The first audio issue I will be taking on is… Trying to get a low IRQ for a soundcard.
I use the M-audio delta 1010 PCI soundcard.
The delta card is as we say “a good bang for the buck”.
It has been a long love/hate relationship with this soundcard.
A while back I was having some problems with the card stuttering during playback.
So I emailed tech support at M-audio asking for a driver update.
They emailed me back saying” this is not a know issue“ and” it sounds like a IRQ conflict”.
“Try and get the card on a IRQ lower than 16,try swapping PCI slots “etc..
My machine was running Windows 2000 sp4 on an Asus dual CPU Athlon mp board in standard pc mode.
The delta card was on IRQ 24,I believe.
I could not get it on a lower IRQ, I tried everything, swapping PCI slots, and assigning lower IRQ’s for the PCI slots in the bios, to no avail.
Than I tried a new Asus AMD 64 board running Windows XP pro, I think the lowest I could get was 18 or 19 something like that ..anyway I emailed them back and asked what motherboard on the planet Earth they were using to get such a low IRQ, they could not recommend a board because” there are just to many boards out there”.
Well not to be defeated I tried a Giga-byte board that allows a great deal of control over the IRQ settings in the bios.
I assigned the PCI slot for the soundcard to IRQ 7.
Now M-audio recommends that you install their software (drivers and a control panel) first, then insert the card into the PCI slot.
I didn’t do that because I wanted to see which IRQ Windows would put the card on.
Without any software Windows XP pro properly saw the soundcard on IRQ 7.
I pulled the card, installed the software, reinserted the card and low and behold the soundcard was on IRQ 19(it was at this point that I started to lose it).
It appears that after the M-audio software goes in the IRQ goes up, up and away.
This time I called and asked to talk to the guy who told me to get the IRQ below 16.
To M-audios credit I was talking to the guy in a matter of minutes (unheard of nowadays).
I asked him on what motherboard were you able to get an IRQ of 16?
He had no answer for me and blamed the problem on Windows, and on the motherboard manufacturers.
Then what he told me next made my jaw drop …on his own machine at home his M-audio soundcard is on a IRQ higher than 16!!!!!
Well who is to blame for this?… that’s a good question ,does Windows change the IRQ when the drivers go in or does M-Audios software do it?
I’m not sure, what I am sure of is, M-audio should not say that their products need to be on an IRQ lower than 16,when their own techs can’t do it.
To the bitter end their tech told me to try swapping the PCI slots around.
What a costly and painful lesson your humble narrator had to go through.
On a lighter note the sound card works just fine on IRQ 19 in ACPI mode.
Next time we will talk about Steinberg audio products and believe me you won’t want to miss this one.
