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Old 06-06-2018, 11:25 AM   #1
Skrzypiec
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Default Rollback from Scarlett to Audigy 2 ZS...

Hello. I got Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 on Ryzen but because of severe USB incompatibility my audio was basically crashing every day. After fruitless tech talk to both Focusrite and motherboard support, consulting with a PC technician and looking for a solution on various forums which resulted in over a YEAR of break in composing, I'm considering a roll back. I was suggested Audigy 2 ZS in place of Scarlett, because it's pci-e and can bypass the usb issues. Anybody can tell me if this one is any decent considering noise levels and real-time recording latency? Thank you.
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Old 06-06-2018, 12:48 PM   #2
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Audigy2 ZS is not PCIE, it uses the old PCI so make sure your mainboard has PCI slots.

kX project used to have very good support on these cards but it will not be updated anymore.
https://www.kxproject.com/

I am not sure if Creative's official driver for AudigyZS is good or not but it's quite stable for my X-Fi card.
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Old 06-06-2018, 07:25 PM   #3
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Aha, I confused. But I have both pci-e and normal pci.
That should work, also I heard about kx, I'll try them.
Thank you.
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Old 06-06-2018, 08:42 PM   #4
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Why on earth out of all the options out there would use choose an Audigy 2 ZS?

Obsolete, and not that great in the first place. Problems with systems with over 4gb of ram, locked to 48Khz internally, relatively high latency, poor low latency performance, unbalanced I/O. Latency issues probably exacerbated by the fact that your Ryzen board will use a PCIE to PCI bridge chip. The EMU 10K series chips were sensitive to PCI latency issues to start with.

You'll get lower latency with on board sound.
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Old 06-07-2018, 04:26 AM   #5
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That's the kind of info I need. What else can I use in this case?
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Old 06-07-2018, 05:34 AM   #6
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Find a used RME HDSP - pci or pci-e 9632 or 9652.

Mine is years old and still rock solid, has current Win10 and latest Mac drivers and firmware. Great sound and amazingly good latency. but of course you will need to get an ADAT I/O as well if you want to use more than 2 channels.
But they can be had very inexpensively.
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Old 06-07-2018, 05:40 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Skrzypiec View Post
That's the kind of info I need. What else can I use in this case?
Something like these?
https://www.lynxstudio.com/products/e22/
http://www.rme-audio.de/en/products/hdspe_aio.php
https://www.esi-audio.com/products/juliaxte/
https://www.esi-audio.com/products/maya44ex/

Looks like the 18i20 can be used without a computer? So you can use it as a mixer/mic preamp and connect it with the sound card.
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Old 06-07-2018, 08:36 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
Find a used RME HDSP - pci or pci-e 9632 or 9652.

Mine is years old and still rock solid, has current Win10 and latest Mac drivers and firmware. Great sound and amazingly good latency. but of course you will need to get an ADAT I/O as well if you want to use more than 2 channels.
But they can be had very inexpensively.
Your mileage may vary with a PCI card connected through a PCI to PCIE bridge chip. I'd stick with PCIE if you're going with an internal card.

Exactly what do your need from your audio interface? How many inputs? What type of inputs? How important is latency? Do you need ADAT input? Are you mainly working with virtual instruments? More information is good.

Last edited by drumphil; 06-07-2018 at 08:51 AM.
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Old 06-07-2018, 08:39 AM   #9
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Thank you for all the insight.

Quote:
Originally Posted by drumphil View Post
Latency issues probably exacerbated by the fact that your Ryzen board will use a PCIE to PCI bridge chip.
I'm not sure if you mean bridging as audio card architecture or Ryzen architecture... Does it mean I should just stick to PCIE card, or will Ryzen force PCIE-PCI bridging even if I use a PCIE card? I guess you mean the former but this can be read in two ways, so please clarify. I'm on Asus Prime B350 Plus, this one has both PCIE and PCI slots.


