popping appeared out of the blue!

[jamtheguitarman]

i fired up my computer today and started playback of my song. there is a ton of clicking\popping going on though and i cant work out why. the wierd thing is, it was fine yesterday and i havnt changed a thing between then and now. the output isnt clipping and the CPU performance in the VST performance menu thing is only fluctuating aroung half full. i froze my VST synth channel, no change. ive already frozen my 4 orchestra channels and bass channel.
i am using S.I.R on Two FX channel and sending the bass and most of the kit through 1. a guitar channel through the other. i also have S.I.R as an insert on the orchestra main channel. i am using the CLassic series freebee compressor on a few drum tracks and the bass, as well as the EQ from the same series on a few channels.

i am using Cubase SL3 , M-audio omni studio/delta 66 soundcard.
AMD 64 3400 cpu
1 gig memory

need any more of my pc specs?


what the hell is going on, i sure cant figuer it out so i turn to you guys?

thanks
jamie

[DonF]

Just a guess: disk drive fragmentation?

[jamtheguitarman]

i had another look at it. it onlt seems to be happening when i have all the parts playing. if i solo the bass and guitar together its fine, if i solo the strings and guitar its fine. but at the start of the song when its only the synth and strings playing, the popping is still there. ill defrag tonight.

[volltreffer]

Some bus overload?

aXel

[dwillis45]

Have you tried different buffer settings?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

If it's just certain tracks at certain parts of the song, you could have a weak spot on your HD where that WAV file is residing and the system is having trouble reading it. Try re-saving those clips under different names to move them to different disc locations. Run Scandisk, Norton Disc Doctor, Gibson Spinrite or any other disc integrity checker you may have to make sure your not getting read errors or cross-linked files or anything like that.

Otherwise...

If you have changed nothing, make sure someone else hasn't either; i.e. check for any viruses, worms, spyware, etc. that may have decided to become resident on your system in the past 24 hours and is stealing resources. If you check clean with godd AntiVirus and anti-spyware/adware software, then take a look at your running process and/or even viewer to make sure there isn; some other system hoh that is running when it needn't be.

Otherwise, look at your system settings. Like dwillis said, check your software buffer settings and also your systm cache settings to make sure somthing didn't get toggled there accidentally.

Also, *some* (but certainly not all) motherboard BIOSs have options where with the right keystroke combination during bootup, the CPU and/or front-end bus speeds can be throttled down, Make sure your BIOS settings all look OK and tha nothing has been unintentionally crippled.

As was mentioned, disc fragmentation could be a problem.

If all that fails, it might be time to check your HD hardware. If you are using all EIDE/ATA drives, it could be a drive controller issue. Ideally your data drive (if it's a different drive from your system drive) should be the primary drive on the second controller. If you have a slave drive that's in trouble on that same secondary bus, temporarily disconnect the slave and see if that changes your performance. If not, then try moving your data drive to the other controller temproarily to see if that isolates the problem as well (if the second cromtroller is flakey.)

Though rare, it is possible you may have developed some flakey memory. Though at 1GB you have plenty of memory, if you've got a flakey memory address early enough in your stack it can cause performance problems.

G.

[jamtheguitarman]

wow, thanks for th help, i was getting worried a little there. i had a look at it again today and have sorted it out. basicly, it started clicking when i had all of the tracks going, not necciseraly playing but just not muted. when i muted for instance the drum tracks, everything would work fine, if i unmuted the drum tracks but muted the strings parts, it worked okay. i narrowed it down to removing the SIR reverb from the strings track and it all worked okay. so it must have been just too much too handle for the computer with 3 SIR reverbs running. it was strange though because after i removed the reverb from the strings, i then put it back on to see what would happen and it actually worked okay. dont know why that is. i imagine it will start crakling again if i restart cubase.

