jumpy sound

[Empty_5oul]

i have a problem when running certain applications and music i get "jumpy sound" it is very juttery with constant half second or so pauses.

I had a look on google and from what i have found it seems that this could be my problem: http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm

has anyone experienced anyting similar and is that ( ^^^ ) it ??

[AMDave]

That sounds bad.

I knew that DMA would toggle down under error, but I assumed that it toggled back up-again! especially after a reboot.
on further thought, I am sure that I did not know that it reverted to PIO mode

Who was to know.

No. I dont experience that problem, but I have noticed a similar sound-blip bahaviour with some machines at work. I'll check them out.

per another recent post & article, remember that if your case air extraction fails, so does the loss of low pressure in the case that the CD/DVD drives rely on for air transfer and thus CD/DVD failures are likely to occur under this circumstance. According to the linked article this would likely lead to long-term loss of performance for these devices.

If your case has ever become hot due to loss of airflow it could be worth checking this out.

[Empty_5oul]

with a thermaltake Xaser V with 5 onbuilt fans i dont think this would be a problem.
My temps are always about the same and i have removed one extra CD drive to help with airflow.

[AMDave]

Tricky situation...

If you create an wide opening the front of the case you may get better airflow for the CPU and the RAM, but you also compromize the negative pressure in the case that would otherwize draw air through the CD/DVD media drives.

They should have been designed differently. Yes.
They could still alter the design to reduce this problem. It would even make economic sense to do so as a result of the reduction in materials required. However, the restrictions that they have around "Class-1 Laser Products" in many countries requires that the casing be fully enclosed, by regulation. Hance, the dependency on the negative pressure airflow.

In your situation with 5 extractions fans you have plenty of extraction power, so the low pressure in the case should be ok, but if the opening you have created by removing one of the 5 1/4 inch blanks has allowed too much air intake, then the internal pressure will have dropped and you CD / DVD drives may not be cycling enough air.

You might consider fitting a grille to reduce the air flow slightly OR you could consider using an external CD drive case with its own fan which would separate the problem. There are also front plates with variable fan speed adjesters if you want to experiment and need greater control of your fans when gaming at high resolution and clocking them back when not playing.

This is definitely where the fluid and refridgeration CPU cooling systems reduce the dependency on air extraction from the case and I think this is one of their great selling points.

If you have a contained CPU / Graphics Card / Memory / HDD cooling kit and its cooling system or airflow path is independent of the general airflow through the case then you can run a minimal fan through the case to maintain the reduced air pressure in the case that the CD / DVD drives need. In the mean time your dedicated cooling system for your CPU or other device is looking after itself.

Otherwise, you can keep adding fans and opening airways and still compromise your media drive, so perhaps it would be better to provide the CD / DVD drive with its own air cooling path.

I had not really put much thought into that before as I had not needed to. But now that you raise it, it makes sense.

I have once created a custom dual-case machine where I separated the drives from the rest of the machine. I was going to make the external case into an array of swappable drives, but it got too expensive for my limited budget at the time so I scrapped it. It meant running an extra PSU for the HDDs but it worked while I tried it out.

Whilst Rack Units are a lot cheaper than they used to be, I found out just how much rack cabinets cost (just the bare bones) ... and almost fell off my chair :lol:

Besides, HDD capacity took off at that time and the need for extra drive bays is not such a problem anymore.

But perhaps the idea is still feasible for the home enthusiast that needs to separate the cooling paths of various devices.

Interesting.

How long can you make a SATA Raid cable ?
maybe I can dig this concept up again.
Anyone want to sponsor me ??? LOLOLOL

[Empty_5oul]

you raise some good points dave,

before i encountered my problem i knew nothing or that there even was negative pressure needed, - i take it running a machine "case-less" or even "side-less" is damaging then ?

also here is my case http://www.thermaltake.com/XaserCase/WinGo/v8000a.htm if you look at the 2 view bit i ALWAYS have my door closed unless i am inserting/removing a disc. Also in one of my floppy bays i have an adjuser for my heat sink. and finally the two circular button things (smart fan control knobs) on the front are also fan controllers for the rear and top side fan.

[AMDave]

Cool case.

possibly. I have never looked into this before. So you know as much as I do at this point.

when you removed the additional CD drive did you replace the drive-bay cover or is it still open ?

One thing I can say is that I have learned to put trust in designers. If they say that the air inlet should be "here" and so does everyone else, then I am inclined to stick with that until I (or anyone else) can prove something different.

I guess you have a testing opportunity at hand.
It may mean a complete reinstall if your DMA/PIO settings have toggled down, but you get that with windows :lol:

[AMDave]

Yep.
The article is spot on.

My son's games PC sometimes gets quite warm when playing (and crunching DC at the same time)
He was having some problems with a CD-ROM yesterday.
A reboot gave us no joy.

I checked the mode setting on the device and it had reverted from DMA to PIO.
I set it back to DMA again and rebooted.
Checked the device setting again and and it was still DMA.
The CD-ROM worked no problems.

I'll keep an eye on it but I think that case needs another fan.

Stupid windows! If they are going to downgrade a performance setting they should {insert expletive here} well tell you.
Even worse it doesn't notify you of the problem like it should do in the first place.
I found nothing in any of the event logs. Grrrrrrrr :evil:

[Empty_5oul]

i also had another problem before that but seem to have solved them both - "killing two birds with one stone"

what i had was i could play Unreal Tournament 2004 online for say 20minutes with sound and then it would suddenly die and i would get a sort of watery/"white noise" sound. This happened in other games such as Empire Earth and Age Of Empires.
Eventually we solved the problem by finding a music editing program i installed had taken over some of my sound settings so the c-media was no longer default. We put this back and my sound works a lot better (the sub woofer also works now).

When looking for the solution i found that DMA/PIO informaiton. I am glad it was of use to you.