over headphone outputs, but not affecting recorded tracks or other outputs, and perhaps this is what you are encountering. Also, it wasn't clear in your earlier post, but what do you see when you run DPC Latency Checker when Pyramix is both launched and Playing? Any processor load spikes then? Are you experiencing the noise issue when Pyramix is launched, but NO project is loaded (just the grey screen with no timeline)? If you do, then I think you're right in guessing that it's an ASIO issue, and that falls into RME's court, since they wrote the drivers. Yes, it's both odd and annoying that it only seems to happen with Pyramix. By the way, what version and class of Pyramix are you running? Version 5 or 6? Native? Native Media Pack? Broadcast? Music? Mastering? All these different versions have the potential to place different loads on your machine...

With my Fireface 800, I find that TotalMix augments what Pyramix does naturally, in that when I launch Pyramix and configure the inputs and outputs to those available in the Pyramix mixer, I don't have to set levels in TotalMix - so I only use TotalMix when I want to monitor a microphone input with zero latency, rather than hearing it through both Pyramix's processing and the latency of the Fireface (set in the Fireface Settings program). My suggestion is to recall factory preset No. 1 for TotalMix and then leave it alone. If you have an RME Settings program for the Digiface (orange flame icon), set the latency to the maximum amount. Also make sure that DDS is active (checkbox checked), and the correct sample rate is set in both the Settings program AND in Pyramix. Wouldn't it be nice if what you were experiencing were a simple case of clock mis-match...

I'm thinking that with your laptop being a little shy on RAM, there may be some issues with Virtual Memory causing issues in Pyramix that DPC Latency Checker misses. I've noticed that happening on my system when I run a Surround mix session - DPC Latency Checker shows all low levels in the Green, but still I'm hearing clicking and spitting noises due to the load on the processor and I/O (remedied by upping the Latency in RME Settings). In addition, I've found that I get completely different results between running Pyramix and the Fireface on a laptop, compared to a desktop machine. My knowledge of Windows is sketchy at best, but it appears that there are several processes that run on a laptop, probably to do with power conservation and graphics load, that don't necessarily show up as a DPC process, but still slow everything down.

Is there a possibility that you could, as a test, run Pyramix and your Digiface on another computer - preferably a desktop with at least 2 Gigs of RAM? That would tell you whether or not you have a weird hardware fault in your unit (which could, hopefully, be repaired under warranty). Beyond that, I'm at a loss, and as I mentioned above, you may find more satisfactory answers in the RME forum, than here.

[STA]

I own both a Multiface and Pyramix Native (v6) running on a Thinkpad T61, although I must admit I don't think I've actually tried them yet, as the Native system has been out on hire with a different interface pretty much since I got it!

I'll try it when I get it back (sometime next week) and let you know if I find anything along the same lines.

In the meantime my first thoughts are:

In Sequoia, does it work reliably recording to ALL tracks? I did have problems when I first got the Multiface in Samplitude when using more than 8 tracks: the sample rate would drop and jitter was through the roof. Using 8 or less tracks was fine in Samplitude (albeit with high jitter), but in other software the problem was there whatever the track count. I traced this to a problem with the bandwidth of the cardbus port which Lenovo fixed with a BIOS update after a couple of months of testing (some other users were reporting speed problems with cardbus esata adapters too).

Also, are you using cardbus or expresscard? If cardbus, what controller chipset does your laptop use?

All the best,

Shaun

[STA]

Did you ever get this working?

I've finally got round to using my Native version with the RME Multiface today. (Sorry about the wait - things have been out all over the place plus I've been really busy over the past couple of months).

The Multiface works absolutely fine with Pyramix Native, and if that does then I can't see why the Digiface wouldn't.

The system is Thinkpad T61, Windows XP Pro SP3, RME HDSP expresscard, RME Multiface, Pyramix Native V6 SP2, 2nd internal hard drive for audio (7200rpm).

Are you using the expresscard or the cardbus card as the host? (Or have you solved the problem another way yet?)

All the best,

Shaun