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Originally Posted by bennetng View Post
These seem to be within my reach but what I precisely have is electric violin (1/4 jack), electric guitar (1/4 jack), XLR mic for voice, effects and acoustic viola, plus various VST libraries to use with Reaper so I need to narrow down which card would handle all of these better. I'm not sure about several things:


Quote:
Originally Posted by drumphil View Post
...locked to 48Khz internally, relatively high latency, poor low latency performance, unbalanced I/O
Can't find if Maya44 is balanced and why it matters, I only see it has Hi-Z input... It seems good for my violin/guitar input but what about the XLR. Is there a dedicated input or is it shared on this 1/4 jack? (With Scarlett I just plug it in without signal loss... I think.) On the other hand, specs of Juli@ XT mention swappable Unbalanced RCA / Balanced TRS but isn't it also a kind of bridging which would/could increase latency?


Quote:
Originally Posted by bennetng View Post
Looks like the 18i20 can be used without a computer? So you can use it as a mixer/mic preamp and connect it with the sound card.
We're not really binning Scarlett. It now happened we can afford another card so we'll use Scarlett with Intel, I only need a card to swap on Ryzen.
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Old 06-07-2018, 09:34 AM   #10
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The one that *may* affect latency is PCI vs PCIE.

Balanced and unbalanced have nothing to do with computer architecture and latency, but with unbalanced the chance of having ground loop or noise while recording is higher. For this issue, try to connect the 18i20 with the mainboard's built-in Realtek interface's line-in, record something and see if you get horrible buzzing or not, if no, then getting a soundcard with unbalanced I/O should be fine.

Also, unbalanced devices usually have lower voltage (volume), usually about 6-12dB differences for line level connection, when using unbalanced devices to record balanced devices, make sure to reduce the balanced devices' output level to avoid clipping.

Just an example of balanced to unbalanced connection:
http://blog.jdslabs.com/2018/03/how-...dio-interface/

ESI is obviously not as famous as companies like RME, Lynx and even consumer brands like Asus and Creative, but nowadays everything are USB so finding new and affordable studio grade PCIE soundcards is not an easy task.

Which mainboard and OS are you using? Let us know so that others will not have bad experiences like you if they are planning to build a new computer.
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Old 06-07-2018, 10:05 AM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Skrzypiec View Post
Hello. I got Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 on Ryzen but because of severe USB incompatibility my audio was basically crashing every day. After fruitless tech talk to both Focusrite and motherboard support, consulting with a PC technician and looking for a solution on various forums which resulted in over a YEAR of break in composing, I'm considering a roll back. I was suggested Audigy 2 ZS in place of Scarlett, because it's pci-e and can bypass the usb issues. Anybody can tell me if this one is any decent considering noise levels and real-time recording latency? Thank you.
I know this is not answering your question, but there are a lot of red flags here for me.

at any point did you try another usb audio device in order to rule out that it wasn't just a bad unit?

If it's a USB "compatibility" thing, it might be the motherboard. replacing it would be much cheaper than getting a PCI based card on par with the scarlet.

Or maybe you need to flash the bios? maybe update a chipset driver?

What graphics card are you using?

did you maybe just try to run a project with the onboard audio of your device, at least to test?

at any point did you completely do a fresh install of your OS to eliminate driver issues?
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Old 06-07-2018, 10:53 AM   #12
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I'll second James. I did a project not too long ago that had their 18i20 shuttling between two pretty wheezy old PCs (and my Macs) and had no issues. Wish I knew what their motherboards were exactly, but do the checks on all the things he mentions before buying a new interface. If you're still unable to get it going, try running another USB interface before you conclude it's a Focusrite issue. Better yet, stick the Focusrite on another Windows computer and see what happens.
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Old 06-07-2018, 07:34 PM   #13
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For what he's doing, I'm not sure why we're looking at internal interfaces anyway.

If the budget allows it, an RME babyface pro would seem like the logical choice.

http://www.rme-audio.de/en/products/babyface_pro.php

If more I/O is desirable, the RME fireface UC is the next step up.

http://www.rme-audio.de/en/products/fireface_uc.php


If you don't want to spend that much money, then let us know how much you do want to spend so that we can make some recommendations.
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Old 06-07-2018, 08:00 PM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Skrzypiec View Post
Thank you for all the insight.

