Crackles in Cubase

[drumn4state]

Hello Everyone! I am having some difficulty and I am hoping somebody can help me out. I have been fighting this for about a week now, and I am running out of ideas. The problem I am having is crackles/pops while recording. I am running Cubase AI4 into a Delta 44 interface. Here is what I am ruled out so far. I made sure it wasn't a microphone/cable/mixer issue by isolating different variables, and have basically narrowed it down to an issue with the audio interface. I understand that it may be a problem with the latency settings. Here is what I have: On the Delta 44 control panel (which is also the ASIO driver interface I believe) my sample settings are SAMPLE RATE 44100 HZ ASIO/WDM BUFFER SIZE 256 SAMPLES. This is under the hardware tab in the M-Audo control panel. I am not able to change any of these settings here. If I try and click on the adjusting arrows, they will not change. Is there somewhere else I need to make these changes? From what I have read on the internet, I should be able to change the settings here and then see if my crackles go away. I am unable to make any changes. Further in Cubase the latency says in Device setup: M-Audio Delta ASIO driver. Input latency 6.780 ms, output latency 6.440 ms and sample rate is 44100 hz. Like I said, I have basically ruled out everyother aspect of the signal chain except the interface. Is there anything else that I need to check/change to try. I know there are a ton of articles relating to this, and trust me I have read a ton of them, but I haven't yet found one that offers a solution. I have been messing with this for a week now and am desperately seeking a remedy. Thank you all in advance!! Happy recording!!

[tacman7]

When your there looking at your latency in cubase you click the button that says control panal and it should give you a little window where you can change the latency. You need to add a little to get rid of clicks.

Also if you have a bunch of crap running on your computer AVsoftware internet animated cursors, etc. or a bunch of TSR proggies then all those system calls will be click in your recording if your system is at the edge of its capabilities.

Also have you downloaded the latest driver from M-audio?

[drumn4state]

Thanks tacman, here is what I found

Originally Posted by tacman7

When your there looking at your latency in cubase you click the button that says control panal and it should give you a little window where you can change the latency. You need to add a little to get rid of clicks.

This where I have trouble, when I open the M-Audio Control panel, it has the windows where I should be able to change the settings, but if I click on the arrows (up/dn) to change, they won't change, they just stay the same.

Also if you have a bunch of crap running on your computer AVsoftware internet animated cursors, etc. or a bunch of TSR proggies then all those system calls will be click in your recording if your system is at the edge of its capabilities.

I have nothing running on the computer save the recording software, some VST instrument packages, I do have an antivirus program installed, I will try disabling that and see if it makes a difference.

Also have you downloaded the latest driver from M-audio?

I have checked that I do have the latest drivers installed.

Thanks again

[drumn4state]

Okay now this is bizarre. I was trouble shooting this issue, I had a vocal mic hooked up to input 2 of the Delta card, and it was crackling away as I was speaking into it. Then out of nowhere, the crackling stopped!! The signal became crystal clear. No matter what I could not reproduce this issue, yet it has been present constantly for nearly a week. I did not make any changes to anything, it cleared all on its own. So I closed out of Cubase and did some other stuff, reopened Cubase and it was still gone. Fooled around in Cubase for a while, closed out did some other stuff, came back and the crackles are back now. Has anybody experienced this intermittant type issue?

[drumn4state]

Okay, I found a solution for my crackle problem, should anyone else run into this, this is what I did to get around it. I found that if I go into the Device>Device setup menu and make a change, any change, and exit the setup menu and then open the M Audio control panel, click the arrow to change the buffer size and the crackles go away. It definitely seems to have something to do with the buffer size. The M-Audio control panel still does not allow me to change the buffer size, it always stays at 256 samples. I don't know if this is a limitation of the Delta 44, or if there is a bigger problem. I have an email into M-Audio tech support to find a permanent solution to the problem. Thanks everyone.

[tacman7]

Sounds like your interface, may be.

The thing I was saying is you change your latency from cubase. Might still try it.

Device menu/device setup. Click on VSTaudio and there should be a button for control panel that different than your main control panel, well it is on my setup, never really used m-audio.

I would contact them by email to see if it's something they recognize.

[CUBIT_FAM]

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DONT KNOW WHY YOU HAVE TO DO THIS BUT IT WORKS...!

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[IBNezz]

I have been suffering from the same issue - or so it seems. Basically, I can record with no problems. However, during playback, I'll get this popping, then stuttering note sound effect. It almost sounds like it's set into a continual echo effect.

It appears that this is a somewhat common problem across all kinds of interfaces, and systems. For me, I have a Presonus FP10 interface with Cubase 4 LE, and am currently running off a laptop, with some cheap laptop speakers (ughh...I know ). It doesn't seem to be the CPU usage because it never gets all that high.

What is weird is this problem started on it's own at some point, with nothing to indicate a source (like loading a new antivirus program etc), because before a couple of months ago, there were NO issues with my Cubase LE.

I did try changing the latency to a higher millisecond setting last night (from 4 ms to 12 ms), and that does seem to work, but I did still get pops/stuttering after doing that. Maybe I'll just keep increasing it. Is there a limit to how high you should go on latency?

[PeterSimonRussell]

I had a similar problem with my Alesis iOI2 / Laptop set up. Changed the buffer size to max and made the crackle go away. Now appear to have too much latency!

There's four great videos on the Line6.com site about setting up VIsta for use with audio recording software.

Peter

[kevoka]

Note about laptops. The first and formost cause of interruptions in the audio stream will be due to the wireless card being active. On many laptops the wireless card is on the back bus with the USB and Firewire interfaces, and will compete with them for the bus.

Shut/disable off the wireless, and you will see a large decrease in crackle/pops.