On this page relevant topics from the official Terratec FAQ (issue 981228) have been integrated. They are preceded by a small Terratec logo.

For problems specific to certain sound applications like Cubase, Logic, Cakewalk, Cool Edit, Sound Forge, Ed!son Wave etc., we created The Cool CuCake Forge.

DirectSound Hardware Acceleration problem 2000-03-12

Problem:

I have an EWS64XL and am running Win98 2nd ED with all the latest EWS drivers and DirectX6. I have set up 6 Wave play clients (the default) in the synthesiser properties dialog.
However, when I enumerate my DirectSound devices, only the first of these supports hardware accelerated buffers and mixing ("EWS64XL DirectSound5 driver #1 (ewsaudio.vxd)"). The remaining 5 are called "EWS64XL Wave Play #2-#6 (emulated)" and support no acelleration.
I also have an entry for a "CS4232 DirectSound Driver (ewsaudio.vxd)" which seems to support nothing but a single primary buffer, should this be there?

Solution (with contributions from Daniele and Terratec Support):

• Install Asio beta. This resolves the problem of the emulated device (directx). Asio beta installs VXD version 2.38.
• 'DISABLE HARDWARE BASED MULTIBUFFER SUPPORT' in the device manager under the SYNTHESIZER-> Settings.

High pitched noise on IN-2 991201

Contribution by Christoph Niedeggen

I've got some good news about a subject that has already been discussed a lot: the high pitced noise on IN-2. After reading about some sort of hardware modification a while ago I finally called TerraTec. They told me that there actually is some modification to reduce the high pitched noise (although they said that it won't go away completely) and that I might send in my card to get it modified. So on last Monday I sent in my card (V1.2) and also my front panel (V1.2) since I wasn't sure if it had the MIDI-Out-problem (I'm not using Midi enough to realize it yet.) They told me that they would exchange it if there was a problem. On Thursday I got my modified card back, as well as a new front panel (V1.2 again; I can't spot any difference, but it's definitely a new one). So those of you who have problems with MIDI should call TerraTec even if they have a front panel V1.2. On the card there are a few (four?) exchanged SMD parts (capacitors and/or resistors - difficult to tell by their tiny size). To measure the difference I loaded "sn_test.mix" in the Control Panel (Dream Synth clocked at 44.1 kHz) and recorded 10 seconds of silence (with nothing plugged into IN-2) in Cool Edit at 44.1 kHz, 16 Bit, stereo and looked at Statistics... / Average RMS Power.

original hardware: left -84.27 dB / right -84.91 dB
modified hardware: left -90.45 dB / right -91.19 dB

You can see that the sn/r increased by about 6 dB! It's still not as good as a recording with the Dream Synth clocked at 32 or 48 kHz (I get about -96 dB in this case) but much better than before. Moreover the noise now isn't particularly present at 12 kHz any more but more evenly spread in the frequency range (which is less irritating.)
So thanks for this great service, TerraTec! Way to go! I can just recommend to contact TerraTec if your hardware isn't working properly. They really offer a good and fast service. I don't know if they do this kind of modification also outside of Germany, but at least you should give them a ring.

Contribution by Claus Riethmueller

One user wanted to know a setting/routing that makes it possible to play earlier recorded tracks without the one he's recording through one of the two analogue inputs.

Solution:

Open the AudioIn Panel (EWSAUDIN.EXE in EWS64-folder) and click on the Mute Button.

We asked Cristoph Wilms, head of Terratec support, what he thought about the problem that's best described as: "I can hear my screen through the EWS" (mousemovements, windowdragging, in short: all kinds of screen activity).

His reaction:

This can have many reasons, most of the time it is a problem with transmissions from other hardware. If there is a component, that is not 100% CE-certified, it is possible, that the case transports this signals to our card.

A solution (and this is not a TerraTec-Statement.....) is to isolate the whole card from the case (including Frontpanel). But be careful, because once you do this, our EWS doesn't comply with the CE norm anymore.

Our comment:

See also the Grounding and Shielding topic, especially the paragraph The 'illegal' method to solve the noise problems. Also read all the other topics on this page about noise problems.

If all kinds of unwanted noises are giving you trouble, there are a few options worth looking at first. We cannot garantuee you that every noise disappears. After all, you're card is built into a computer with lots of potential noisemakers, causing interference. Have a closer look at them:

Trouble transmitters:

• CD-rom player, harddisk, diskdrives
• TV-card (however: most of the time the best shielded one)
• Fans (power supply, processor cooling)
• Graphics card
• Monitor very close to the computer case
• Devices outside your computer (monitor, other computers, electric motors, tubelights etc.)
• Sound devices connected to your soundcard.

