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Diamond MX300 (Aureal Vortex 2) software wavetable crackling/clipping

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First post, by appiah4

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I recently replaced the SB Live! Value in my system with an Aureal Vortex 2 card, namely the Diamond MX300 (A2 stepping), and I'm having a strange issue with the software wavetable.

I first noticed this with DLS files I converted from SF2 myself (Creative 2/4/8MB SF2 fonts) so I reverted to the original ARL, and noticed that it is still there. The wavetable synthesis produces lots of crackling and clipping for some odd reason that I can not seem to troubleshoot. The issue is a lot more pronounced on the Line Out 2 port, which is recommended for headphones (because it apparently has an amp behind it and can be set to headphones in the driver control panel).

The onboard daughterboard header (MPU-401 MIDI device) does not have this issue when used with a hardware wavetable, so that pretty much rules out PCI Latency issues which would be my kneejerk reaction here.

I also had no such issues with an SB! Live card in this system. The SB Live! rendered all sound fonts perfectly well.

Is this a known problem? Is there anything I can do to fix it?

System specs are:

250W No-Name ATX PSU
LuckyStar 5P2BX2 (440BX) Motherboard
Pentium III 450 Katmai
2x128M PC133 SDRAM
Alps FDD
NEC 16x DVD-ROM
Seagate Barracude 80GB IDE (UDMA33 Mode)
3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Dimanod Monster Sound II MX300
TP-Link TF-3200 10/100MBit PCI
Windows Me

I'm using the officiam MX300 driver CD found on Vogonsdrivers.

Reply 1 of 2, by 640K!enough

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The first thing to check is that you don't have the card installed in PCI slot 5 (closest to the ISA slots). According to the manual for your motherboard, slot 5 is a slave-only slot, and may cause trouble with bus-mastering cards, like many types of network, SCSI and sound cards.

I will also add that if you're noticing more of these problems with one output versus the other, it may be a loose connector or similar problem, rather than one that is bus- or driver-related.

Reply 2 of 2, by B24Fox

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I recently purchased an MX300, and I'm a bit confused... Is it normal on the MX300, for OUT-2 to always be ~30% louder than OUT-1??? 😕

Also, for anyone else stumbling on this thread; I've also encountered issues with intermitent heavy MIDI distortion on a Vortex2 Turtle Beach, and a T.B. clone on certain systems or situations. So I don't think it's tied to the MX300. The problem I think is the software.

I believe, the AU8830 hardware can only do 64Voice polyphony. The rest is done in software.
It can be changed from the Vortex MIDI control panel from 576Voices, to 64Voices, and that might help.
What I've also encountered, is that in the DirectX DirectMusic test, sometimes the MIDI song is played in a "non-standard" way... like it has a different rhythm in the beginning, that is from a later part of the song. Like the parts of the song are mixed differently.
Usually this anomaly I found to be exhibited more when using the non-default font.

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