Performance before optimizing Win7

At this moment I'm testing Sequoia on my MBP with 8 stereotracks recording from a Fireface 800 in 96KHz/24bit  resolution.
I'm just sitting wondering why I had problems doing the same thing or even less tracks yesterday...
The MBP is showing a CPU usage of 25% and Sequoia is reporting a disk usage of 2%, so I guess I have to increase the load

Running 6 stereo tracks at 192KHz/24bit (1024 samples buffer)also seems fine. Although the playbuffer reports a couple of errors it doesn't seem to influence the recording. Also writing the files in 32bit floating format works fine.

Can also do 6 stereo tracks at 192KHz/24 bit with 256 samples buffer (128 not ok) and recording to 32 bit float. Also the Sequoia feature "record without playback" works fine, so I can sit and mix the material while recording and jump around in the project without affection the recording. (though inserting effects results in lost ASIO buffer)

16 tracks in 96KHz/24 bit with 128 samples buffer produces some recording errors (8 errors in 3 minutes).

8 tracks in 96KHZ/24bit with 128 samples seems fine. But with 96 samples it's getting sensible to GUI interactions (20 errors because of some zooming and open/close mixer).But when I reduce the bandwidth to only analog 1-8 in the RME driver it's solid again and don't care if I touch mixer settings.







It seems like the most problems occour is when you switch samplerate in the project or change the ASIO buffer size. Sometimes Sequoia hangs and writes long messages in the crashlog.

So now it seems that the best investment of my time is to work on removing the spikes in the DPC latency, so I get my rock solid recording setup.

But before I'll just have to summarize my setup right now when it's still working:

Running Windows 7 professional 32 bit.
On MBP Intel Core 2 duo T9550 @ 2.66 GHz
4GB Ram (2,73 GB usable)
Performance adjusted for best performance and best performance of Background services.

• Power adapter in
• FireFace 800 connected via firewire 800 (Belkin cable) into the leftmost firewire 800 input on the fireface
• A Belking USB 2.0 hub (with nothing connected to it) connected in the first USB port next to the FW800 port
• The CodeMeter connected in the second USB port
• Recording on Intenal HD on bootcamp partition
• Disabled in Device Manager:
• Generic Bluetooth Adapter 
• Apple IR receiver
• Apple Multitouch Mouse
• Build in I-sight
• NVIDIA nForce 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
• Realtek High Difinition Audio
• Wireless Network connected! 

And going though this list it hits me: Didn't I have a 1394 network adapter before?? At least its gone from the device list now!

Comparing my MBP Sequoia / Fireface 800 performance with my old PC from year 2001

This is no scientific test!! Probably not relevant to anyone - so don't read on! Just a small comparison for my own sake to see if my old PC will perform better or just more reliable than my MBP bootcamp.

The old pc: 1 GHz AMD Athlon, 768 MB Ram, XP PRO SP3

First of all I've checked the DPC latency to see if there's any obvious differences between the machines.

I notice that my PC running for 10 minutes have a very steady latency about 170 mySec and the absolute maximum is 334 mySec!!

This is quite interesting compared to the MBP spikes mentioned ealier in my blog. Just sweet green colums stroling by on the old PC - and that's not even a clean install!

At first my little testrun seems fine - doing mono input 44,1/24 for a couple of minutes. I get greedy and change the project samplerate to 96kHz and try to playback. Then the program freezes and after a while the pc reboots automatically... wierd! Has never seen that before.

Next time I startup Sequoia I try to make a new VIP project in 96kHz but everything just freezes and I have to reset the pc.

Recording in 96/24 with my old Delta 66 PCI with buffer 256 samples ASIO buffer made:

• 2 "record errors" with 1 stereo track
• 4 "record errors" with 1 stereo tracks
• 6 "record errors" with 1 stereo tracks
• 8 "record errors" with 1 stereo tracks

See a pattern? It looks like there is an error either for each mono track each time recording starts or one for each stereo track at start and stop of recording.

Also when playing back the info bar yields "2 lost ASIO buffer" each time I stop playback.

I also tried recording with Fireface in 96/24 in another DAW and interestingly the pc froze and restarted like when I started out in Sequoia.

(after a little more testing jumping to the conclusion:)
Generally it seem, that I can record and playback a lot of 44/24 tracks on my old pc but as soon as I make the shift to 88,2 or 96 kHz I get in trouble and have bad response from the system.
It hasn't got a lot of horsepower but I stable when it only has to deal with projects within its league.

Installing windows 7

For some time I've been messing around with different settings, drivers etc. in my Bootcamp windows XP partition. Actually so much that I don't know what's up and down anymore. So the first step is to start with a clean install. And why try to make things work in XP if they'll work out of the box in win 7. So setting up a win 7 Bootcamp partition.

Checking tahe system response with DPClatency

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Just after installing win7 I have a small spike between 800-100 mysec every 15 seconds. Occasionally there's a spike at 10620 mysec

After disabling in device manager: Bluetooth, network adapters, Audio Hardware , iSight it seems like I got rid of the biggest spikes.

Installing Bootcamp 3.0 drivers (build 2058) and apple update

• intel graphics
• ati graphics
• crystal beach
• broadcom wireless network
• sigmatel sound
• (removing old realtek sound)
• realtek sound
• usb modem
• cirrus logic
• Intel Ethernet

And a whole lot more I could'nt read.

After installing Bootcamp drivers I checked DPC latency again and found that it was all red. After killing the bootcamp.exe process in the task manager the latency almost went back to normal. But disabling audio, network etc. again optimized a little.

Installing Fireface 800 driver

I've used driver version 3.02 and firmware 2.77. I had audio going but Sequoia hangs once in a while without no obvious reason. I have to compare the hangs to the DPClatency checker to see if it occours when there are spikes.

The next thing I'm going to do is to compare the MBP performance with my good rock steady PC I build back in 2001.

Premises

Premises for this blog.

I own a MacBook Pro and I want to install Sequoia on a windows bootcamp partition. Until now I been trying for weeks to make first my Motu828mkII firewire 400 soundcard work without luck. Yesterday I tried a Fireface 800 which I updated with the newest firmware(2.77) and install the newest driver (3.2) for the Fireface 800. After a restart it worked almost flawlessly (just a little hang). This morning when I turned on the MBP everythink was back to "normal": Audio-glitches and ASIO buffer loses.
I now know that I can work with my firewire card in the MBP. I recorded 192KHz/32bit stereo audio for 10 minutes without problems and I'm gonna make it happen again. Just have to structure my search a little. That's why I have this blog - it's going to be my log!