Trouble receivers:

• Mainly the unshielded flatcables of your soundcard
• The electronic components on your soundcard and the frontpanel

Other possible causes:

• The FX Panel software of your EWS

Possible solutions:

• Make sure the frontpanel is grounded, just as your whole computer system
• The soundcard is not shielded, just as little as the flatcables. Move the card to a slot as far away as possible from the interfering sourc(es).
• Check the cable layout in the computer: bring order in the spaghetti and move it away from interfering sources as much as possible. Use tie-raps.
• Check the settings in the FX Panel. Turn off all effects and see if there's any noise left. Other users report considerable noise reduction when switching off chorus/V-space settings. See also item 'Influence of FX panel on overall sound'.

Things you should not do:

• Shielding the cables or other components with aluminum foil. There is a high risk that you cause a short-circuit within other components when the aluminum foil accidently touches them. However, there are users that found fairly safe and creative solutions. See the Grounding and Shielding topic.
• Connecting the frontpanel with cellotape and/or rubber bands when it does not fit into the bay the way it should. Refer to the Fitting Problems page for possible solutions.

Problems clearly related to the cd-player:

• It may vary from one player to the other, but the average player has a bad influence on the sound of your EWS64 system. Main problem: high pitch noises. We paid some more attention to the thing and noticed the following:
  • Use the EWS-player software, add some cd-tracks to the playlist. You will hear the high pitch sound if you have the Output slider set to the maximum.
  • Then set the switches on the Control Panel to M B A (seen from left to right), remove the music cd-tracks from the play list. Then move the cd-slider on the Control Panel: the high pitch sound disappears.
  • The moment you open the playlist again, the noise is back.
  • Press the 'Pause' button in the EWS Player while playing a cd-track. Wait about 20 seconds: the noise is gone untill you continue playing.

  Our conclusion: the EWS card (or the front panel) picks up the interference from the cd-player.

That's what you seem to get if you install such a sensitive sound device as the EWS in your computer. Can we expect the highest professional performance in such circumstances? Maybe we should be realistic and admit that this is always a kind of compromise. Who really wants to work with professional midi-equipment and samplers, should better choose for external devices. Or not?

When recording from an audio cd:

• cd-rom players produce unwanted high pitch noise. However, as we noticed, there is an audible difference between various 'cd-play software'.
• cd-players have no perfect constant speed. Consequence: you can hear jitters (a kind of clicking noises) during wave-recording. Try to record at the same sample rate as the cd has been recorded (44.1 kHz). The sample rate of 48 kHz is for DAT recorders.

Contribution by Rogier Hofboer

• Look in the Windows Control Panel and go to Power Savings.
• In this window you'll find a tab for Crystal SoundHardware.
• Choose power down now (click that button).
• The noise is away, even the beep I got when ADM was set to D! And there was an external sync source connected (like my CD player).

The power of the CODEC is turned down now, so the beep is really coming from the Codec, the device I don't need, want, asked for. But ok, it's nice to have good sound in an old dos game! If you disable the codec, you can't turn its power down and the noise remains. so that's not a solution.

When ADM is set to A there's still some noise (no beep), but you have to realise that the A/D converter is in a noisy  environment! Even when ADM is set to D there's still some noise from the D/A converters, but you wont notice that without blowing your ears out. If you really want professional recordings, use your DAT's D/A and A/D converters.

Contribution by Gerrit Boudewijn

Many users reported that the EWS64XL produces a high-pitched noise/hiss (6 or 11 kHz). The origin of this noise is most probably the A/D converter for IN-2. If you select D (Digital) with the switch next to the IN-2 fader (in the Control Panel), the noise disappears. When selecting A or M the high-pitched noise is back again. There is a work around to this problem:
If you select 32 kHz or 48 kHz in the right top corner of the Control Panel the noise disappers or is at least reduced considerably.

Ben Maassen (Terratec-US) reported in EWS64XL ML Digest #54: "We have not solved this problem with 2.0, I'm not sure if this error is hardware or software based, will keep you updated."

Additional information

Also other users report the 'high pitched noise' problem, on OUT 1 as well as OUT 2. We still have no further comments from Terratec. However, not every user seems to have this problems (or such sensitive ears :-). In any case it is wise to exclude any other probable cause, like shielding problems and 'cable routing' inside the computer. See also the items Avoiding Extra Noise, Influence of FX on overall sound  and Noise caused by Videocard on this page.

