White noise from my interface ....

[elsiebear]

Hi…I am very new to laptop style recording so I have never used Audio interfaces before .I use Ableton live 8 and Akai EIE interface …
I have been finding that quite often I get very loud ‘white noise’ that kicks after about 1 minute of vocal recording (it scares the life out of me if I have ear phones on !!
I find if I pull the USB lead out and put it straight back it s fine for about a minute again. The noise does not stop if I remove the mic so it must be from with in the unit.
I haven’t been able to master ‘latency’ yet and I don’t know how I can listen to my music track at the same time as recording my vocal without the vocal being doubled …could the ‘noise’ be to do with either of these things ….

 

[mjbphotos]

White noise can best be described as hissy, or like waves across a rocky beach - is that what you are hearing? Do you have the latest drivers installed for the interface?

 

[Mr. June]

mjb is right; making sure your drivers are up to date should be your first thing. Also, be sure to try different buffer settings in Live (audio preferences). I've sometimes had luck switching USB ports on laptops; sometimes they differ power-wise, check this as well. Lastly, be sure that Live is the ONLY program running...good luck!