New set up driving me crazy

songsj

Member
Have a new DAW set up , I swear I am getting some distortion and I cannot figure out why , New Dell XPS 8910, Creative soundblaster sound card, New Yamaha HS8 monitors, Reaper and Sony Vegas with Waves plugins, I cannot find anything I'm overdriving and I disabled the sound card and went with the onboard audio no change,Ive even played store bought CD's bypassing the DAW software and they just don't sound quite right. Like high frequency distortion. Almost like when tweeters start to fry but these are brand new and I have not cranked on them. Driving me crazy cannot figure it out. Suggestions. It is like something in the computer is set wrong and overdriving the monitors. I've tried different settings in the preferances looked at the device manager, only have one audio enabled at a time Help!!! Also just listened with headphones same problem, burned a cd of a mix I thought was okay. Sounded like Crap on my old system I'm using a project that I already did and made sound great on my old Pentium 4 with XP 32 bit. I've checked the media files they are the same and I got them from the old project. Could I have a bad computer with a bad motherboard. I don't know what else to think. I am going to hook my new monitors up to my old system and see how they sound.
 
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Play a track on iTunes or spotify. Does that sound good? If so, then your playback system and computer is fine, and the distortion is to do with the chain from the input through your software up until the point it gets routed to the sound card, which you already know is fine.

If iTunes/spotify is distorted too, then the sound card/drivers are your problem - or of course, a faulty amp?

We really need your entire chain to work it out remotely - device to device, then the computer software, sound card or external audio device details, then the monitor system.
 
I'd be interesting to hear what you're hearing, but I guess the only way would be to record the line out of the SC. Not Shure how that'd be done. Going analog out, back in, play and record at the same time?
Know anybody with a known good USB I/F you could borrow?
 
I'd be interesting to hear what you're hearing, but I guess the only way would be to record the line out of the SC. Not Shure how that'd be done. Going analog out, back in, play and record at the same time?
Know anybody with a known good USB I/F you could borrow?

That's the old trick before ASIO and he has two cards - out one, into the other
 
Update, I ran windows trouble shooting scan for sport, it found some windows media player settings needed correcting so I let it do that but did not let it re-enable the on board sound card as I tried that already to no avail. Not sure what that would have to do with anything but I figured it could not hurt. It actually seemed like it made the store bought CD's sound nicer, but still did not get my recording there. Lucky for me when I finished this project on my other system I saved everything. I played my master mix cd on the new system and could not believe how good it sounded, so maybe I am back to missing something in my software settings and combine that with new computer, new monitors, different room and it can be a recipe for disaster. Spent hours on it today, left late for work, little sleep, problem not solved. Called the geek squad, while I'm sure they are good at what they do I did not sound confident from our phone conversation that they would be much help even though the machine is only 4 weeks old. Us audio guys and girls really are kind of in our own world and on our own. If I had to lay 100 bucks down on something today I would still have to bet that I am over driving something, I just cannot figure out what. I have gone plugin by plugin in removing them one at a time until there are none assigned and I still have it. I even wondered if I accidentally created a buss somewhere I'm missing that might be clipping, can't see it yet if I did. I am new to Reaper so I have to search around some in it. Really guys if I could go back 1 month and over 3k earlier, I would just buy a nice refurbished Xeon processor 32 bit machine for 450.00 and run all of my old software that except for being old is working great and does a bang up job. Still might do it. Any other setting suggestions or ideas of where I might be clipping something would be appreciated. I did double check my audio files and they seem okay. Geek squad guy said I could do a complete system restore and reinstall all of my software and see if that takes care of it. I guess it could come to that but I told him I did not have another 12 hours to mess with this right now. It's not like we all have cd rom's for our software anymore. And I'm not sure what Waves policy is on their licenses. I've bought several new ones. I know it can be done but what a pain for something that may not even be the problem.
 
have you paid attention to task manager = looking to see in Index is running constantly, or, anything else ?
 
Thanks I will look when I get home, I also found some diagnostics that can be run from Dells website, maybe something will show up there. What do I have to lose, Funny this machine boasts "Award Winning Audio" !! That is a good one!!! I did some searching and some people have had audio problems with Windows 10 but I would think they would have that solved by now. I would hate to have to try and roll it back to a Windows 7 Driver and run it in compatibility mode, should not have to do that with a new machine.
 