(Contribution by Gerrit Boudewijn)

Many users reported in the EWS64XL ML Digest of Ruud van de Kruisweg, that the EWS64XL produces a high-pitched noise/hiss (6 or 11 kHz). The origin of this noise is most probably the A/D converter for IN-2. If you select D (Digital) with the switch next to the IN-2 fader (in the Control Panel), the noise disappears. When selecting A or M the high-pitched noise is back again.

There is a workaround for this problem:

• If you select 32 kHz or 48 kHz in the right top corner of the ControlPanel the noise disappers or is at least reduced considerably.
• Ben Maassen (terratec-us) reported in EWS64XL ML Digest #54: "We have not solved this problem with 2.0, I'm not sure if this error is hardware or software based, will keep you updated."

Possible solutions reported by other users:

• Run 'Setup' from the Control Panel several times without changing anything in the settings. The crackling will vanish gradually.
• Check in 'Setup' (through Control Panel) if original IRQ's are used. If not, setup the IRQ's and refresh the EEPROM with these settings, otherwise 'polling mode' is used. It seems the crackling can also be caused by the card polling. Polling mode also decreases performance.
• Probably it isn't a bug and it won't go away. It's digital clipping, which is just a result of the sum of internal signal being too loud. If you want/need to process a track, you have to leave some headroom or turn 'Clip' 'ON' (at a guess this is why it's there).

Cubase VST users: see The Cool CuCake Forge.

It takes a while before you understand the EWS64 Control Panel to the full extend (not pretending that we do already, on the contrary). But sometimes 'the coin drops'. We noticed:

• Other sound-related programs can influence (and often do) the settings in the Control Panel, especially the slider settings. That would not be such a problem if it would be visible, but sometimes it's not. Some examples of things we noticed:
  • We installed Real Audio Player (5.0 beta version). Real Audio stays in control over the volume. First: no volume at all, after moving the RA-slider there is suddenly sound. The Wave-volume slider in the Control Panel moves synchronized, but RA 'stays in control'.
  • Starting Microsoft's Internet Explorer (v. 3.02, NL) suddenly raises the volume to the max.
• The consequence of the former item is: the level of sliders in the Control Panel can suddenly be moved to the maximum without you noticing it. This also causes sudden sound distortion, as your input level to the external amplifier becomes to high. Maybe that's what some users indicate as 'crackling noises' (although we know that there are also other causes for that).

Open the FX Panel, then switch off the EQ . Reason: The EQ affects also the S/P-DIF output.

We fear this aspect needs some improvement by Terratec. We tried 3 different mic's: a Sure SM58, an AKG C410 (some pro's) and a really cheap Trust microphone. The Trust had the best performance, but it still isn't much. Boosting is always the least you can do. Must be something in the EWS, because a cheap Soundblaster does much better with the same Trust micro.

The best solution probably at this stage is to connect an external mixer to one of the IN's of the EWS. Someone with better idea's?

(Source: Terratec FAQ, translated by Computer ConText)

The Out-1 and the Out-2 of the EWS64 are not exactly equivalent and cannot always give the same signal.

If you are interested in further information about this subject, you can download the file about the Virtual Channels software, which supplies more information about the Outputs.

(The English version of the mentioned file is available through our Download Page.)

Additional information by Computer ConText:

The confusion around Out-2 is illustrative for the poor user-interface of the EWS Control Panel. So this is what we found out (if you have additions/corrections, please email us):

• Connect an amplifier or other device to your Out-2
• Open a Wave-editor (e.g. Cool Edit or Ed!son wave) and load a wave file.
• Open the EWS Control Panel.
• Make sure that your Output 2 slider is not at zero and/or not muted.
• We used the following settings:
  • Input Selection: Synth
  • ADM-switch to 'M'
  • ABC-switch to 'B'
• Open the FX-panel (FX-button on Control Panel)
• Crucial here: the 'FX-4ch' switch in the Wave section.
• Set the switch to '4ch-mode'.
• Play the wave-file. Now you should have an output signal on Out-2 also.

