Sigma Tel

122356:

Thanks for visiting the Dell Community Forums.

That's an interesting problem, and one I don't have an immediate answer for.

Let's do this. If any board member has any suggestions, please respond and we can attempt to troubleshoot on this thread.

122356, check your Private Messages. I might also be able to escalate this to one of our engineers internally.

Thanks Chris, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tommy

Well I'm up for brainstorming this but any suggestions I might have right now will be general in nature because I lack specic familiarity with the 2 main products. When I joined this board it was the 'Inspiron Audio' board but over the years it has been merged and renamed a number of times; as a result there are models discussed that I am not as knowledgable about as I would like to be. Chris, do the Latitude D630 and D830 correspond to specific Inspiron models? If they do that would help.

I'm also vague on the Pocket PC interface. I've been aware of it for years because it was the first or one of the 1st notebook audio interfaces, but almost all of the discussion about similar cards on this board has been about the Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS PC card.

Tommy,  would you please give some more clarification about the basic mechanics of the problem? The picture I have is that you are using a multitracking recording program (because the Pocket PC is a dual mono channel interface and you wrote that you have 4 channels). Then, as you wrote

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The problem we are seeing is everything will work fine for a short period of time and then two of the four recording channels (1 & 2) will peak out with white noise. This will last for anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes and then go back to working correctly.

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Does this mean that you have recorded the 1st 2 tracks and are playing them back and overdubbing tracks 3 & 4, when suddenly the playback audio on tracks 1 & 2 goes into digital distortion (" peak out")? Or is it that all 4 tracks have been recorded and while playing back all of them the 1st two consistently distort intermittently?

Sorry that I'm not immediately grasping the senario. I haven't had much luck googling VoiceIQ; apparently the company is bankrupt and most of the links are either bad or about legalities. I normally use a Cakewalk Sonar multitracking program so naturally I am thinking in terms of that in the absence of details re VoiceIQ. Besides wanting to know what the software does, I also wanted to find out why it requires you to only use a Pocket PC card as the interface. It could be as simple as that at the time the specifications were written the Pocket PC was the only PC Card available.

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Everyone we have discussed this with says it's an issue with the new sound card built into the Dell's. I'm hoping that you might be able to shed some light on this issue.

Is there anything that I can do to make the newer HD audio interact like the older C-Major with our Digigram sound card?

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Once again it is hard to understand the mechanics of this. Because you are using an external audio interface, how does the integrated Sigmatel system become a part of the problem? In what way is the HD audio system supposed to interact with the Pocket PC? The reason this perplexes me is because when you select one device as the default device in the Audio Properties, you automatically deselect the other one. Or are you selecting one device to be the default recording source and the other to be the default playback device?

Jim

Hey Jim,

Thanks for asking. The pc card from Digigram has a dongle attachment that lets me plug 4 xml mic's into the pc card. Then the software (http://www.viqsolutions.com/) allows me to record 4 channels of audio at one time and save to the local hard drive. The software has a built in VU meter that lets me monitor the audio input of all 4 channels. During the recording, channels one and two will peak and stay there and then return to normal, which will drown out the other two channels during the peak. I don't know the mechanics of how the pc card integrates with the built in sound card. You're right about setting the specific card in the audio properties, one for record (digigram) and one for playback (SegmaTel). I know that the application will not work with the built in sound card disabled. One person from tech support at VIQ thought the built in sound card was trying to play during the recording which was causing the spike. Unfortunately with the new HD SigmaTel's you don't have a lot of control over what it's doing in device manager. So I'm not sure what options I have. I tried going into the advance performance properties of the SigmaTel and turning off the hardware acceleration with no success. Again, it works great on the older laptops , but not with the newer one's that have the different sound card. Please let me know if I'm not clear on anything. I appreciate your help.

Tommy

Tommy,

I have been doing some research based on your information.

Your Digigram VX Pocket PC sound card is a VXpocket 440 model. I was able to get the user's manual and much other information about it from the Digigram site. There is nothing usual about the device itself that requires that a laptop's integrated audio system must be enabled for it to work. This requirement is counterintuitive and I can see where it might lead to problems. There is a good chance that the VX and the Sigmatel are sharing the same IRQ assignment and interfering with each other or overloading the pci bus. Has anyone suggested checking the IRQ's? Because they are assigned by Windows plug & play they might share an IRQ in one model but not in another. The laptops have a limited pci bus system and too many devices can end up sharing IRQ's.

I still don't understand why you are required to have the Sigmatel selected as the playback device when you are recording. The Sigmatel has no functional role in the process as you described it, or do you use it to monitor the recording or something?

I haven't been able to find out anything regarding your software. I don't know the name of it. If it is Courtable or another discontinued product then the site you linked me to might not be of much help. Can you paste in the section of documentation where it requires that the VX and Sigmatel be simultaneously enabled? That requirement seems bizarre to me. Do the Digigram tech support endorse using that software with the VX? Do you have any other multitrack program that you can use to test the VX?

I wonder what happened to Chris? ("If any board member has any suggestions, please respond and we can attempt to troubleshoot...")

I'll try to think on this some more tomorrow. This is tough because except for the symptoms you reported the technical details of what is supposed to be happeningin the software program are non-existent.

