Hd300 Asio Driver Crashes

[the29band]

I have been using the POD HD300 for about 8 months now without any issues, until recently. The HD300 is connected to the PC using the USB cable and I am using Reaper as the DAW. Lately, when I turn on the HD300, plug the usb cable into the PC, open Reaper, it shows the ASIO driver but when I hit play or record, nothing happens. I hear slight pops and crackles but the cursor doesn't move at all.Nothing has changed in my setup (no new programs installed). I even reset the PC to factory settings but that didn't help much. I also tried changing the USB cable but still no luck. 

 

I have the latest drivers and firmware in the Line 6 Monkey, for the POD HD300. 

 

Any ideas why this might be happening? Thanks for your inputs.

[gckelloch]

Is your CPU maxing out?

 

You using the actual ASIO drivers and not the ASIO DirectX or Multimedia driver?

 

You sure your ASIO driver buffers aren't set too low?  If not, reset Reaper to default settings form the Reaper start programs folder, or install any other app that uses ASIO.  Reboot and see if it works.

 

Maybe your Reaper disk stream settings got changed, or you have a failing disk?

[the29band]

Is your CPU maxing out? - No it's not. This happens with a new session with no tracks. 

 

You using the actual ASIO drivers and not the ASIO DirectX or Multimedia driver? - Yes, I am

 

You sure your ASIO driver buffers aren't set too low?  If not, reset Reaper to default settings form the Reaper start programs folder, or install any other app that uses ASIO.  Reboot and see if it works. - I am setting this to the lowest possible (256) in order to get minimum latency. I monitor the guitar through reaper, instead of straight out of HD because I use impulses, hence the setting for lower latency. I guess it is possible that this is causing the ASIO driver to crash. 

 

Maybe your Reaper disk stream settings got changed, or you have a failing disk?

[gckelloch]

Impulses for speaker cabs?  Yeah, they might need more latency not to max the CPU.

 

Cab impulses are normally limited regarding response/feel.  It depends on the plugin.  You should consider some kind of preamp and/or tape sim plugin to run after the cabs to tame resonance peaks.  Otherwise, a "brickwall" limiter would suffice.  Compressors won't catch the initial transients.  I prefer natural gain compression -- Rupert Neve/Eddy Krammer old school styley.

 

Really nice free VST dynamics plugins here: http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/vst-effects/

 

I like running the TeslaPro transformer saturater into the FerricTDS tape saturater -- no limiters needed.