Other things to take into account:

• Also open you Virtual Channels module: the working of the sliders etc. correspond to the wave-device you selected. Example: if in Cool Edit you selected 'EWS Wave Play #3' to be the device to reproduce your wave-file, you also should select #3 in Virtual Channels for it's sliders to take effect.
• Note the relation between the 'FX-4ch' setting and the display of Virtual Channels: if you set the 'FX-4ch' switch in the FX-panel to 'FX', you have 4 sliders in Virtual Channels. However, if you set the 'FX-4ch' switch to '4CH', the 'reverb' and 'chorus' sliders in Virtual Channels change to a QuadPad. This way you have a kind of quadrophonic panning at your disposal between left/right and front/back (read: Out-1 and Out-2). So, if you still don't get a signal on Out-2, also check if the 'dot' in the QuadPad isn't set to the 'front', but at least in the middle.
• There is no 'FX-4ch' switch in the Midi-section of the FX panel. But if you switch off the chorus and reverb in the FX-panel, in the Media Player also appears a QuadPad (with thanks to William van Dieten for his addition).

Anyway, we hope this information is a starting point for experimenting further and getting a better view on the operation of the EWS-software.

Last remark: there is also software in your EWS64 directory for controlling the audio INputs of the EWS! It's called: EWSAUDIN.EXE. And there is no button for it on the Control Panel:-)

(Contribution by Purple Snail)

Some users report very annoying 'noise spikes' in harddisk recordings when they use the optical interface.

The solution for this problem is to make sure that you sync externally. The Control Panel is confusing at this point. When the button says Sync Ext you are actually syncing internally! The button should say something like 'Click here to sync externally'. So, to sync externally, the button should read Sync Int.

Small addition by us: Also use the same sample rate at both devices if you are copying from -for instance- a DAT-recorder.

This is caused by a hardware error of the S/PDIF digital input circuits of EWS hardware revision 1.0.
In order to solve this problem you will have to send in your card to TerraTec and they will update it to hardware revision 1.1 free of charge. This way you will also get a nice soft clip algorithm which prevents the output signal from clipping. This can be turned On/Off of course.

The FX program has an 'overall' control on your sound output, even if you did not start the program. Endless echoes? Shaking reverb? Mind-twisting chorus? Heavy volume? Start the FX and switch off every lightning button you see and you will know what we mean.
See also the explanation of the signal routing on the Stupid Questions page.

Contribution by Kay Bruns

You must enable the WAVE EQ/VSpace send in the FX Panel and set the WAVE Master Reverb/Chorus Knobs to a nonzero value (e.g. 128). Then you must go to the VChannels Panel and set the Reverb/Chorus sliders for the in EWSPlay selected Wave driver to a nonzero value. Then you should hear the Effects.

Remember that you have three controls for Volume/Panning/Reverb and Chorus for WAVE. The MASTER in the FX Panel, the logical device controls in VChannel and the physical sliders in EWSPlay for every open client in the logical device (e.g. Wave Play #1).

Some users complain that effects (set in FX) are just audible during playback, but are not actually recorded in a wave (e.g. using Cool Edit or Ed!son Wave for recording a wave).
Check your settings, because it should be no problem at all.

• First of all, it's best to set 'EWS Wave record' to be the preferred Wave record device. Do this in Configuration, Multimedia, Audio Tab. Set the preferred Wave Play device to one of the EWS Wave devices (#1 to #x)
• The crucial setting however is the Record section (top right) in the FX panel. To record the effects together with the original input, set the switch to mix! If you set it to Audio In, the effects only apply to playback.
• From now on you can experiment with the effects settings in FX, until you have the desired amount of effect.

Contribution by Rogier Hofboer, with additional comment of Peter Huber

This is not a bug! This is Digital Clipping in the DREAM chip. If you play more samples at full volume you don't have enough bits to fit in the 20 (or was it 18 or 16?) bits that the DREAM chip supports.

The solution:

• Lower your Synth Volume in the Virtual Channels (not the one in the Control Panel, that one doesn't help you!)
• In a sequencer you also have to adjust the midi master volume. Unfortunately they don't offer that slider in sequencers (Ok, in Cakewalk you have the Panels you can use). Programs like Koan X and the EWS Mediaplayer do, for example. But you can lower it by hand or by using the right midi command.
• Important: If you load a .MID from somebody else, most of the time it changes the Midi master volume. And often on more channels! It would be nice if Terratec gave us two sliders: one Synth volume, and one midi master volume, so you can put Midi master to 127 while leaving Synth volume to say 64.
• The same goes for Virtual Channels. If you play on more then one Virtual Channel with the volumes all up, you'll get the same clipping. This is solved by lowering the volume of all seperate channels, which are probably already optimezed for your mix. So it would be nice if Terratec would add an extra 'overall control slider' to Virtual Channels. One that increases or decreases the volume of the other channel-sliders, relative to their original settings.  This may require some changes in the firmware as well.