I'm not sure if you mean bridging as audio card architecture or Ryzen architecture... Does it mean I should just stick to PCIE card, or will Ryzen force PCIE-PCI bridging even if I use a PCIE card? I guess you mean the former but this can be read in two ways, so please clarify. I'm on Asus Prime B350 Plus, this one has both PCIE and PCI slots.
OK, this is how it works. Once PCI was the standard, and all motherboard chipsets supported it natively. Then PCIE came along, and the chipsets supported PCIE and PCI natively at the same time. Then as time went along native PCI support was removed from the chipsets (AMD kept it the longest, finally doing away with it with the chipsets that go with Ryzen CPU's), and PCI functionality is provided using a bridge chip that connects to PCIE from the motherboard chipset. So motherboard chipset PCIE bus--> bridge chip--> PCI slot.

This is a compromise. Some bridge chips work better than others, but none of them work as well as true native PCI support directly from the chipset. Doesn't matter in a lot of cases, but low latency operation of sound cards is one case where is does matter. Depending on the sound card and the bridge chip in use it may work fine, work but struggle at low buffer settings, or just plain not work at all.


Quote:
These seem to be within my reach but what I precisely have is electric violin (1/4 jack), electric guitar (1/4 jack), XLR mic for voice, effects and acoustic viola, plus various VST libraries to use with Reaper so I need to narrow down which card would handle all of these better. I'm not sure about several things:
It seems to me that something like the RME babyface pro would do everything you want, and unlike an internals card it has two good mic preamps and two line/instrument inputs built in. If you want more channels like the 18i20 has, then the fireface UC is the next step up.


Quote:
Can't find if Maya44 is balanced and why it matters,
Balanced I/O matters because it is immune to ground loop noise (* not quite as simple as that, but not worth going into here). Yah know when you hook everything up and end up with hum or noise in your recording or from your monitors? It should prevent that so long as everything uses balanced I/O. It also has superior outside noise rejection, but that's less important with small setups.

Quote:
I only see it has Hi-Z input... It seems good for my violin/guitar input but what about the XLR. Is there a dedicated input or is it shared on this 1/4 jack? (With Scarlett I just plug it in without signal loss... I think.) On the other hand, specs of Juli@ XT mention swappable Unbalanced RCA / Balanced TRS but isn't it also a kind of bridging which would/could increase latency?

There is nothing wrong with the ESI cards, but I'm not sure why we're looking at them as the best option for what you want to do.

Going for an external USB unit lets you have all the I/O you need in one box. Mic preamps, line/instrument inputs, a dedicated headphone output. Going with RME gives you excellent low latency and low latency performance over USB. There are other cheaper options, but it is a compromise. Is the compromise worth it? That depends on money, the relative latency performance of the cheaper units, the varying quality of preamps and stuff.

There are decent units for less money than RME, but RME is the go to option if you can afford it. The 2nd gen focusrite scarlett units actually do pretty well on sound quality and latency, and are much cheaper than RME, but if they don't work with your motherboard then they're not an option.

For what you're doing I don't see the point of getting an internal card. The RME PCIE internal cards are indeed a great bit of gear, but they require external ADAT converter racks. If I was setting up a studio to record 24 tracks at a time with racks of converters I'd consider going that way, but for what you're doing I don't see the point.

What James HE said too. Have you definitely updated your motherboard bios? Have you definitely tried it in the USB2 rather than the USB3 ports on your motherboard?

What are you complete system specs?

Last edited by drumphil; 06-07-2018 at 08:13 PM.
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Old 06-08-2018, 02:42 AM   #15
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As the OP specifically mentioned that Focusrite and the motherboard's tech support, opinions from many other forums and a PC technician were not able to solve the problem for more than one year, it is an extremely hard, if not unsolvable problem. Any further troubleshooting can easily waste another year of time.

Actually the Juli@ XTe is an "archived" product, so for any ideal PCIE interfaces with everything supported the only choices are the expensive ones, with an external preamp/mixer. RME9632 uses old PCI, Babyfaces are USB, for firewire there is also risk of firewire card driver and compatibility issue.

Considering all these things it could even be more economical to get another Ryzen board or even switching to intel.
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Old 06-08-2018, 04:14 AM   #16
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Originally Posted by bennetng View Post
As the OP specifically mentioned that Focusrite and the motherboard's tech support, opinions from many other forums and a PC technician were not able to solve the problem for more than one year, it is an extremely hard, if not unsolvable problem. Any further troubleshooting can easily waste another year of time.
If the problem turns out to be, for example, some driver / bios / registry conflict in the software environment, a new device will likely have the same problem.

