POPS and CLICKS and NOISE "oh my "

J

jajsound#5

New member
.
OK, I got pops and clicks and skips and dropouts and stuttering going on..
During recording and playback, hell just move the mouse to click or highlight and the rice krispie trio come crawling thru my Cans or Mons.

Just tonite I upgraded to 4 GB of RAM...zero improvement.

Equipment List :

Dell GX620 with Intel Pentium 4 (now 4GB Memory ) 160GB Hard Drive and Windows 7 Home Premium

NVIDIA GeForce 210 graphics card

Cubase Element 7

Guitar Rig 5

EZDrummer 1.0

Steinberg CI 1 Audio Interface

Korg nanoKEY2

Korg nanoPAD2

Sony B1000 Monitors

Furman PL-8

Here is a simple example : 5 tracks 2:30
ezdrummer/ simple room reverb inserted
2 guitar tracks/ Guitar Rig 5
2 Halion Key tracks

Internet is turned off ( very limited use on this computer)

CPU Performance set for HIGH

All peripherals and USB Ports turned off/unplugged

All USB Hubs bypassed and USB Extension Cables no longer used, direct to USB Ports on the bay panel of CPU

Buffer set at 512 when recording

Buffer adjusted from 512 - 2048 during playback

No longer using wireless Keyboard or Mouse (wired only)

Have tried recording and playback with the following:
Steinberg CI 1
M-Audio Fast Track
ASIO4ALL
SoundMAX (Dell Sound-card)

Have tried Monitors, Head Phones, Computer Speakers,

During playback tried bypassing the inserts, effects etc.
Bypassing Guitar Rig (str8 dry guitar signal)
and still have problems.

Solo/Mute Individual Tracks (get pops and clicks just engaging and dis-engaging tracks)

Devices>VST Performance> runs around 60% to 80%

I can't think of anything else,

So I am now asking for 911 Assistance.



jajsound67@gmail.com
 
The review I found says "but the components of the GX620 themselves should be able to handle Vista in standard mode once the advanced OS arrives." Suggesting it's rather low on performance compared to current machines which gobble processor power and ram. What processor is in it? How old is the computer?
 
I tend to go with Rob here,
that Dell has a 2 core 2.8G processor which should be good enough but then there is a hell of a lot of number crunching proggs going on there!

I have only used a demo version of GRig 3 but that was pretty CPU intensive. Then you have Ezdrummer, tried a demo of that, not sure how much that loads the chip but I do know it was hell's teeth to uninstall!

You say you have set the PC for "High Performance" (why would one not?) but have you disabled all graphics animations and features like Aero? Have you set the machine to run "Backgound services"?

Is OBS and win bloops disabled? Also try removing the graphics card and running on the bog S MOBO vid'...Yes! A graph card SHOULD help performance I agree but not always!

Bottom line I think you are asking too much of the PC at one time. And, can't recall, is that Win7 64 bits? If so get another 4G of ram.

Dave.
 
Did you open the Windows performance monitor to check the CPU load? My computer is a quad-core and playing a tune with 14 tracks with several plugins together it won't pass 20%. Being your computer a duo-core it shouldn't take more than 20-50% that is still very far from choke the computer. I don't think that the issue is on CPU capacity.

Seems to me more a Windows issue. Until some time ago I used Windows XP and was pretty fine with it, and every time I tried to move to Windows 7 I had all sort of issues with multimedia -- not only DAW, but simpler things such as play an MP3 (drop outs, pops, clicks, buzz, etc) meaning that I couldn't even listen to my favorite tunes while working without to get pissed off.

Then recently (around the beggining of this year) I tried Windows 7 again and for some reason I don't know the issues just disappeared and my system does fine with all multimedia, DAW and such. I believe that something may have not worked well at the install of some driver or such in the past.

About your issue, specifically I would suspect of the following things:

1) Your Windows version specifically. Maybe your computer hardware doesn't like Windows 7. In your shoes, I would consider seriously to downgrade to XP that may be an excellent choice since you mentioned that you barely access web with it. I used XP for ages and it always was my favorite. I just moved out of it because I make a heavy use of Internet and after the descontinuation of the support it may be a bit nasty to me to keep with it.

2) Out-to-date drivers or conflicting software. I never had a Dell but heard that it doesn't like too much of generic drivers. Maybe it would be the case? Are you using ASIO? Or using the sound card proprietary driver? Are you running the latest drivers?

3) Incompatibility among your VSTs, the OS, the DAW and the hardware. Computers are a mistery and not always there will be a reasonable explanation or a fix for all issues. I tell this by self experience. Although my system runs fine mostly of the time I have small problems once in a while here in there. Specifically regarding to musical production, I have this issue that piss me off and that I can't see a way to figure a solution out: when using Fruity Loops I have to be extremely careful with certain VST generators. Some of them will surely crash the program whenever I try to use more than an instance of each. It happens usually with small sampled generators (such as DVS Saxophone or Ixox Flute). It will work fine if I have only ONE instance of them and use different ones together, but if I try to put two flutes or two sax, etc, it will crash FL. I have several other VSTs that will allow it without any problem though. Go figure!

4) Cubase. I have used a few versions of Cubase along the last decade although not as an heavy user. While the vs. 1 used to be fine I experienced several issues with more recently versions including sudden crashes with a subsequent close of the program making me lose all changes, etc. After to get tired of struggle with it I started looking for other alternatives and ended with Reaper that seems to be the ultimate tool for me for a long future.