I'm old enough that I cut my teeth in the analog world with tape machines, 2 rules of thumb, do not overdrive anything unintentionally and you can Y all of the outputs you want but never Y an input. This sounds like something is being overdriven [turned up too high] or like 2 inputs are Y'ed together. [ 2 input processes fighting to enter the audio chain somewhere] Kind of that sound like when the snares on a snare drum rattle from the toms or loud audio. In the analog world you would look to see if you were over driving your pre's, mixer etc. and make sure you wern't clipping your monitor amp. I believe this machine was like this out of the box because I was disappointed with the audio before I installed any 3rd party software, I guess that is a good news bad news thing. I should have taken it back. My bad!!
 
Another thing, I have to be careful because this type situation can eat tweeters/ high frequency drivers real quick!!
 
Well, modern machines want to let you record whatever you are hearing online and can be routed to your inputs. My newer (2010 ) sound blaster and one realtek came , or where installed with that virtual device active.
 
Thanks so much, all of your replies are helpful and helping me narrow this down [I hope} , I am stressing big time, this is my hobby not my job, I have limited time to spend on this but have to get it right or there is no point. Unfortunately the "Sweet Spot" for most of us in recording and mixing is pretty narrow. Getting your mixes 80% is not going to cut it. This is not something I can live with,it is making it impossible to reference correctly for mixing. If I don't solve this I will have one expensive internet surfing machine, and I don't surf the interment for enjoyment much.
 
On this dual xeon 3.20 HP XP 32 and 64 dual boot, I was able to remove media player in total. This board has the Analog Device's SoundMAX chip and I leave it running even though I have two USB interfaces sitting on top when I want to use them
 
I ran a system/ hardware scan through Dell's website and all hardware checked out. I've checked all the easy most likely stuff, I hooked the new Monitors up to my Tascam 2488 and listened to store bought cd's while I was screwing with the other one. The Monitors seem to be fine. Give you a lot of bass when on the floor. I guess I'm down to 2 choices, a complete system restore or since that is where I am headed I may as well start uninstalling things I don't use or need, may get lucky. I could look at one of those programs like conflict catcher but I don't know how good they are or if they even still make it. Whatever it is is passing the windows 10 and all driver updates. I'm growing more fond of my old system that served me well and is still working. I can always use the video and audio monitors and I needed a new internet machine anyway so maybe that is what this will become. Maybe I should eat the 1K I've got in new 64 bit software and pick up a refurbished Xeon 32 bit with windows 7 installed. I've seen them for as low as 400.00. I'll keep you posted as I try things right now I need to get away from it for awhile. There is a lot of crap that can go like Groove music, Dropbox, whatever that is, and since I'm using a soundblaster PCI audio card I could probably dump the Realtek Drivers, I notices in task manager some HD audio things were running in the backround that did not look like creative maybe they can go too. I forced them to quit but they came back. " A lot of living in a lifetime".
 
I got a refurb q6600 ?? core 2 quad for $150 w7 pro 64. It's dog compared to the new stuff, but I don't seem to run into trouble. I'm not a big VST user, though. Supposedly the 2.4 will clock to 3ghz easy enough and remain stable.

Creative always has software that want's to take clock cycles, I've never noticed that with realtek?
 
Started removing useless [to me] and not necessary programs today. Things like Netflix, Skype Power music, Cyberlink, I even removed the Realtek Driver for the onboard audio. No luck yet has not solved my distortion issue. I'm finding some of the things I would like to dump are part of a bundle install and not as easy to remove. That takes an IT wizard better than I. In regards to your refurbished q6600? they only have to be as fast as you need them to be. If you are only doing audio and not rendering video a system smartly put together with a good engineer can do an awful lot with very little. Right now for what I'm doing my 12 year old Pentium 4. 3.0 630HT with 4 GB ram, XP 32 bit is kicking my 6th Gen i7 quad core's butt for end use product.
 
I could try that but my thought was since bot the onboard audio and PCI audio had the problem it may not make a difference. Also I used a 4x express slot, I only have a 8x slot left can I put it in there?
 
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