The focusrite rep and the motherboard rep are are likely just going to go over basic troubleshooting, and are also likely not going to just say "oops, that's an issue with our product, looks like you got a bad unit, let's start the RMA process".

Also in general, it's difficult to really get help with something like this when you don't exactly know enough to ask the right questions or even follow troubleshooting steps correctly.

The OP is asking about purchasing an Audigy PCI soundcard - I'd wager that the internal sound on the motherboard is pretty much on par with that device

OP should at least test that.
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Old 06-08-2018, 06:02 AM   #17
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What James said.
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Old 06-08-2018, 12:51 PM   #18
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I am pretty sure those tech supports and members from other forums suggested similar generic troubleshooting stuff as well, for more than one year, and I suppose the PC technician was providing on-site service.

Anyway, let's wait and see if the OP will come back and make a reply or not.
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Old 06-08-2018, 04:29 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Skrzypiec View Post
Hello. I got Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 on Ryzen but because of severe USB incompatibility my audio was basically crashing every day. After fruitless tech talk to both Focusrite and motherboard support, consulting with a PC technician and looking for a solution on various forums which resulted in over a YEAR of break in composing, I'm considering a roll back. I was suggested Audigy 2 ZS in place of Scarlett, because it's pci-e and can bypass the usb issues. Anybody can tell me if this one is any decent considering noise levels and real-time recording latency? Thank you.
I got 18i20 too and runs well under intel...

there is a reason to not use amd: AUDIO.
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Old 06-08-2018, 08:19 PM   #20
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Originally Posted by bennetng View Post
I am pretty sure those tech supports and members from other forums suggested similar generic troubleshooting stuff as well, for more than one year, and I suppose the PC technician was providing on-site service.

Anyway, let's wait and see if the OP will come back and make a reply or not.
If there is one thing that being a technician has taught me it's that making such naive optimistic assumptions is rarely a good idea.

Maybe he has really properly narrowed the problem down to issues with USB that mean the scarlett will never work with that motherboard, but I'm sure as heck not going to assume that. If I worked like that half the problems I solve would remain unsolved.

If the OP is able to explain exactly what different things he tried in his efforts to resolve this problem, depending on what the answer is, I may be a bit quicker to give up on figuring out if there is a way to make it work.
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Old 06-09-2018, 12:11 AM   #21
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Should have given you the back story as to why I am now all RME.

In the early days of USB audio interfaces I went through Tascam & Focusrite, especially focusrite. I had a saffire 6 which worked great on my Core2 Duo right up to when I switched to an i5 and win 7, when everything went to shit. Since it was still in warranty Focusrite worked hard with me to resolve the problem but never did despite me going through a Scarlett 2i2 and a 2i4 in the end they refunded me and we gave up.
I still have no idea what was causing the glitches, but always assumed it was related to focusrites drivers, never their strong point back then.
So I wound up going with the original Babyface which I still have and use in my portable rig, based entirely on my positive experience with a pci card in the main studio machine which is also still giving good service. As to pci/pci-e, both are still out there in the RME range and you can still get modern MOBOs with at least one native slot, but you really have to seek them out.

However if you dont need more than 2 I/O there are more affordable USB options like the N.I Komplete Audio 6
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Last edited by ivansc; 06-10-2018 at 02:39 AM.
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Old 06-09-2018, 03:47 AM   #22
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Should have given you the back story as to why I am now all RME.
Yeah everyone knows RME is good, the DAW Bench proved it.
http://www.dawbench.com/audio-int-lowlatency3.htm

Unfortunately the OP didn't even quote my link of the HDSPe AIO card and the Lynx, the only reason I can think about is price. According to the DAW Bench ranking, the Julia@ XTe is a very good choice if the OP can find one at a good price, and of course only if the driver support for recent OSes and hardware is still good.

I also used the RME HDSPe card + Multiface II in non-optimized typical Lenovo and Dell PCs and it is so stable to the point of boring.
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Old 06-09-2018, 03:35 PM   #23
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Waaait... it suddenly works, when I wanted to give up...
I'll test for few more days but I'm noting your tips.
Thank you for all of them, they open eyes a lot.
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