Comment by Peter Huber

DSPs (Digital Signal Processors) usually work internally with more bits. The 18/20 bits you refer to is the word-length of the EWS-DA-converter. Motorola's 56002 works with 24 bits, but you can have precisison up to 56 bits ( 2*24+8(overflow) ). I hope the DREAM chip is capable of  doing this!
I sometimes had distortions on my own system. The reason for this was the careless use of the EQ. Too much amplification gets me some horrible sound. So try to switch off the EQ, that may help.

Users report to have 'loop'-problems. But it should be possible if you set your Control Panel the right way. So have a look at our Download Page: there are mixer files for this purpose you can download.

One of our readers had the following suggestions for keeping the signal purely digital. You can use one of the following options:

• If your CD player has an optical TOSLINK output, connect this to your EWS and do your recording this way.
• Use a CD-ROM writer to read (yes!) your audio CD. You then have the possibility to save your CD tracks as .WAV on the hard-disk (at least with a HP SureStore which comes with Easy CD-Pro).

Contribution by Leopold Strauss

Software (DAO) that enables you to read audio tracks from CD and write the directly to harddisk you can find at www.goldenhawk.com. At the moment only  most standard SCSI CD-Rom drives are supported. However, it's announced that by February 1998 also IDE types will be supported. The software made by Jeff Arnold and is not freeware or shareware.

Contribution by Jazzluck

WAVELAB does it really great! I don`t know how, maybe it works so good on my
system because I have a SCSI-CD-ROM-Drive. But it also works connecting my audio-CD-player (with digital-out!) to the digital-in of the EWS 64.

A user wrote an interesting explanation about this subject, worth keeping.

The reason why usually there are no absolut 1:1 copies of digital material can be made is simple:
Given that there are no transmission errors via optical or coaxial SP/DIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface), your Audio-DAT will store the digital data (uncompressed, 'as is') on a TAPE, not a disk.

That means:
It needs an error correction code to get as much of the signal back as possible. The error correction code is optimized for restoring audio material, i.e. continuous wave forms. If there is signal dropout from the tape readout, it sometimes has to calculate/interpolate the missing signal parts! No problem for audio...

For this reason e.g. the professional Triple DAT-Software uses a second error correction layer to achieve a minimum of data loss. Actually, this happens with every other (professional) digital tape system also - ADAT, Tascam's DA88, Reel-to-Reel machines like DASH and others.

Conclusion: it's neither EWS nor the digital transmission, it's the DAT's fault.

You can read more at: The DAT-Heads - list archieve http://www.eklektix.com/dat-heads/

Contribution by Justus Henkmann

Electric, acoustic, classical... if you've got a decent mike and external preamp/mixer, the result is wonderful. My EWS is so quiet, it's a dream; Cool Edit Statitistics give me >95 s/n Ratio RMS power when I record through input two with no cable connected. And as I didn't notice any considerable distortion either, why shouldn't it work? But again: Forget the mic input, use an external preamp and go through input 2.

Not to our knowledge. The most common procedure is to connect headphones to you sound-monitoring system. It's better to connect a headphone via your audio-system than via the EWS. The EWS headphone socket has a to high output, the volume can't be controlled and apart from that you run the risk of walking away with the whole computer system in your trail. Also the socket's fixation is not very firm.
If you want direct control the only option is: buy headphones that have their own volume control (not always the best :-)

Additional tip:

• Buy a headphone amplifier. That way you can also connect more than one headphone. Handy for recording sessions with more musicians.

(Contribution by Purple Snail)

To test your s/n ratio load the sntest mix file. Make sure nothing is plugged into In-2. You must then record about 10 seconds of 'silence' (the noise is present of course) from the Wave Device (NOT the Codec).
The easiest way to do this is to use Ed!son Wave. Just load it, click on the record button. This brings up a record settings panel. Make sure device is set to 'EWS64XL Wave Record' and that the samplerate is the same as is set on the EWS64XL Control Panel. Then just record about 10 seconds of silence and save it to a file.
You must now do a statistical analysis on this file. Ed!son wave can't do this, so you need to use Sound Forge or Cool Edit (the most common ones, there are others I'm sure).
In Sound Forge Load the file and choose Tools->Statistics. In Cool Edit choose Analyze, Statistics. In both cases you are looking at the statistic 'RMS Power' (Cool Edit gives values for max,min an average RMS). This is the s/n ratio (although it isn't actually, but it's as close to it as we can measure with simple programs). The actual s/n ratio you are achieveing is likely to be a bit lower than this. (I get a value of -100dB which is higher than the Terratec quoted value for the s/n ratio of the card). However this is the best way for people to compare and see how noisy their cards are.

