Regulated clicks in my recording?

redCashion

New member
I have been having a very frustrating ordeal with trying to get rid of the clicks/pops/noise on my recordings. I have been very thorough about trying many optimizations but nothing has worked yet. If anyone could help me I would be forever in their debt..

My set-up: 650 AMD Duron/VIA Chipset/384MB RAM/20 Gig 7200 RPM WD HD master/40 Gig 7200 RPM WD HD slave now used only for waves (though I had previously had about 20 gigs of mp3s on there). I also have a network card hooked to a cable modem, I tried disconnecting this thinking that I was getting some unintentional signals being sent, but did not get any results.

Signal path is just a Shure 57 or guitar into a Digitech RP2000 into the front bay of a Soundblaster Live! I have a Delta 44 on the way and will be buying a pre-amp and RNC soon so that my vocals are not going through the RP2000 any longer. I am using Samplitude 2496, and used to use Cool Edit Pro where the problem was even worse. The clicking gets progressively worse the more files I have even if some are muted.

I had originally thought the problem was that my HD was getting too full (it was up to 33gigs). So I bought a CD-RW and archived all the 33 gigs, I removed everything but 9 gigs, repartitioned my drive using PartitionMagic, and moved the 9 gigs to the E partition. Btw, the cluster size on the D and E partition are 32k. I defragged the D partition (doubt it did much on an empty drive of course), but didn't see the need to reformat an empty partition. I have done some recording on the now near-empty D partition but still get clicking. Strangely, the clicking is now regulated at about every second, sometimes it will skip a click, but it always seems to fall on a certain "beat". The strangest thing is that this wasn't always the case, but maybe some of the optimizations that I have done in the last few days have changed something, or maybe got rid of some of the clicking and left this behind? It sort of sounds like a clock issue but I don't know what I can do about that.

By the way, these are the optimizations I have made:
-- made sure DMA was checked
-- in sys.ini, set:
[vcache]
minfilecache=8192
maxfilecache=8192
-- experimented with cache settings in Samplitude, setting them as high as 256mb, which did nothing more than slow me down.
-- Disabled Read Ahead Optimization and Write Behind Caching in System Performance.
-- Used the network server performance profile.
-- cleaned out my system tray and made sure that no programs are running.
-- checked to see how my resources look when recording, I usually have ninety-five percent of my system resource's free.

I have tried:
-- lowering the bit rate when recording to 22, but I still got clicks over my chipmunk voice.
-- recording to the Windows Recorder, strangely I got no clicks here, but alot of hiss.
-- lowering the graphics acceleration to 0, this did nothing so I set it back to full.

Optimizations that I didn't try:
-- setting different network profiles, as I assume that disconnecting the cable to my card would do the some thing.
-- setting virtual memory because I think that with 384MB ram this isn't an issue.

These are the places where I found different optimizations if anyone is curious:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...t6.45742$Xt3.6868490@news1.rdc1.az.home.com#p
http://www.greatidea.com/paris/hd.htm

But so far nothing has worked, can anyone give a suggestion based on the fact that it is now a regulated click? Thanks so much.
 
I disabled my USB port by disabling "OnChip USB" in my CMOS, but it had no effect. I have also tried recording on my original C drive to see if the problem might be local to the D/E drive, but on the C drive I am getting the same problem.

Man, this is really frustrating..
 
Knock the bit-rate down to 16, and put it to 44.1 Khz, and give that a shot

I just don't remember the SBlive being a card that can handle anything 16+ bit....

But I honestly don't remember,

Sabith
 
I think I might know the source of your problem.

I had regulated pops & clicks with my old SB Live Platinum - I unchecked the DMA box on my Hard Drive settings and that fixed it. I didn't notice too much degradation in Audio/Midi timing (but that may be because I rarely use more than 1 or 2 Midi tracks in each song). I believe the problem may be related to issues with the VIA chipset (although I'm not certain).

I also had the same problem recently with my new Audiophile 2496 card. Again: pops and clicks on each beat while recording in Cubase (but curiously, not in Soundforge), unchecked the DMA box and the problem was sorted out. I'll probably get a new motherboard and chipset very soon...

S.
 
couple a' things....

- try disabling 'auto-insert notification' on your cd-rom and cd-rw drives - I didn't see this as something that you had tried - but this 'tweak' was the one that finally allowed me to record 'clickless' on my system

- download the latest '4in1' drivers from the VIA website:
http://www.via.com.tw/jsp/en/dr/driver.jsp
 
I switched software to Nuendo, and that *seemed* to solve the problem. It still is somewhat unclear as Samplitude would take several recorded tracks before it would start acting up, but I am hopefule. Thanks for the help :)
 
I've had a look at the VIA website mentioned above. Unfortunately, I don't know which chipset I have. Do any of you know where I can find the chipset version on my Windows 98se PC? It might just save me from having to buy a new motherboard...

Thanks in advance.

S.
 
SB Live! Tip

The SB Live only digitizes at 48KHz. When you record at any other sampling rate, it has to resample on the fly down to your desired rate.

I just thought you should be aware of this.
 
This whole thread is a case in point --- you simply don't have to deal with this kind of crap if you DON'T use a computer for recording!!!

;)

Bruce
 
The link above didn't work for me either. I have an epox motherboard so I simply went to epox.com to get the 4in1 drivers. I think via.com has them as well.

Btw, thanks for the info on the soundblaster only recording in 48.1, I hadn't known that! But I am getting my Delta in the mail today so it may be a moot point now, thank goodness :)
 
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