Installation and drivers

When you install a sound card, you are installing both the hardware and software called a driver. The sound card driver is what allows your operating system and your sound card to communicate. This section is aimed at preventing problems when installing both your sound card and its driver.

Installing a sound card

Follow your sound card’s documentation for installing the sound card in your computer. If you are installing a PCI card, or any hardware that requires you to open the cover of your computer, be careful to discharge any static electricity you are carrying by touching the metal casing of your computer before handling the sound card itself. Static electricity can damage a sound card’s circuitry.

WDM and MME

In most situations, the newer WDM (Windows Driver Model) sound card drivers that most sound card vendors are creating are a much better choice than the older MME (Multi-Media Extensions) drivers. If your sound card vendor has a WDM driver, it’s usually a good idea use it. The following table compares their characteristics.

WDM	MME
Lower latency	Usually higher latency
Not every sound card vendor has produced a WDM driver.	MME drivers are widely available. Note: If you use two or more sound cards at the same time, and not all of them have WDM drivers, you must force the WDM drivers to function as MME drivers. Go to Edit > Preferences > Audio - Playback and Recording and select MME in the Driver Mode list.

IRQs

An IRQ (Interrupt Request) is an assigned location where the CPU expects to be interrupted by a device when it has completed a task. There are 16 IRQs on a computer. Usually, three or four are taken by the system, leaving 12 or 13 for other devices, like printers, USB devices, hard disks, floppy disk drives, keyboard and sound card. Some of these devices can share an IRQ with other devices, but for the most part this is not a good thing, and for a sound card which can use a lot of CPU power, it can be a real problem. IRQ conflicts can cause your system to freeze or fail to boot up properly, or the system may fail to recognize your sound card. Sometimes the problem only reveals itself when you attempt to use the device that is sharing an IRQ.

IRQ conflicts

Newer motherboards often use something called ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) which controls IRQ settings, in effect overriding the motherboard IRQ settings. ACPI, just like Plug and Play, can sometimes lead to shared IRQs and problems with your sound card.

Checking for ACPI on Your System:

1.	Look at your IRQ settings.

2.	Look for an entry that says ACPI.

Resolving IRQ conflicts on a Non-ACPI system

The easiest way to resolve a conflict may be to remove the piece of hardware that is conflicting with your sound card. Of course, this is not always possible, but if you have a modem, network card, or some other hardware device that you do not use, removing it (and its driver) may free up an IRQ for your sound card.

Sometimes you can change a sound card’s IRQ setting by physically moving the card to another PCI/ISA slot, or by moving several hardware devices to new slots. To do this, uninstall the hardware you want to move, along with its driver, put the hardware devices in their new slots and reinstall their drivers. Once you have completed this, check the IRQ settings again.

If moving or removing hardware did not help, you may be able to use the system BIOS to change an IRQ setting. To see if your BIOS allows you to make changes to your systems IRQ settings, consult your motherboard’s documentation.

Resolving IRQ conflicts on an ACPI system

If you are experiencing an IRQ conflict on an ACPI system, you may want to turn off ACPI. This varies depending on your OS, BIOS and motherboard. Consult your computer manufacturer’s documentation or technical support for instructions on how to do this.

SONAR and audio hardware

The following tips will help you get the most out of your sound card and Cakewalk software:

Use SONAR’s Wave Profiler anytime your install a new sound card. Wave Profiler determines the correct settings for your sound card.

Read the documentation for your sound card. You can save yourself a lot of time by learning about your hardware before you try to use it. Many sound cards have their own control panels which allow you to customize the card’s settings.

 

For more information, see:

Audio

MIDI

Audio hardware (sound cards) and drivers

Audio playback in SONARTracks

Tracks

Clips

Track-by-track playback

Connecting an instrument, home stereo, or microphone to your sound card

Choosing inputs

Audio recording