Good luck!
 
Cubase 7 is not meant to run on XP. :(

I have heard some do get it to work though.

I think it mostly has to do with limited power of his PC or possibly the way it is setup. Hence why I posted the link to W7 setup for recording. :)
 
Another possibility could be a need for a Video card with it's own memory. THIS is what I have on my studio PC.

What is in yours JAJ? ACK!

And btw, that 'ACK' thing is an inside joke thing. I have known this guy for like 25 years. Hell, we have shared women after gigs. Even the sound guy gets bennies. :)
 
If you continue having problems, if you haven't already, try plugging the device into the USB ports that are directly mounted on the MB. These are usually located on the back. You do get a performance boost. I have another USB device (turntable) that gave me fits and this was what corrected it. So now, any and all real time USB devices get plugged in there, controllers and such (MIDI Keyboards) you can get by with on hubs and such.

Hope this is a new idea and helps.
 
I remember reading there were some problems (including mouseclicks being recorded) with recording when using certain video cards, wonder if that is the problem?
 
mjbphotos said:
I remember reading there were some problems (including mouseclicks being recorded) with recording when using certain video cards, wonder if that is the problem?
Click to expand...

Yup, That's why I suggested ditching it and trying the MOBO graphics. The offending cards were ATI IIRC but have not read of any issues recently. Little point to a super graph card that I can see anyway? You need to turn all the posh stuff off!

On a general point: In over 8 years of infesting audio recording forums I have read of scores of instances of clicks and plops and general audio glitching. These problems seem to beset high and low performance PCs (sometimes even macs!) rich and poor, Venus and Mars and the wise and the foolish.

The only fix (if there be one) is to strip everything down to bare essentials, one AI one DAW two channels....and build from there?

And in the limit a system HDD format and re-install everything!

Dave.
 
Tip: Avoid running short of RAM

When RAM becomes scarce, problems occur almost automatically and these may even include crashing. If you are using your computer for music production, as a general rule, the more RAM you have, the better; but even when vast amounts of RAM have been installed, if it is not used efficiently, it can still become scarce. We therefore recommend the following strategies for optimizing RAM management.

Realizing when RAM is scarce: The first thing is to establish whether or not you are running short of RAM. If you are using Windows, open the Task Manager (shortcut [Ctrl][Alt][Del]) or if using a Mac, open the Activity Monitor (Applications>Utilities) and you will see how much RAM is being used by each application. Of particular interest here is the amount of RAM being used by your DAW, as this figure includes the RAM used by all the plug-ins loaded.

When it comes to RAM use, there is an important difference between 32-bit and 64-bit DAWs: 32-bit DAWs are only capable of addressing 2 GB of RAM, even if the computer itself contains considerably more. As soon as the RAM requirements of a 32-bit DAW begin to approach this 2 GB limit, the application will become unstable and malfunctions inevitable. In this case, you should use the measures outlined below to reduce your RAM requirements. With a 64-bit DAW, of course, you can use considerably more RAM, but here, too, shortages can occur, if the DAW claims virtually all the RAM that is physically available. In either case, the following measures are recommended.





Reduce the maximum number of undo steps: However, managing the undo history also requires memory – and the more undo steps are stored there, the greater the memory requirement. Each possible undo step therefore costs memory, . the maximum number of undo steps and with it the amount of RAM needed by the undo function. By default, the parameter is set to 25. Reduce this value if you find memory running short or decide you really don’t need that many undo steps.






Sampler instruments with long, multi-layered samples are particularly greedy when it comes to RAM. For this reason, most such instruments are also capable of switching to disk streaming technology whenever their RAM consumption would otherwise exceed a prescribed limit. This limit is generally user-adjustable, so if you need to economize on RAM, you can simply reduce it. Keep an eye, though, on the CPU load display of your DAW, as lowering the RAM limit of your sampler engine will increase the load on the CPU. The aim is to find a happy medium whereby excessive demands are made upon neither your CPU nor your RAM.

Restart your DAW at regular intervals: Many DAWs have a tendency, the longer they run, to monopolize more and more RAM, which they fail to give back to the operating system in the correct way. This is something you will notice typically from the fact that the RAM display (in the Task Manager under Windows or the Activity Monitor on the Mac) will show less and less free RAM available even though you haven’t performed any additional editing in Melodyne or added new sampler instruments. Restarting your DAW at regular intervals, you will find, works wonders in such cases. As a rule of thumb, we recommend the following: each time you leave off editing one (fairly long) track with Melodyne, before you begin work on the next, you should save the song and restart your DAW. Only then should you perform the next transfer and resume editing.

Reboot your computer: It is less often necessary but can still do no harm to reboot your computer from time to time, thereby defragmenting the RAM. Severely fragmented RAM can sometimes be responsible for your DAW becoming unstable — even when, at first sight, the level of RAM consumption is far from critical. Even though the total quantity of RAM available may seem sufficient, if it is fragmented (i.e. if no large blocks are available but only a multitude of fragments scattered all over the place), hiccups can be experienced in the communication between the operating system and the DAW or between the DAW and the plug-in. You can solve such problems at a stroke simply by rebooting the computer.
 
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