First of all: you should also read the other topics on this page about noise problems! Especially the Avoiding extra noise item, which gives you a first impression of troublemakers in your computer system.

Before we go into the real subject of this item, some important remarks.

As said elsewhere on this page: a PC is not really the ideal place for a professional sound system. But ok, you have bought your EWS64XL and you expect professional results. Setting aside the 'money problem', the ideal situation would be to buy a separate computer for your sound-jobs. Use that system for nothing else. Make sure that the system meets the standards for such a sound-computer:

• It has to be fast, with enough internal memory and as much harddisk space as you can affort.
• The computer housing should be big: at least a midi-tower (a mini-tower is to small in our experience). A big housing has the advantage that you have enough room to store components like cd-rom player, cd-(re-)writer and your EWS64XL of course. Also the components can be further apart from each other, which reduces the  interference.
• The components in the computer should be of good quality. Use an A-Open or Asus mainboard for example, they are the 'top of the tests'. Also pay attention to the processor fan: a type with proper bearing.

Now back to the main topic: ground problems, noise problems. First let's make a rough distiction:

• If you hear 'hum', you have a grounding problem.
• If you hear 'noise', you have a shielding problem.

Ok, we're making a bit of a shortcut here in listing the problems, but it's clear this way. The solution is not easy, it depends on the setup of your whole system, connected audio devices included. So you have to find out for yourself what's the most probable cause. Below we give some hints and tips and probable causes. Work systematically, one step at the time, no trial and error.

Grounding problems

• Your computer system should always be grounded properly. That means: the powerconnection always has an extra wire to 'earth'. The system can vary from country to country. But the basic principal is: the computer requires a connection to 'earth' via an extra wire, so connect it to a power supply that has such a provision. A proper 'earth-cable' is always connected to a water pipe, not a central heating or some other 'metal construction'.
• You have a sound-system (e.g. stereo set) connected to your sound-card. In many cases this sound-equipment does not have a ground connector. The system is 'double insulated' instead (at least in The Netherlands that's the case). But of course the components inside your audio-system have their own electronic grounding to the chassis. Now the situation can occur, that there is some tension  on the housing (chassis) of the audio system. The shielding of your audio connection between the EWS and the audio system is connected to the chassis of both systems. There can be a difference in electrical potential between the audio system and the computer. Result: via your audio cable a current starts running between from the audio system to the computer, because the latter is really grounded. It's not dangerous, but it's not the way it's meant to be and this situation causes hum! So to prevent the current running through the shielding of your audio-cables, you might consider to ground the housing of the audio-system as well.
• You can have a so called 'ground-loop'. We are not that technical, but in our experience you should neutralize this situation:-). It causes 'hum' and sometimes also 'flicker' on your monitor. Simon Rohde suggested to buy 'ground-loop isolators'. Good idea and not very expensive.
• From our own experience it's also a good idea to put a 'APC Surge Arrest' between the (grounded) mains and the computer-/sound system. It protects your system from power line spikes, surges and EMI/RFI noise, the manual says. It comes down to this: any unwanted fluctuation in power, strikes of lightning, noise on the electrical net is smoothed.
• Determine where the 'hum' is coming from. Is it your audio system or the card/computer? That's easy to test: mute the OUT-1 (or 2, depending which one is connected to your audio-system). Turn up the volume of your audio-system. If you still hear 'hum', it's your audio-system (more likely in most cases: the audio-cable).
• Your cd-rom player produces 'hiss'. How much depends on the quality of the player. Activate the EWS-Player, put in and audio cd, play the cd. Press 'pause'. Turn up your OUT-volume. The only thing you should hear is a weak 'hiss'. This 'hiss' is mostly absent when the cd is actually playing. The less 'hiss', the better your cd-player. For what it's worth (we haven't heard them all): the best cd-rom in combination with audio we heard so far is an A-Open 32 speed. But nothing compares with a 'dedicated' high-end cd-player. If it has a digital out, it's even a better option: you can connect it via the optical IN of your EWS.
• Check your connectors, that goes without saying. Connectors that don't connect the way they should are a constant frustration. Especially that tiny things you have to stick in the back of the EWS. In our opinion this method is in contrast with it's professional pretentions.

