Subject:Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Posted by: Ecreator

Date:1/21/2003 11:21:16 PM

I have a Terratec DMX 6 fire soundcard, 512ram, 2.4GHZ, etc. and I am getting sounds like a vinyl record in recordings, ALL of the time. Anyone have any ideas. Terratec hs no tech support.
Thanks

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: vanblah

Date:1/22/2003 10:18:41 AM

There could be a number of things causing this. What kind of hard drives are you using? Do you have seperate drives for the OS (system) and Audio (data)? What video card are you using? Could there be IRQ problems? etc.

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: Ecreator

Date:1/22/2003 1:32:53 PM

Thanks,
I have an only 1 80 gig hd, vid card is raedon 7500 64 meg, and I don't know what IRQ means. I have tried changing buffer amounts, and I also tried changing the slot of the sound card. I am starting to wonder if the terratec sound card is defective?

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: mrsharky

Date:1/22/2003 11:18:17 PM

I'm having very similar problems.
I get the tiniest of glicthes when recording from Dat> Digital Coax in using a Terratec DMX 6Fire. The glitches are definitely not on the tapes, as i've checked and double checked them with headphones and on a stereo setup. I've tried this with two different dat decks, each using a separate digital coax cable, and got the same results. I've switched out the motherboard and the processor recently, and I keep getting these tiny little glitches which are driving me mad.

Here's my setup:

AMD Athlon XP 2000
Asus A7V333 motherboard, 512MB PC2700 DDR
Terratec DMX 6 fire sound card running latest drivers (version 126)
Windows XP Professional SP1
Western Digital 60GB 7200 IDE hard drive is used for recording. I have it partitioned with XP & Soundforge installed on a 12GB C drive, and I record to a 30GB partition on the same drive, all NTFS.
Soundforge 6.0 (Build 219)
Recording from a Tascam DA-30 and Sony D7 (same problem occurs with each)

Is it preferable to record to a separate hard drive? what about write caching, could that have any effect? Since I record to a completely separate partition, I'm able to format the entire partition before recording, so defragementation shouldn't be an issue.

Can anyone think of any other ideas? What's ASIO? Should I enable it?

I'm hoping this card isn't bunk.

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: Ecreator

Date:1/23/2003 3:20:04 AM

I finally solved the problem by getting a different sound card plus uninstalling the Terratec hardware & software. I had tried many options to correct the glitches in recordings before buying the Creative labs Audigy 2 Platinum. All the pop and crack type sounds are gone!!

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:1/23/2003 12:05:45 PM

When recording from a digital Input, where do you have the word clock selected for your sound card? This sounds like the usual wrong word clock setting, that will cause occassional pops and clicks in audio. When recording from a DAT or CD player with a Digital out, and connecting that digital out to a sound card, you need to set the sound cards word clock to "external". If you don't then you will experience these types of pops and clicks in most cases.

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: vanblah

Date:1/23/2003 3:26:12 PM

mrsharky -

You should record to a second drive, not a second partition. For what it's worth: fragmentation is inherent in streaming audio applications. Try not to defrag your audio disks, but if you have to defrag use an interleave utility to "re-fragment" properly. Some people don't believe that this is neccesary, but I have used it with good results. Of course you are using M$NTFS which is supposed to handle fragmentation differently ...

There is also debate that NTFS is not the appropriate filesystem to use, but I don't want to get into that. Do a search in various DAW forums on NTFS vs. FAT32 .

BTW - I think that Ecreator has solved the pop/click problem by getting a new sound card ...

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: JohnI

Date:1/24/2003 7:27:24 PM

I believe the Terratec DMX6 Fire and Sound Forge clicks problem is quite fundamental for us unfortunates that have it - I have been struggling with this for some time and see a few others have similar problems from time to time. I have exchanged/returned the board and the computer without success. Single sample errors get inserted on analogue recordings producing occassional clicks. This problem does not exist when recording with Sonar which is clean. The only solution I have found is to record using Sonar, save the file and process in Sound Forge. I have the latest versions of everything with all updates and p4/WinXP and played with buffer setting extensively. If I use the onboard sound chip the problem goes away. So this seems to be a very infortunate combination between Sound Forge and the Terratec. Remove either component and the problem goes away. Regards John I

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:1/25/2003 5:54:03 AM

Posted by: vanblah (Ignore This User)
For what it's worth: fragmentation is inherent in streaming audio applications. Try not to defrag your audio disks, but if you have to defrag use an interleave utility to "re-fragment" properly. Some people don't believe that this is neccesary, but I have used it with good results.

*******************

Um, what ?!! Care to explain how that works ?

Ecreator, forget the above twaddle. Do the standard windows optimisiations as described below:

http://www.blkviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm
http://www.musicxp.net/installing_tips.htm
http://www.nemesysmusic.com/support/W2k_XP_Optimize.pdf
http://www.musicxp.net/installing_tips.htm

Also audio is best on a second separate *drive*. You could also have a problem with your soundcard sharing an interupt (IRQ) with another device. It is best if it in *NOT* in the slot next to your display adaptor.

geoff

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: vanblah

Date:2/4/2003 11:13:27 AM

Twaddle? I don't recall directing abuse at any of your advice in the past, Geoff_Wood. So, um, here is your explanation asshole:

Large files get broken up into smaller clusters. These are stored on the disk starting at the first available cluster. If there is data in an adjacent cluster, the RW heads skip to the next available cluster. This is the simplest explanation for fragmentation.

When you defragment a hard drive, the files are moved around so that they are located in adjacent clusters. This is called 1:1 interleave, and most defrag utilities use 1:1 interleave when they defrag. Works great in your average office or home computer because drives are really fast, but we aren't using them in the average situation.

An interleave utility takes music files that have been defragmented and interleaves them based on information you give it (header size, cluster size, sample and bit rate etc.) so that the disks are optimized for streaming audio (which is what audio editors do: stream audio); streaming doesn't just mean "across the web."

Interleave is nothing new, it's been around since the first slow hard-drives.

I'm not claiming it will work in every situation, but as I said: it has worked for me when I have had to restore data from a CD.

Doug_Walker

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: musicvid10

Date:2/4/2003 12:36:08 PM

I haven't heard of a connection between defragmentation and audio interleave before. Could you direct me to the source of your information? What interleave utilities are you referring to? Where can I download them?
TIA
Mark

Subject:RE: Pop, Crack sounds in recordings

Reply by: vanblah

Date:2/4/2003 2:22:22 PM

Here's the one I use:

http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/audio/interlv.htm

Doug