Sweeps Are Garbled

[Jerry Garcia]

I am no expert at REW, but I have used it successfully over the years. But I am currently stumped. I have used it on current setup but not for a while. Only thing that has changed that I am aware of is the video card. It's currently a GeForce 1050 Ti; it was an NVidia Geforce 2070 super. I also changed from UMIK 1 to UMIOK 2 but swapped that back during troubleshoooting to no avail, same result.

The result is that when I run a sweep, it is garbled/staticy and cuts in/out rapidly. I can hear the sweep increasing in frequency but it is completely distorted and unusable. The only thing that really stands out to me is the output options, not what I am used to seeing; wave0c1, wave0c2 etc. Not sure what it was before but it was not that.

I have attached some screen shots of the preferences and ASIO control panel. Any ideas would be much welcomed! TIA.

 

[Harrycr]

I'm no expert but if you can post the REW MDAT file for others to look at.

 

[sam_adams]

The result is that when I run a sweep, it is garbled/staticy and cuts in/out rapidly.

Change the ASIO buffer size to max (1024) and see if that fixes the issue.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

I'm no expert but if you can post the REW MDAT file for others to look at.

Unfortunately you can’t run a sweep.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

Change the ASIO buffer size to max (1024) and see if that fixes the issue.

I will give that a try. Thanks.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

I was able to make some sweeps, the buffer didn't help. It is just horrible static over the sweep. No idea what is going on.

 

[sm52]

Jerry Garcia
the reason may be incorrect operation of ASIO4ALL in Windows. Find an external sound card with two inputs and two outputs.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

Thanks sm52. Hoping to find another solution as that would lose the simplicity of using HDMI. I recall years back running REW off a sound card and it was a bit of a nightmare. This is the same install of ASIO that was working 4 or 5 months ago, only thing that has changed is the video card and of course numerous windows updates (which certainly can cause issues). Before I do that, I think I might just connect another PC and see what I get. Sure would like to find the culprit here though.....very odd.

 

[sam_adams]

You could give FlexASIO a try—unistall ASIO4all first befire installing. If that doesn't work you may be running into the well known issue with NVidia video cards and may have to seek a different solution.

 

[andyc56]

You could give FlexASIO a try—unistall ASIO4all first befire installing. If that doesn't work you may be running into the well known issue with NVidia video cards and may have to seek a different solution.

I second that. I've had sound glitches with AMD-based systems and ASIO4All that were fixed using FlexASIO. I fixed the glitches as follows:

In the REW Preferences, Soundcard dialog, set the devices to "FlexASIO" and set input and output devices appropriate to your setup. In the REW FlexASIO Control Panel, set "Driver Type" to "Windows Direct Sound".. To set the buffer size, I do the following.

• Open up the REW Generator and set it to "Tones" and "Sine".
• Play a sine wave at around 100 Hz at a reasonable volume.
• Turn the sine wave on and off multiple times via the button on the lower right of the Generator dialog.
• If you hear distortion, crackling or significant clicking when doing this, launch the REW Preferences, Soundcard dialog again, and launch the ASIO Control Panel from that dialog.
• Increase the buffer size to the next bigger one.
• Repeat the steps above until there is no more sine wave distortion or crackling when turning the sine wave on and off in the Generator dialog.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

Sounds promising, I will give that a try. Thanks guys, really appreciate it.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

BTW, what is "the well known issue with NVidia video cards"?

 

[andyc56]

BTW, what is "the well known issue with NVidia video cards"?

The ASIO4All software implements the ASIO Application Programming Interface (API) using kernel streaming "under the hood". Apparently the kernel streaming sound drivers provided by nVidia for HDMI have caused problems with ASIO4All in the past, as reported in the AVS REW megathread. FlexASIO allows you to choose the underlying implementation of the ASIO API from DirectSound, WASAPI, MME and kernel streaming (also known as WDM-KS). This gives lots of flexibility to try out different implementations. DirectSound is usually a safe bet See this page for a discussion of FlexASIO backends.

 

[sam_adams]

Thanks to @andyc56 for providing the detailed answer. @Jerry Garcia, if you get to the point where you are integrating multiple subs, check out @andyc56's MultiSub Opitimizer.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

Thanks everyone. @andyc56 FlexASIO did the trick. I changed it to Direct Sound and ran a sweep just fine, so I didn't even mess with the buffer. All seems good now. I have looked at MSO a while back, did not realize that was you. Pretty impressive piece of software. I do have multiple subs, but I am using Dirac and I'm pretty happy with the results over all. Thanks for all the help. Really appreciate it.

 

[andyc56]

Thanks everyone. @andyc56 FlexASIO did the trick. I changed it to Direct Sound and ran a sweep just fine, so I didn't even mess with the buffer. All seems good now.

It might be interesting, just for the sake of Science™, to see whether the problem returns when WDM-KS (kernel streaming) is chosen for the backend in FlexASIO. If it works fine, that would shoot the "bad nVidia kernel streaming driver" hypothesis out of the water and instead point to a possible bug in ASIO4All itself.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

Easy enough. I will give that a try and report back.

 

[sam_adams]

It might be interesting, just for the sake of Science™, to see whether the problem returns when WDM-KS (kernel streaming) is chosen for the backend in FlexASIO. If it works fine, that would shoot the "bad nVidia kernel streaming driver" hypothesis out of the water and instead point to a possible bug in ASIO4All itself.

Excellent idea.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

I can successfully run sweeps no matter which backend I choose in FlexASIO, it works fine with any of the three choices. So not sure what the issue is actually.

 

[andyc56]

I can successfully run sweeps no matter which backend I choose in FlexASIO, it works fine with any of the three choices. So not sure what the issue is actually.

That would point to a bug or incompatibility of ASIO4All with certain nVidia-based HDMI setups then. Thanks for checking.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

I had it working fine with the previous nVidia card. I wonder if it is a driver issue as the driver has certainly been updated since I last used an nVidia card successfully. But it's working now so goal achieved. Thanks for all the help, wouldn't have thought to try Flex.