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Subject:Crackles while recording audio
Posted by: surfmonkey
Date:1/8/2003 4:20:24 PM

Hello everybody. Can someone help me figure out why my audio track has horific crackling on it during playback. The Buffer is maxed out. Here is my system:

Pentium 4 1.5 ghz
1 gig RAM
98se
Delta Omni Studio
Acid 3.0c

I don't have very many loops going, and only 2 audio tracks so far. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: surfmonkey
Date:1/8/2003 4:45:50 PM

That's really strange but if I re-select my record device in the record dialog before EVERY take, the crackling goes away. Does anyone know if this is a known issue with Acid, or is it something I'm doing wrong?

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: surfmonkey
Date:1/8/2003 6:18:17 PM

O.K., well that magic trick stopped after about 10 takes, so that's not a work around.
Help?

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: noFony
Date:1/8/2003 7:53:03 PM

Have you tried searching the subject. It's really been beat to death on every audio forum.

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: surfmonkey
Date:1/8/2003 8:23:34 PM

Yeah, I tried searching and followed all the possible remedies, but nothing worked. My card is in the correct IRQ.I have the latest driver. My audio is on a seperate degfraged hard drive. Buffers all set high (hardware and in acid). I'm not beatmapping the audio. What am I missing here?

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: Iacobus
Date:1/8/2003 9:26:27 PM

You said you had the Omni I/O, but you didn't say what card you're interfacing it with? (I'm guessing either the Delta 44, 66, or USB Quattro.)

Instead of maxing out the buffer, have you tried lowering the buffer? Sometimes you have to find a happy medium—not too small a buffer but yet not too large either.

Also try uninstalling and reinstalling everything, ACID and the drivers for your soundcard. (Make sure you properly uninstall the drivers first before reinstalling them.)

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: pwppch
Date:1/9/2003 12:36:11 AM

>Instead of maxing out the buffer, have you tried lowering the buffer? Sometimes you have to find a happy medium—not too small a buffer but yet not too large either.
<
This is very true. If you set ACID's buffering to the max you will encounter worse performance. Same is true of any hardware settings you may make. Too large of buffers will cause problems.

If at all possible, use the ASIO drivers for you hardware and stick with 256-512 samples as the ASIO buffer size.

Peter

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: surfmonkey
Date:1/9/2003 7:09:15 PM

I am using the Delta 66 card with the omni studio. I thought all omni's had the 66, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I re-installed Acid (I upgraded from 3c to 3g) and the drivers for the Delta. I played around with the buffers, which didn't really seem to any affect, which is strange (or if it did, it was very little). The problem is intermittent. I can record about 3 or 4, one and a half minute takes (or one-shots) that are fine, but after that I get this popping sound in most of the takes recorded after that (but not all). I wondered if this was a defrag problem, so I defraged before I opened Acid each time, but that didn't seem to help any. I guess I could try degraging before every take, but that seems like a ridiculous solution, no? Any more suggestions? Is there something simple that I am missing? I appreciate the help.

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: Vocalpoint
Date:1/10/2003 7:12:38 AM

surfmonkey,

Working with the Delta/Omni for 18 months and I have never had a problem.

1. Firstly - Why are you bothering with 98SE on a 1.5 GHZ P4? Go to Win2000 at least. Not saying this has anything to do with your issue but it is light years more stable.

2. Let's go back to IRQ's - the Delta card needs it's own IRQ...not shared with any other device in the system. This is crucial.

3. How many hard drives do you have? If the answer is 1, then I will stop here. You will most certainly have crackling.

4. Finally - what driverset for the Delta are you using? There is only one driverset that was ever worked well for 98SE and it is very old. I believe it was 4.10.0.27 or something along those lines. I do remember the .27 very clearly. Having said all this...you should really think about moving up to something newer...both in OS and in drivers.

I have used 98SE, Windows 2000 and now Win XP with my same Delta/Omni combo and it has been a joy to work with. You do need to be aware of many things to get a DAW worked right. Motherboards are another issue that I forgot...what mobo is in your machine?

Update when you can.

Cheers,

Cuzin B

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: surfmonkey
Date:1/10/2003 7:26:13 PM

Thanks for taking the time to respond Cuzin B...

1.I'm using 98se, because I am mostly using this computer for Gigastudio, and that's the OS they recommend (over XP for now).

2.No shared IRQ's. It has it's own at IRQ 9

3. Two hard drives. #1 OS #2 Samples & audio. I even experimented with putting the audio on the O.S. drive, but that didn't seem to make a difference (better or worse)

4.Driver 4.13.01.0042 Do you know if the .27 will work for me with my Gigastudio? I have to have a mulit-client driver or something like that?...

5. Mobo is Iwill P4S. I forgot to mention, that I do have an onboard audio chip. Could this be interfering with the Delta? I have it set so that it is not running, but I could manually disable it in the jumper settings. I will try that next. I don't have that problem with any of my other audio programs. Does that sound like a likely culprit?

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: DirkSteele
Date:1/10/2003 10:30:34 PM

I had the EXACT same problem. I bought the omni i/o and delta 66 bundle and simply could not get rid of the crackling no matter what I did (e.g., adjusted latency, did trouble shooting, etc.) After several hours on the phone with M-audio we decided the card was defective / destroyed. I took it back to guitar center and insisted they install a new one. They did and it now works like a charm. It's possible to inadvertently blow up the card with your body's own electro-static discharge when installing if you don't first ground yourself before touching the card. Since M-audio doesn't tell you this up front you can argue persuasively that they should replace it. NOTE: I had the card problem AFTER I already had my first omni i/o replaced b/c the pre-amps didn't function. I like the omni but they must not have enough quality control at the factory. I'm sure they're aware of this.

Regards,
DS

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: surfmonkey
Date:1/11/2003 12:34:16 AM

How exactly did they determine that the card was defective? And did it work intermittently or not at all? Mine seems to work when recording into Cubase VST so I kinda doubt mine is a defective card.

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: surfmonkey
Date:1/15/2003 4:04:18 PM

sorry for double-post

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: surfmonkey
Date:1/15/2003 4:05:36 PM

Cuzin B,
Thanks for the help. The driver was the problem. The old .27 driver fixes the problem, but it's not multi-client, making it unusable for my Gigastudio. Maybe it's time to upgrade to XP...what driver are you using for XP? Any problems?

Subject:RE: Crackles while recording audio
Reply by: Vocalpoint
Date:1/15/2003 4:31:52 PM

Surf,

For XP you can't beat this one: 0.5.10.00.29x12. It's the last driverset listed on the driver page. Make sure to select Delta 66, Win XP and "Show Previous and Beta drivers" when doing the search.

I haven't had a single issue with this set yet.

Cuzin B

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