i have another question though. i wish to have all 3 revebs running at the same time but obviously the pc cant handle this. the obvious thing to do is to freeze the effects once i have them set up. the problem is though, i wish to have reverb on my drum tracks but there all routed to group tracks and i cant freeze groupe tracks. what do i do?
i also wish to have reverb on my string tracks. i am using Garritan orchestra and there for the tracks arnt audio. is it possible to add reverb and then freeze the track in some way?

thanks
jamie

[xstatic]

Try using reverbs on sends instead of inserts. That should help some. Also, you can try and raise your buffer a bit when you start bogging down. With convolution reverbs the actual sample you use can make a big difference as well. Some samples use less cpu power than others. Convolution reverbs (especially with really high quality samples) can absolutely eat up just about any system with just a few instances.

[jamtheguitarman]

Try using reverbs on sends instead of inserts

i am already running all my drum tracks thorugh one reverb send. but the other two reverbs i am only using on one track for each. is there any point in setting a send up to only put one track through it, rather than using an insert?

[Monsterpop]

hi folks
i just found this problem thread after starting one of my own!
doh!
my noises dont go away when certain tracks are muted though

but would it be because of too many plugins after all?


Im actually doing a remix/dancey type version of a country/rock song
and im using far too many tracks and spending far to much time on it!

is it worth just removing a bunch of plugins to see if that cures it?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by Monsterpop

hi folks
i just found this problem thread after starting one of my own!
doh!
my noises dont go away when certain tracks are muted though

but would it be because of too many plugins after all?


Im actually doing a remix/dancey type version of a country/rock song
and im using far too many tracks and spending far to much time on it!

is it worth just removing a bunch of plugins to see if that cures it?

Muting the tracks may not be enough, and keeps you from hearing them as part of the mix. Typically the best way to deal with that is to lock or freeze the tracks you are not currently editing instead of muting them. "Locking" and "freezing" are two different names for the same thing, different brands of DAW software just use different names. Search your software's online help files for either "freeze" or "lock" and it should explain it pretty good for you. This will allow you to take the load off of your CPU and still hear everything, including all your plugs on all your tracks.

G.

[LemonTree]

If it's just at mixdown and you've nothing else to record you can whack your buffer sizes way up. As latency won't be an issue with tracking out the way. I used to have to record every single instrument and overdub with everything dry as a bone to get the latency down then crank up the buffer size to start mixing......so long ago now, but it was a problemat one stage.

[witzendoz]

Usually this stuff happens when you have reverb plugins on a few tracks at once, one trick is to render the reverbed tracks to new tracks and mute the originals so you could change the reverb later if need be. With the track muted the processor does not have to deal with the reverb.

Cheers

Alan.

[NYMorningstar]

Originally Posted by Monsterpop

hi folks
i just found this problem thread after starting one of my own!
doh!
my noises dont go away when certain tracks are muted though

but would it be because of too many plugins after all?


Im actually doing a remix/dancey type version of a country/rock song
and im using far too many tracks and spending far to much time on it!

is it worth just removing a bunch of plugins to see if that cures it?

Get yourself a second hard drive and dedicate just for music data.

[Monsterpop]

Originally Posted by NYMorningstar

Get yourself a second hard drive and dedicate just for music data.

hi there
thanks for the reply.

as soon as i got this Mac i bought an external drive just for that purpose.
however i was having alot of problems with freezing up etc
and was then advised that the usb ext drive was too slow

So i recently bought a firewire external drive for recording

though i cant say i notice it running any better to be honest.
It still very often freezes up when importing a file to a session
its a real pain when that happens,,as i cant force quit on PT
cos it just stays in the dock
And then of course i cant eject the ext drive,as it tells me it is still in use

so im forced to do a hard shutdown and risk losing data

so if its not one thing its another it seems

cheers

[NYMorningstar]

I'm not familiar with Macs but can't you get a second internal drive?

[Monsterpop]

hi
thanks for the reply
as far as im aware,i should be all set as i am!
with the Mac mini theres no room for anything in there anyway!

i wouldnt even attempt to open it for adding memory or the like

too techcnical for me