Hello all, I have spent 2 days trying to resolve that audio hardware problem.

I have disabled relatec drivers with a jumper on mainboard (no such option in BIOS), have tried to switch to analog input, downloaded QT version that was listed as tested/approved, even upgraded WMA9 drivers.

I have SoundBlaster X-Fi Elite Pro (one with external audio controlers). Problem appears under MC3, which i have upgraded to recently, and which i could not lounch also...

Mostly it shuts down itself on "Initialise audio" loading screen but from time to time it happens to show me nice Windows style blue screen. I have upgraded from MC 2.6 which nomen omen was running smoothly on Relatek drivers.

Any clue how to wake that beast up?

Sencire, Greg

can anyone help me with that?

should i downgrade my music card?

phoned the tech suport and they said that i should do what i have allredy done... and well that isnt helping MC3 to stand up.

Hi xvc,

You will get more help, if you help the forum users by filling in your system specs. under your profile. It is very hard to diagnose something if you do not have all the information at hand.

Don't forget as much as possible. e.g drivers, QT version, any connected hardware etc.

Steve.

TY Steve,

I really did forget to fill that in, here it goes:

2xQuadXeon 53xx 1,87GHz each, MB: Supermicro X7DAL-E with 4GB ECC ram

nVidia GForce 7950 Ultra GTX, Creative SB X-Fi Elite Pro - with external panel connected

Intel Raid internal card 28x (dont remember the exact model name)

11HDs build on WesternDigital YS series (RAID edition) smth about 6-7TB disk space

 it goes under WinXP Pro

all drivers (QT, nVidia, WMA9) are approved by AVID, even thou there are higher ones

I can downgrade my card to SB Live! 1024, or plain Relatek integrated with mainboard, but I'd love to keep the new X-Fi with 24bit sound processor and it's external panel.

Thanks all for any help/advice

Hi,

There is a funny case, which happens on some machines during the Initalise Audio, when the computer has registered ASIO, but there are no ASIO devices.  The easiest way to take care of this is to use regedit and search for anything with the word "ASIO" in it and then rename it to "zASIO" or something (so you can change it back).

If that doesn't work, you can try to delete any dll's with ASIO in it, but at that point its probably a different problem anyways.  Let's figure out what's going wrong.

Try removing the ASIO registry entries and if that doesn't work send me an email and we'll go through it step by step.

Best,
Rob Ferguson
Audio Software Engineer
Avid Tewksbury

Hello Rob,

thanks for the tip, I have renamed all ASIO entries into zASIO (damn that was a lot of that in reg) - I have even prayed while reboothing... and it's not that. MC did not start.

Is there anything else we can do, before I ll be forced to downgrade due to lag that this audio issue of mine is causing in my workflow?

Greg.

I have managed to lounch AVID MC3 when i ejected SB X-Fi and disabled relatek AC97 directly on mainboard (jumper OFF setting). But well... editing w/o sound...!?!

I guess you already tried that, but just to be sure: have you set your soundcard to "stereo speakers" in windows sound control panel? Other modes like 7.1 surround seem to confuse MC...

Okay,

Here are a few more things to try:  You can search for ASIO.dll's and rename them too.  There will be one in Program Files/Digidesign/digidesign and another in Program Files/Digidesign/Driver.

Once you've launched MC you can always use the windows mixer instead of the MC mixer by going to "Sound Card Configuration" in the settings menu and then clicking "Use Windows Mixer".  Then you can route the audio outside of MC.  (I use this to listen to iTunes while debugging)

Best,
Rob

yes, tried all setups, from headphones threw 2.0, 2.1 to 7.1

did that allredy - figured out that on the way there was TONS of entries for ASIO from my soundcard, literaly i have spend 40-50mins on:

ctrl+F, enter, option -> rename, leftarrow, home, "z"

...and so on

.dlls having ASIO took few seconds to batch rename in Total Commander

Im wondering if that Windows Mixer will do the trick. But well its 100% worth trying.

What i also tried was: SB Live! 5.1 soundcard - also a failure (but not the blue screen), i was even about to switch to wirus vista ultimate - have bought it like year ago and formated it after: "chose yes/no", "are you shure you have chosen yes? yes/no", "do you veryfi that you have selected yes and than confirmed it by pressing yes? yes/no"... but i need to w8 for my new harddisk to arrive (i dont want to jeopardise my confguration of all programs).

I have another question concerning ASIO drivers/tech - i use aftereffects alot, will that registry trick not harm it's stability?

sencire,

Greg

Yeah honestly it sounds like you have a really bizarre configuration!  I know I'm not perhaps the most unbiased source.. but Creative drivers can install a bunch of crap you don't want.

Usually only the drivers in digidesign folder and windows system folders matter for ASIO.  The reason this happens at all is that we try to load an ASIO driver if its good, but sounds like you have a million bad ones.

Aftereffects will likely be uneffected (in an adverse way) if you're just renaming ASIO dlls in the system and digidesign directories.  You can also try regsvr32 dllname /u. Instead of renaming and seeing if that works.

Sorry you're having such a rough go!  Let me know if windows mixer works for you.

Best,
Rob

Yes I will, we have 7-8 hrs of time lag - so I ll do it tomorrow - and once again thank you very much on your involvment in resollving that audio issue. I hope I could keep the digital 24bit audio input that X-Fi has in its external device - it went soo sweet on another computer of mine with yamaha studio mixer.

back again, once again BIG THX for all the help

And you ll not belive what happened day after I thought Rob solved the thing for me...

Well my Raid array collapsed :) nice huh...

2 weeks of getting data back, fixing the system, installing new OS etc.

and there it goes under Vista Ultimate 64b the X-Fi have NO PROBBLEMS with AVID MC 3.o :)))

Hugs all

Same here man...I was driving myself nuts trying to get the audio to work with either the onboard IDT audio, or my X-Fi Extreme Gamer Pro card in XP. The second I switched to Vista 64-bit I had no audio problems with the X-Fi, and Avid is running beautifully so far.