Jim

Sorry for the slow response. Out of the office on Friday. Not sure why the sigmatel has to be there but it does. If I disable the sigmatel and then try to start the software, will receive a "failed to get the input port:1" error and software will not start. I have tried two different versions of the software. My original version is called courtable (ver 3.6) and they have come out with a newer version called encompass. The newer version does have a monitoring capability built in that does require the sound card for headphones, where the older version does not. And, we have been using the built in sound card in the older version to confirm recording levels in our testing before we start our true recordings. But neither one will work with the new laptops, even when I select the digigram as the playback device. Looking at the digigram card settings, it is using irq 07 and an I/O range of FFF0-FFFF. Unfortunately the sigmatel does not give any info in device manager about it's settings. But using a command line tool, winmsd, does not show any conflicts in IRQ, I/O or any other type of setting. The only thing I've been able to see as a possible conflict is running dxdiag, I see the sigmatel and the digigram card both listed as "WDM" (windows driver model) types, for whatever that's worth. Again, I appreciate you taking a swing at this Jim.

Tommy

Thanks, Tommy.

Have you seen the VIQ Service Bulletin dated January 10 that addresses your issue quite specifically?

SB's

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USING THE VXPOCKET 440 WITH DELL LAPTOPS CAUSES INTERMITTENT
WHITE NOISE
Using Digigram VXPocket 440 MPEG recording cards in some Dell Latitude and Inspiron Laptops may
cause certain audio channels to record white noise after a few minutes. This behavior has been reported
with 4 channel cards where a pair of the channels will function normally while the other pair will record
white noise. VIQ Solutions and Digigram continue to test this condition and look for permanent solutions.

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Jim

Tommy,

In light of that bulletin and considering the very skimpy amount of technical information available, I don't see any reason to think it is a Dell issue. Unless there is any evidence I haven't seen that the Digigram device would not work with the Dell laptops if used with one of the mainstream multitrack programs like
Sonar or Cubase, then I feel that the VIQ software is causing the incompatibility and as they said they are working on a solution.

Let me restate, this conclusion is influenced by that the fact that there is almost no technical information available from VIQ that I have been able to find. Without any such information to work with I can't at this time come to any other conclusion. I could well change my mind about this not being a Dell issue if any new facts emerge.

Jim

I think I'm the reason that was issued.

Thanks Jim. I will post back if a solution is ever offered.

 

Tommy

Tommy,

I took a look at the VIQ site again this a.m. to see if I missed anything. The absence of information on the site is the most remarkable thing about it. I tracked the Encompass Standalone links and could not find even one screenshot of the software! Unbelievable.


Early on you wrote

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Everyone we have discussed this with says it's an issue with the new sound card built into the Dell's. 
and
Talking to Voice IQ, Digigram, Dell support and our Dell sales rep. also failed to provide a solution.

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Historically neither Dell's sales nor tech support have had much of a  grasp of audio issues, and I wonder if they had access to enough information to conclude that this is a Sigmatel HD issue or if they were just blowing smoke. If they did have adequate info I someone would share it here. Without knowing how the software is supposed to work with the Digigram and Sigmatel, it is impossible to say why it is failing to work with them in that way.

The following is off topic if you want to skip it.

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Chris,

I saw that emoticon ... can't get much past me.

On another board NemesisDB wrote:

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Per an earlier suggestion I made, I'd also like people responding to a thread ( or perhaps the OP) to be able to request assistance from others by flagging the thread ( perhaps another color/ icon?).  To the extent that jumping into another thread and helping after someone else has already replied is considered bad form now, it will only be more so the case when people are rewarded for solutions.  A system to say " I give up" or " I need help from others" would help others feel free to join in without stepping on the first responders toes ( or feeling like they were stealing points from someone).

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This is the best suggestion for an ' improvement' to the forum that I have ever seen. I particularly like the idea of the thread or post being being flagged with another color. If something like this had been in place then with your 1st post ( and only one I can't help noticing) you could have flagged the  thread with say a red box or whatever, and anyone  passing through the Laptop Audio board would have been alerted to the fact that this is an ' open' thread where extra helped is required and requested. I think that under such a system the  response from the other regular forum members would be like bees to honey.

I'm not sure about this though, ".. .that jumping into another thread and helping after someone else has already replied is considered bad form..." If anybody has an alternate idea I don't mind when they ' jump' in after me, although I have been known to get snippy when someone does something like answer a question addressed to me before I get a chance to. But if anybody is holding back because of some unwritten rule of forum etiquette, Nemesis suggestion would give them permission to contribute.

Jim

jimco:

You lost me :smileyvery-happy:

 

@122356: I sent you a Private Message requesting your account information so that I could get you in touch with one of our engineers.  Did you receive it?  If so, can you please respond.

 

In regards to helping others on threads, I think an additional flag would be beneficial as well.  Or, if you are working the thread and are at a loss for any other troubleshooting steps, you could simply reply stating "others are free to jump in" or something similar.

 

 

 

 

Hey Chris, No I never received your Private Message. Maybe I'm not looking in the right spot.

 

Tommy

I was looking in the wrong place. Replying now, thanks.

Tommy

Chris wrote

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Or, if you are working the thread and are at a loss for any other troubleshooting steps, you could simply reply stating "others are free to jump in" or something similar.

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Isn't that what you did in this thread when you invited participation? I think you'd need a bright red flag in order to draw more eyes to the thread, particularly on this board where there is a shortage of regulars.

Jim

PS Tommy, sorry for going off topic but there are some saavy folks on the forum who might be interested in trying to figure this out if we could attract their attention.