Nope, ASIO doesn't help. Only slows things down when I choose it as a primary driver...
---------- Post added 06-04-2011 at 08:24 AM ---------- Previous post was 06-02-2011 at 09:33 AM ----------
Here is the detailed description of the problem that I have posted on manufacturer's forum (still no response from them) :
I use M-audio Firewire 410 sound card.
Few days ago, while I was working on (windows XP SP2) a project in Nuendo 4 when suddenly it started giving me a very slow and distorted playback. Even the interface started lagging (inside the project only - meaning zoom, scroll, move etc. but not the upper menu - main menu). All of the sudden, Fruity Loops also started slowing down with all the crackle sounds coming from everywhere.
I decided to change the operative system and start clean, so I installed Windows 7 64bit. Same thing - Nuendo is unbearable. Out of the sudden it is acting as if my sound card or my computer were over over-encumbered. My windows media player has excellent audio playback in both audio and video files, so I guess the problem doesn't lie in sound card directly.
My computer should be capable of taking care of some 20-30 vst plugins working simultaneously (i even had projects with over 40 plugins that didn't lag/glitch even once during the producing process). I have around 20GB space free on my windows partition so that should not be an issue as well. I have downloaded the latest (and only) driver for Windows 7 64 as soon as I installed it. I also downloaded ASIO4ALL just to see if anything changes if I switch drivers (yeah, like that happened...). I disabled my sound-chip (on my motherboard) so it doesn't intervene with my sound card performance. My nuendo device settings are all set properly to use my sound card's driver as primary sound driver and the MIDI mapping seems all right (same settings as the past 2-3 years of working perfectly).
I ruled out everything I could think of... I don't think my sound card is dying, since the playback of audio files outside of these programs have seamless playback (except for some online video games - it gets glitchy when too many sounds are playing at once - also happened out of the sudden during Windows XP - simultaneously with the Nuendo/FL problem).
UPDATE : I found another thing now... In control panel/hardware and sound/manage audio devices I have : S/PDIF, Line 1/2, Line 3/4, Line 5/6, Line 6/7, Line 7/8, Multi-channel (all marked as M-Audio firewire 410, of course). Only Line 1/2 & Multichannel as a default device produce sound when I play some music on WMP (which is only logical since 1/2 ports are used by my monitors & those channels also include headphones - i sometimes connect my other set of monitors to a single cable and then that cable into the headphone input for fast switching and comparing). BUT, Nuendo produces the sound no matter which device i choose, which leads me to conclusion that, although Firewire 410 driver is set as primary driver, Nuendo doesn't use Firewire 410 at all... I am not sure how is this possible, since I set my motherboard sound card/sound chip to "disable - do not use this device" and it is completely removed from my sound devices list. I hope this is going few steps towards the solution... Also, when I open "adjust system volume" tab, which is supposed to show all the applications using my primary sound device at the moment, I don't see Nuendo on any of these channels, further proving the point.
