i need to put everything back together one last time.

i'll be back to work soon.

that's almost six weeks, to conclude there's no answer.

ugh.

at least i understand, now...

no difference in behaviour on the pIII through the audigy - with a vanilla xp sp3 install.

so, that's tested on two different computers through three different soundcards. it's a programming error.

ugh.

i installed cubase on the pIII, but it was full of errors and ultimately the licensing didn't work. i was going to have to reinstall anyways after that, so i'm going to wipe it and put a vanilla sp3 on it. i've worked it down to processor or program error - or the obscure possibility that it might still be ram.

it should install fine on a vanilla sp; there's an audigy in there, it should pick it up through asio. if i get the same results, it's absolutely the program.

but, for this machine, i'm not as convinced of this. if i get different results, i'm leaning towards it being an error coming out of doing 32-bit math on a 64-bit processor. that's ultimately a programming error, as it really shouldn't happen. but it's the only thing i can really make sense of. i'll be able to verify that through this process. but, it means i can't rule out the ram.

what i'll have to do to rule out the ram is to find a way to get it up on this thing - maybe try vmware. i fully expect no change on this laptop, but we'll see.

but before i go out of my way on that, i'll wait to see what happens on the pIII. if i get the same thing, it's just the program and there's nothing else to do...

you know, i'm not sure why i thought loading cubase in virtualbox would be an easy task...

it doesn't know how to read the soundcard emulation. it's not going to figure it out. and i don't know how useful the test would be anyways.

this laptop was given to me as a gift. i'm grateful for it, no doubt. but, it has a chip in the bios that prevents xp from loading. no joke. microsoft is that neurotic about it. i'm not particularly keen on a reinstall, but it's not an option, anyways.

i do not believe that there is a way to install the h20 drivers in windows 7.

my other modern laptop has the same issue. my ancient laptop is ancient. you don't understand. 1997, i think.

that leaves my living room pc as the only serious option, although it's stripped down so far that it might not install. i've run cubase on it in the past, but not sx3. it's the exact reason i upgraded; it was just not useful to run a daw on. pIII. 500 Mhz. well, there's only one way to find out what happens...

yes. i have a pIII kicking. it just sends youtube videos to a tv i found on the side of the road. and audio signals to the stereo. but i wrote a third of the discography on it...

actually, that might be a better idea, because it's the only specifically 32-bit processor around. i suspect that this may be significant.

i still have testing to do, but i've more or less ruled out the ram. everything remains completely consistent, regardless of which slots i use or which sticks i put in.

i don't think it's the board, either.

i'm demonstrating that the output is very consistently different after the save. but i'm also demonstrating that it's always the same before the save, and always the same after the save. i had to test this because i'm running out of ideas, but i can't really build a chain of logic that would implicate the ram.

i'm going to test on the laptop. but i'm almost entirely convinced that this is a programming error that i just never noticed and that the outputs from july are closer to the direct ram output due to an error in the drivers that sort of cancelled it out. while that might have resulted in cleaner renders for those specific files, it's likely not reproducible and i'm going to just have to adjust - or switch to another daw.

i just spent 6 weeks trying to correct a systems collapse, only to realize that there's a programming error in cubase.

it's minor. i only noticed it due to a driver break. it was there all along. i'll work around it.

uploads should resume shortly, and i should be able to push into period 3 within a few weeks.