Subject:Weird Clipping While Recording

Posted by: JazonNorth

Date:3/4/2002 7:48:06 PM

ACID 3.0 started introducing this weird clipping while recording. These are my observations/actions:

1. Typically when I boot up ACID, the first track I record will be fine and then every one after that will have this weird clipping/distortion.
2. My levels are NOT too high.
3. It is not a mic/line level (-10dB/4dB) problem.
4. I've reinstalled my maudio (delta 1010) drivers.
5. I've uninstalled and reinstalled ACID 3.0.
6. Sound Forge & other apps record fine with no clipping at all.

The problem persists! Any ideas?!

Thanks,
Jazon
WetFire.org

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: nlamartina

Date:3/4/2002 8:20:19 PM

Jazon,

I have a few questions:

1. Is the clipping/distortion present in the file itself (ie, if you take the recording file and open it in Sound Forge, is the distortion still there)?
2. Have you tried adjusting the recording latency in "Advanced" under the "Audio" section of the Preferences dialogue?
3. Are you recording while playing back multiple tracks? If so, try recording while muting or in a new project to see if the problem persists.
4. Is DMA turned on for your hard disks?
5. Do you have any virus scanners or other such programs running in the background?

Try and supply this info and we'll continue this dialogue.

Regards,
Nick LaMartina

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: JazonNorth

Date:3/4/2002 10:51:49 PM

1. yes
2. no, not yet
3. didn't work
4. yes.. a recent cubase install did this.. (THIS COULD BE IT!)
5. no

Any other ideas.. how do I turn off DMA? Bios?

THANKS FOR THE HELP~!

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: spesimen

Date:3/5/2002 12:22:34 PM

oops, don't turn off your DMA! dma is the modern way of quickly transferring data from hard drives into memory. that's not the problem, in fact it should be -on- for any computer made past about 1998. otherwise you'll definitely have problems playing back more than a few tracks at once from disk.

another thing to check, is the maudio card sharing IRQ's with any other cards? in theory PCI bus allows this but it often causes problems with multi-channel soundcards.

or it could be a bug. what OS are you using?

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: JazonNorth

Date:3/6/2002 12:57:23 AM

Ok here's an update & review.. if you guys are still with me.

PROBLEM:
1. When we record tracks into our Delta1010 sound card on our powerPC (scsi, athlon 1.5, 500mb ram) I get clipping on about 50-75% of the tracks. Sometimes there is no distortion at all (no levels have changed).. and sometimes, it won't record anything until it hits a certain threshold of input as if it is gated?!
2. This is not a mic/line (-10/4DB) issue.
3. There have been no hardware changes to my system since this clipping/distortion has begun.
4. We have been using ACID 3.0 for several months without this problem... it just started happening last week (and is delaying the deployment of this huge project, pissing off lots of people!)

LOG OF FAILED ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS:
1. I pulled my Delta 1010 sound card out and put it another slot, because it was sharing IRQ 11 with my SCSI card. Now it's on IRQ 10, hopefully alone. Distortion persists!

2. DMA is still ON, per "Spesimens" comment, to leave it on.

3. The clipping IS present in the wave file recorded in ACID 3.0, and plays back with distortion.

4. I adjusted the Preferences/Advanced/Latency to -5 and +5 which didn't help.

5. Norton Virus Scanner is OFF. In fact, all other processes/apps are killed, prior to running ACID to minimize conflict.

6. If it weren't for this nice Beck's, I'd have punched a hole in my monitor cause his cousin "Mr. Audio" is pissing me off!

PLEASE LEND YOUR BRAINS!!

My audio hats off to whoever solves this one.

Jazon

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: SonicJG

Date:3/6/2002 2:16:27 PM

The gating thing sounds very very strange...

Are you in 2k/xp or 9x?

Also, in Prefs/Audio/Device type, have you tried both MS Sound Mapper and Classic Wave Driver?

Also, are you doing any custom routing through the Delta's control panel applet? You're not duplexing the previously recorded signal into the new recordings by any chance?

Just some ideas--I hope they help.

-Joel

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: nlamartina

Date:3/6/2002 2:51:01 PM

Jazon,

I know it sounds strange, but perhaps try turning DMA "off", as you stated that a recent Cubase installation turned it on. I know that with my own machine, one particular drive induces noise when DMA is turned on, but not when it's off. It has to do with the latency of the PCI bus (or something like that). When the latency is too high during a bout of heavy data transfer (DMA on), the controller would "choke" and start corrupting data, which ended up sounding like static recorded into the file. Now, I recently patched the driver for the chipset (which reduced the latency), and I can use DMA without noise anymore, but just for kicks, try turning DMA off and see if the static stops. You never know, it might work. Let me know if you need instructions on how to do this.

Hope this helps,
Nick LaMartina

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: spesimen

Date:3/6/2002 5:31:33 PM

nick is right, it might be worth turning DMA off just to see if it helps. but eventually you'll want to find a way to get it to work with it on if you can.

mostly i'm curious because if you can record fine in soundforge then it must be related specifically to acid. have you tried doing any full-duplex recording with a different app?

i can't record files properly in acid either so i'm just as stumped, but my problems, while similarly mysterious, are due to dropped samples than clipped ones. i have a nagging suspicion that it's related to the goofy mme-driver emulation that happens in win2k and xp with WDM drivers, but it's not clear which OS you are using.

did you try both 24-bit and 16-bit? maybe make a project all 16-bit files and try it? (the win2k/xp mme subsystem doesn't like 24bit apparently due to bugs.)

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: JazonNorth

Date:3/6/2002 6:28:43 PM

1. ACID 3 running on WIN 98 SE
2. Same behavior with Sound Mapper & Classic Driver
3. Nothing Custom or strange with the Delta 1010 Mapping. It's the same config as
it has always been, which typically works fine. We've uninstalled/reinstalled it
several times, and downloaded the latest as well.
4. Our Bios settings have UltraDMA = AUTO for all 4 IDE Controllers on the IDE RAID (the only other option is DISABLED.. which we haven't toggled yet, because we found another possible way to test this disabling DMA: We have a SCSI drive as well, so we changed the ACID Temp Storage folder to the SCSI drive where DMA shouldn't apply and the distortion problem persists). If we run out of ideas, we'll disable UltraDMA (should we do this on ALL drives or only the drive in which the ACID WAVs are saved to?)
5. Full Duplex Recording work great in Cubase.

Hmmm.. scratching head, doesn't help.. head banging my numb-skull into the table didn't help either..

Jazon

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: SonicJG

Date:3/7/2002 10:05:21 AM

I'm stumped as well--I have a delta 1010 at home with 98SE and have never seen anything like this. Have you tried recording from each of the ten channels (maybe the problem exists at the hardware level??)? This is reaching at straws (especially since SF records fine), but has any new equipment recently been plugged into either your audio chain, or into the same electrical outlet/circuit, and is your power conditioned?

-Joel

Subject:RE: Weird Clipping While Recording

Reply by: C_Ya

Date:8/20/2006 2:30:28 PM

I know this thread is pretty old, but I just started having the same problem. Anybody ever find a solution? I suspect it's a non-switchable feature of my rinky-dink sound card. I get it no matter what program I use to record - Screenblast Acid 4, Sound Forge 7, or just the plain old Windows Sound Recorder.
YUK!!
Thanks,
C Ya