Posted on 06.12.2008 @ 21:01:39 PDT
by djblade311

If you ever pick up an M-Audio Firewire Sound card, you might become one of the no-so-lucky customers that experience distortion when playing music through iTunes or WinAmp.   There are numerous recommendations on the internet that may not work for everyone.

Here were my symptoms and what was happening to me:

1. While playing an mp3 in iTunes, any large data transfers like syncing your iPod at the same time may cause distortion.    Shutting down iTunes and iTunesHelper.exe sometimes helped but required a reboot most of the time.
   
2. While copying large amounts of data from an external hard drive, my M-Audio Sound card would disappear from the Device Manager completely.    Re-scanning for hardware didnt work so rebooting was required.
3. If at anytime any of the above occurred, the same problem existed within WinAmp.

Various Recommendations from the internet:

1. Adjust Quicktime settings
2. Rollback Quicktime and/or iTunes
   
3. Turn off the EQ within iTunes
4. Turn off the Sound Enhancer within iTunes
5. Update drivers for M-Audio Firewire series
6. reinstall firewire card drivers.
7. etc, etc
   

After days of troubleshooting, I determined that it was basically a problem with either the M-Audio Firewire sound card or the Firewire bus itself.   Since my Dynex firewire expansion card was brand new from Best Buy...I figured it were the sound card drivers.   Nope.   Even the latest sound card drivers didnt fix it.

My Solution/Fix:

1. Return that P.O.S. Dynex Firewire expansion card
2. Replace it with a card that had the Texas Instruments (TI) Chipset. 
   

Voila.   Problem fixed.   Yea it costs a little more when it has a TI chipset but you get what you pay for and when you need stability for DJing, Studio Recording, Mixing, or Video editing via Firewire, using a name brand card with a reputable chipset manufacturer will be beneficial.   Why would you put yourself through the stress of trying to perform live with a possibility of distortion?