Now about the shielding

First read the remarks at 'Avoiding extra noise'. As said in that item: you can't really shield all the cables of the card. A better option is: buy or try a larger computer-housing. That way you can better route the cables the way you want. One user took the Frontpanel out of the computer housing and uses it externally. If you're the handy type, this might be a solution, considering that most of the noise comes from other internal devices. Anyway, according to another user, shielding the cables will only help on the S/N ratio of the headphones plug and the analog CD signal. The noise is present because the analog parts of the EWS card itself are not properly shielded from the rest of the computer. Some people recommend switching off the Codec if you don't really need it.

For the rest the best we can do here is to share our own experiences:

• We use a seperate computer system for sound purposes. That costs money and not everybody is rich. We neither, so we took a loan. The specs: Pentium III 450Mhz, 128MB, 10GB Quantum harddisk, A-Open AX6BC mainboard, A-Open cd-rom 48x, HP 8201 cd/r-writer, a good quality big-tower housing with low nois power supply and an old but faithful ADI 17" monitor. On board is a EWS64XXL and a EWS88MT.
• We connect to the EWS64 as digital as we can. E.g. for connecting our Sony DAT to the EWS we use an optical cable.
• The whole system is grounded, with an Trust Power Protector 5000 between the system and the mains.
• We have hardly if any noise problems. At least not more than to be expected from a system like this, which is: a soundcard in a computer.

The 'illegal' method to solve the noise problems

Some users solved the noise problem by using unorthodox methods. Consequently the CE-compliance of the system is lost. But if you're careful, we don't think you will have sleepless nights about that.

This is what some users did:

• Building a cardboard box around the card. The box is covered with alufoil. That layer of alufoil you have to insulate again with a layer of plastic wrapping. The latter is very important, otherwise you risk a shortcut in your system and that will most certainly damage it (if not permanently)!
• The opposite of grounding: insulating the EWS from the computer housing, so especially the Front Panel. They did this by using plastic screws and washers or by making the Front Panel external. The flatcables are long enough for this: remove one of the spare brackets in the back of the computer housing to lead the cables outside. Make an insulating box around the Front Panel and put it on the computer.

Another 'illegal' method to solve noise problems (high pitched noise on IN-2 in particular) 991202

Contribution by Matthias Uhr

Problems with noise? You can literally HEAR your screen and mouse moves, your harddisk and everything through the headphone jack? That was my problem too, but no longer: To minimize noise in headphones, you must shield the cables from the EWS card to the front panel. Have you ever wondered why these two cables are so LONG? This is like a kind invitation for electromagnetic waves to infiltrate your sound. We don't like that, do we? Listen to my ideas: I shortened the two flat cables by carefully removing the connector at one side, cutting the wires and then remounting the connector again. (For the cable with the twisted, colored wires, make a note of how the colors are arranged before cutting.) Then I unisolated about a meter of normal electric power cable, till I got a bunch of copper. I then winded these strings carefully around the colored (analog) cable, covering every spot. Next, I put a thin, isolated cable to one end of the copper with a soldering iron. Then I isolated my new shielding, fixing the copper strings at the same time, with tape (what's the word in english..? something like tesa film but stronger, e.g. gaffa tape). Now I put the much shorter, shielded cable back, connecting EWS to front panel. The thin cable soldered to the copper shield I connected to the computer case in order to ground the shield.

Many users report that they can 'hear' their screen. Moving the windows around, sliders, the mouse: all those actions can be heard through the EWS.
At this moment we believe it's more the fault of the video card than the fault of the EWS. Also the problem is more severe when you use applications that make extensive use of graphics (like Cubase VST etc. and the EWS-software).

There are a few things you can try:

• Switch off the hardware acceleration of the video card. This can be done in the Windows Configuration:
  • Select the 'Screen' icon (we translate from Dutch here, so we hope we have the correct 'labels').
  • Select the 'settings' tab.
  • Press the button 'Advanced Properties'
  • Select the 'Performance' tab and decrease the acceleration.
• Switch of all animations of cursors, icons, 'virtual desktops', 'full window dragging' etc. Many of these features are implemented in Windows Plus. Some features directly influence the functioning of your EWS-software or cause noise or hum.
  A good help for tuning your system is 'More Properties'. This program is freeware and can be downloaded from any good software site. But don't become reckless while working with it! Backup your registry first.

See also: Terratec support about noise. Also read all the other topics about noise, grounding and shielding on this page.

This is partly our fault, partly Microsoft's fault.

