clicks and crackles in audio playback (even outside of a DAW)

[luiza177]

hey,

I recently "upgraded" my audio setup, I'm now using an m-audio fast track ultra interface and sonar 8. Thing is, recently I started experiencing audio clicks and crackles whenever I playback audio, be it in sonar or just listening to music on winamp or anything like that.

my settings are in the pictures: (latency in sonar is at 23ms)

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j3.../fasttrack.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j3...a177/sonar.jpg

apparently, messing with the buffer size in the fast track, changes nothing clicks/crackles-wise... messing increasing the buffer size to 1000+ in sonar guarantees crackles, but setting it 256-512 "randomizes" them, as in sometimes they happpen, sometimes they don`t.
switching to WDM and messing with the latency also changes nothing. (I also have no idea which is best, ASIO or WDM, or what the difference is)

any help is appreaciately and thanked for in advance.

[adorian]

WDM and Sonar are usually happier together.
Is your audio card USB? Try disconnecting as much USB stuff you can when connecting the card.
Check the manufacturer site for new drivers/updates and same with the software maker. I was getting really weird errors and crackling in Cubase that got fixed with their update, maybe Sonar will also have a patch.

[luiza177]

it happens outside of sonar too. I even tried using WDM but it doesn`t seem to help.

yup, it`s USB. I re-installed drivers recently, made sure I got the most recent drivers. I also don`t connect anything but the interface on usb.

[adorian]

Did you disable your other audio interfaces via the control panel?
Is this a laptop or desktop?

[luiza177]

yes

it's a HP pavillion dv9000 laptop.

[adorian]

ok, on laptops there is sometimes a slowness that comes with the built in hard drive as it can't handle audio written to it and running the audio software at the same time. If you have an external hard drive you might want to test recording to that, if possible hooking it on the other USB port.

As far as OSes go I am assuming that you might be on Vista which is a double barf when it comes to audio. You'd have to optimize it for audio. I found this:
Audio Forums

You might want to start with this;
Visual Effects > Adjust for best Performance (this disables all Aero effects).
Advanced > Processor Scheduling > Background Services.
Advanced > Data Execution Prevention > Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only. Press OK when done. This will disable the Windows Aero™ theme. If you would like to enable it again, rightclick on the desktop and choose Personalize > Theme > Windows Vista. Resource usage from the Vista theme is negligible. See the section on Personalization for more details.

Did you max out the RAM on this machine? I'd say load it up as it is not that expensive, so put in 4gigs of ram if it'll take it and you can afford it.

[cakewalkgg]

do you have more than one device using the usb bus at the same time.. I have the same problem with my podxt.. Line 6 blames inadequate usb chips.. so I upgraded to a pci usb card.. it helped but there i still some occasional cracks and pops.. Ironically I have the Fast Track pro usb and it has none of these issues.. I spent a couple months researching and pretty much came to the conclusion that usb 1.1 is questionable. The FTU is 2.0 so I dont know what to say there.. I do agree with the already mentioned optimize the PC to be a DAW.. you can google for Optimize visita for DAw and get some good results.. make sure you trust the source.. i found a few sites making some wild recommendations that were very bad..

[luiza177]

don`t have anything else on any other usb port. and I'm on XP actually, hated Vista so I downgraded it.

[fohmixer]

Originally Posted by luiza177

don`t have anything else on any other usb port. and I'm on XP actually, hated Vista so I downgraded it.

That's not a "down grade"

[adorian]

Since you're on XP see if you can remove any running and startup programs, do a search for XP optimization and I am sure that something will pop up.