Crackles in Cubase

[PeterSimonRussell]

Thanks for tip about laptops kevoka - i'll try disabling the wireless card when I record.

[IBNezz]

Originally Posted by 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.

Sweet! I'll give this a try.

I ended resetting my hardware interface (Presonus FP10) latency settings all the way up to 25ms (the max indicated), and I was still getting that annoying issue!

[drumn4state]

I have just learned to live with the fact that everytime I open Cubase to record, I have to go into the Devices menu, open up the M-Audio control panel and click the up arrow for the buffer size. The buffer stays at 256 because it doesn't let you change the buffer size once Cubase is open. This gets rid of the crackles. If I don't then I have crackles everytime. Annoying but livewithable.

[mattj86]

if i have recorded a peice and its crackin and poppin like a bowl of rice krispies, if i do all the above, will it still do this?

or

will i have to record all the parts again?

[drumn4state]

Originally Posted by mattj86

if i have recorded a peice and its crackin and poppin like a bowl of rice krispies, if i do all the above, will it still do this?

or

will i have to record all the parts again?

As far as I know you have to record it again. I haven't been successful in removing them from something that I have already recorded. If someone reads this and knows a way, I am all ears.

[Svencanz]

Also check that your computer does not have the Nvidia Nforce4 chipset for graphics - these are common on laptops and known to create problems.

[tiberius]

In the past i've recorded things with the add random click.
You can open the offending .wav file in audacity and find the click, then zoom in and
draw through it. Save the .wav again and the problem is solved.

[mattj86]

I changed my latency settings mid session (now at 60ms output) and did the whole switch VST audiobay and turned wireless off. Now it has started doing that weird echo effect that someone mentioned earlier. Am I just going to have to scrap this and start all again? All my problems seem to occur when i use something like amplitube, their a common reason for this?

Also, Can someone please tell me or point me in the right direction of how to perfectly record in Cubase when plugging into an audio interface?

Im just unsure when you should use things such as a limiter or compressor.

Thanks for any help

[kevoka]

I am not sure what amplitube is. If it is plugin to Cubase, or another program running on the DAW, then it can have a definite effect for Snap Crackle and Pop. ), If a hardware device in the input stream then ignore the rest)

The whole issue with S, C & P is when there are:

1) interrupts on the PC busses (USB, Firewire, back bus, and wireless (and probably a bunch of other junk), or
2) other resources contending for the same CPU cycles in the DAW. The more things that are executing, and demanding CPU cycles, then the more S,C &P. The best thing to do during recording is to record dry, then apply effects afterwards. Do not apply unneccesary effects during the recording phase (compression, reverb etc). They can all be applied during mixing.

In cubase effects like these are only applied on the output side anyway (monitoring or playback - at least I do not know how to apply them to the input stream, prior to the stream being sent to the disk), so all they do is suck CPU cycles that should be dedicated to getting the input stream from the audio interface through the back bus, through the CPU and to the disk. (the disk is usually on separate back bus).


Or buy a bigger, better, faster DAW, that does all this, bigger, better and faster (and does not have an operating system that checks the web every 5 secs for updates to Media Player, runs a virus scan on every file that is opened, etc).