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[vinylfreak]

I'm running the most current stable release of MC 18 on my HTPC.
I'm outputting audio out of the toslink connection of my Asus Xonar Essance STX card into my Onkyo 818.
I recently did a mother board and CPU upgrade on my HTPC but I am still using the same Asus sound card that was in my old HTPC.
I always ran in ASIO mode in MC, it sounded great!
Now with the new build I am getting an audible Snap , Crackle and Pop during ASIO playback. It goes away when I use WASAPI mode.
Any clue on what might be causing this??
I get the same results with the most current Asus drivers and the most current Unified drivers for the Essance STX.
Troubleshooting tips would be Greatly Appreciated.
 

[6233638]

Check your buffer settings. A lot of people seem to have problems using ASIO with the ASUS cards though - it seems like this may be a driver problem.

[InflatableMouse]

And please also search a bit, in particular in this subforum.

There's been quite a bit of discussion on this like here, here, here and here.

But as a vinyl freak, aren't you used to cracks and pops anyway? 

 

[vinylfreak]

Thanks for the tips and the links guys.
The puzzling thing for me is that my previous HTPC running Win 8 and MC played back in ASIO mode just fine
with the Exact same Asus card. I had No issues what so ever.
I will try to do some more tweaking.

[jctcom]

Just wondering.  Do you have "Play Files from Memory instead of disk" Checked?

I tried this setting for a short time and experienced a similar issue to yours.  Turning it off resolved the problem for me.

I thought this would be a good option as I have 12GB of RAM.  But apparently not.

Carl.

[pcstockton]

Why not just use Wasapi???  My understanding is that ASIO is great for XP machines.  Wasapi for anything more current.

-Patrick

[InflatableMouse]

Because with Wasapi the drivers of the Xonar resample everything to whatever is set in the driver control panel and it doesn't really do a very good job.

ASIO bypasses that entirely.

[vinylfreak]

Just wondering.  Do you have "Play Files from Memory instead of disk" Checked?

I tried this setting for a short time and experienced a similar issue to yours.  Turning it off resolved the problem for me.

I thought this would be a good option as I have 12GB of RAM.  But apparently not.

Carl.

I really thought maybe you were on to something.....I just recently upgraded to 16GB of RAM , and I vaguely remember checking that box to see if it made a difference.
I must of unchecked it though, because it wasn't enabled.

What I did end up doing , was to install the ASIO4All driver from http://www.asio4all.com/.
Im using this , in place of the Asus ASIO driver and my Snap Crackle and Pops are gone.
I literally just did this so I haven't spent a lot of time with it yet.
I will keep you posted , as time goes by....
Hopefully! this is a long lasting fix.   
Anyone out there have any long term experience with the ASIO4All drivers??

[pcstockton]

Because with Wasapi the drivers of the Xonar resample everything to whatever is set in the driver control panel and it doesn't really do a very good job.

ASIO bypasses that entirely.

? Does the ASIO not do auto sample rate switching?

[pcstockton]

Anyone out there have any long term experience with the ASIO4All drivers??

I never had good success with them.  I used ASIO4all with an M-Audio Transit to try to get past pops and crackles with anything over 24-96 (16/44 played fine).  I was getting pops and crackles with any buffer setting on anything high-res.  ASIO4all simply made it worse.  I reverted back to the M-Audio ASIO drivers.  This was on a old P4 Dell tower running XP

Then I got an ESI Juli@ card (the M-Audio did NOT do auto sample rate switching) and used its ASIO drivers and no more pops and crackle ever.  Then I went to a more powerful machine (i5, sandy bridge) without discreet audio card and simply use Wasapi.  This is by far the best performance and sound I have had with a PC as source.

Good luck!
Patrick

[InflatableMouse]

? Does the ASIO not do auto sample rate switching?

With ASIO, everything plays at their native sample rate, it doesn't get resampled by the Xonar driver to whatever is set in its control panel.

[jodokus]

Can you tell me the model and brand of both of your motherboards? My Asus p5k deluxe gives problems with my Asus Essence ST. Maybe trying a different motherboard does the trick?

[kstuart]

I'm running the most current stable release of MC 18 on my HTPC.
I'm outputting audio out of the toslink connection of my Asus Xonar Essance STX card into my Onkyo 818.

If you use the taslink output of the STX, then you are wasting it.

The STX costs US$199 because it contains a high quality DAC.   If you use the toslink connection, when you are using the DAC in your Onkyo instead of the STX (probably not as good).  So, then you might as well use a US$20 Xonar card which will be just as good in passing digital untouched.

So, the point of the STX is to connect it to an amplifier with stereo analog interconnects.