Windows (95/98) can only manage a maximum of 8 audio drivers automatically. If you are using 8 or more synth play drivers for the synthesizer and 1 codec play driver for the codec, Windows doesn't 'know' which driver to use to playback system sounds. This is why regulating the volume of system sounds and all other audio files is a problem if they are being played back by an application that doesn't allow a special audio driver to be configured.

You can force Windows to playback audio files via the codec in order to be able to regulate the volume with the WAVE regulator on the EWS Control Panel.

• Open the Device Manager 'Start/Settings/ControlPanel/System'.
• Mark the 'TerraTec EWS64 XL Synthesizer' entry and click on 'Properties'.
• Select the 'Settings' tab.
• Reduce the number of audio drivers ('number of wave devices') to 7 and click on OK.
• Close the Device Manager and open Multimedia (Start/Settings/Control Panel/Multimedia).
• On the 'Audio' tab select the 'EWSCodec-Play' driver as the preferred device.
• Tick the 'Use preferred devices only' check box.

Now all Windows sounds will be played back using the codec driver and can be regulated using the Wave
regulator in the Control Center.

Unfortunately, recording from a microphone is quite complicated due to a problem with the driver. Because of a discrepancy in the driver it is not always possible to detect whether the microphone AGC is activated or not. This means that it may be activated already at startup although the corresponding 'LED' is not on.

For best quality microphone recordings we recommend that you leave the microphone's BOOST function off and to switch the AGC on and off again immediately.

If you wish to use language recognition software you will find useful tips in the PRAXISTIPS.PDF file which you will find on our webpage or on your driver CD.

Make sure that the sampling frequency configured at the top right of the Control Panel corresponds to the DAT frequency, etc. and that synchronization is set to EXTERN (EXTERNAL) e.g. < EXT. 44.1kHz >

Alternatively:

• If you are using the optical socket test it with a different cable.
• If you are using the coax socket test it with a different digital device.

Please download the latest drivers from our webpage (http://www.terratec.de) or from our BBS.
If this is not possible, please proceed as follows:

1. First reinstall an older 2.x driver version (e.g. 2.0 or 2.03)
2. Shutdown Windows and restart in MS-DOS mode (not a DOS window!)
3. Now copy the 2.x files EWSAUDIO.DRV, EWSAUDIO.VXD and EWS64CFG.DLL to your WINDOWS\SYSTEM
   directory and the EWS64_OS.BIN file to your WINDOWS directory.
4. Switch off the computer, wait a few seconds and start Windows 95/98.

You need driver version 2.14 or higher. These provide you with the option of selecting MusicMode or GameMode for DirectSound under 'SETTINGS' in the synthesizer driver. In this case, GameMode is of course the appropriate choice.

Check if the pitch faders for all wave devices in the 'Virtual Channels' are centered.

In this instance you should increase the latency of the synthesizer driver in the Device Manager. Unfortunately, we cannot recommend a specific value, because this setting is system-dependent.

For use under DOS the EWS64 must be initialized. It is best to place the EWSINIT.EXE program in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file so that it gets initialized automatically every time you boot. A typical line in the AUTOEXEC.BAT will read as follows:

C:\EWS64\EWSINIT.EXE F V B GSSBK080.94B M C:\EWS64\SETTINGS\DEFAULT.MIX

We are assuming that you selected the 'C:\EWS64' directory when installing. If you used a different directory, you must change the path accordingly.

The only possibility to solve this problem is to change the DirectSound mode in the device manager.

• Open the device manager and the 'TerraTec Audio Devices' folder.
• Mark the 'TerraTec EWS64 Synthesizer' and click on 'Properties'.
• Open the 'Settings' tab and change the DirectSound setting into 'Game mode (high performance)'.
• Click 'OK' to accept this setting.

During changing the EWS settings in the device manager no EWS application (Control Panel, FX panel etc.) should be running.

Please follow these steps to set up the EWS for this purpose:

• Deactivate the clipping modus in the ControlPanel.
• Open the 'FX Panel' and disable the 'EQ-/VSpace Send' for 'WAVE'.
• Open the 'Control Panel' and set the 'Synth Input' to 'Codec Out'.
• Open the 'Virtual Channels' and set the volume of the correspondig playback driver to maximum.

If you have installed a 'MIRO PC TVpro' in your system, please get in contact with the MIRO support. Here they can solve the problem.

© 1998-1999, Computer ConText, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, except for contributions made by others.

Latest update on page: 19-04-99

© 1998-1999, Computer ConText, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, except for contributions made by others.

Latest update on page: 19-04-99