Is a new RAM the only thing I need?

Alejo

Alejo

New member
Hello to all,

It seems that once I go deeper in recording, the clicks and pops appear more often. I record the tracks one by one, and after 6 audio tracks and 4 midi ones, these clicks are become annoying.

I set the DMA buffer size of the soundcard to the biggest one I can, even knowing this could yeld in latency problems, but these nasty efects are still there. Also, Cubase SX does not respond after few minutes working and I have to kill it and restart again.

It´s clear that I would have to replace my old 128 RAM, but do I need something else?. My HD is also 4 years old, and I believe is not fast enough.
Are clicks and pops also related to the speed of the HD? Should I buy also a new 7200 rpms HD?

If you think that I have to do more changes on my hardware, please tell me. Or may be this could be solved with some sofware setting (which I cannot imagine now).

Specs:

PIII 733 Mhz, 128RAM, 20GB HD, Sound Card Audiophile 24/96, Cubase SX. If you need more detailed specs I will open the CPU, because I have no more info than this.

Thank a lot,

Alejo.
 
A few suggestions:

Make sure the graphics accelleration on your video card is turned way down, or off. THis can cause pops or clicks on screen updates.

Try going to 'expert settings' under 'vst multitrack' and unchecking 'lower latency'.

Make sure you have the most recent driver for your soundcard.

Your soundcard should be ASIO compliant if I'm not mistaken, you may be able to go into your soundcard screen and actually raise the buffering that the soundcard does, seperate from SX.

if your HD is running under 7200 rpm, and it is the only HD on your system, that could be causing the freezes. It's hard enough for a slower drive to keep up with writing audio data realtime, but if it's trying to READ the program data, and WRITE the audio data at the same time and on the same slow drive....YIKES! What I would do if I were you is invest in a nice 7200 rpm HD, (they are really pretty cheap now) and use your old drive to run SX, and the new drive exclusively as a write drive that will keep all your songs. Make sure when you install the new drive not to make it a slave to the old one, you want them both as masters if I am not mistaken.

RAM helps run a lot of plug-in's without problems. 128 does seema bit light, but I think the HD would be the bigger issue that you face currently.

Just some thoughts. Good luck with your system. Hope things get working right for you.
 
Bass Master-

Nice. It is not the first time you solve me a problem and I really appreciate you help this time too.

Actually I was not aware of the importance of the speed of the HD because I didn´t know the basics you told me. Also I thought the clicks that come after screen updating were given by default and I couldn´t do anything to improve it. I have realized also that Cubase and my sound card have separated buffer size settings which I should adjust (this "lower latency" option).

I will download the drivers, buy a 512 RAm and a 7200 rpms HD next week.

Again, thank you.

Alejo.
 
I agree that you could use more RAM but you may not be able to utilize 512 MB with your motherboard. Try just going to 256 MB. Also, your harddrive will not get slower over time. You may have an issue with fragments causing it to appear slower but all you need to do is to defrag it to fix that. It is still a good idea to get an extra HD just for writing to. You might also look at a faster processor as a PIII 733mhz is kinda on the lower end these days. Good luck 2 u.
 
Thank you for your response. I positevely have to check if the motherboard is compatible with the latest RAM´s wich I doubt. If not, 256 megas would be a reliable update anyhow. I try to keep my Pc defragmented and pretty away from non useful programs- like the stupid little ones that I downloaded in the begining that slowly make windows to collapse.
I will start with the RAM and the Hd. If I have to change also the processor, it would be better to buy a new CPU.
Thanks again.
 
Glad I could be of help.

Keep posting if you have more troubles. Hopefully you will soon have a flawlessly running DAW. I just finished my music room/ home studio in my new house and I am in heaven being able to use my gear after 3 months of it being packed up. Anything I can do to help others get theirs running I am happy to do. Nothing more frustrating than having the creative juices stifled by technology not working as planned. :p
 
You are right. Most of the time your brain has assimilated so many technical concepts when setting up everything that there is no room to compose aything decent afterwars. Personally I end up like a girl with "post-natal" depression: tired and lazy for a couple of days.
Good luck with your music projects in your new house!.
Regards,
Alejo.
 
Bass Master - Good to hear your getting your stuff back together. I'm still being stifled by my technology problems though......... Damn popping. Had it since day one.


Tried lowering the graphics acceleration. Still there. I've reinstalled windows, reconfiguring windows, changed drivers, checked IRQ's, disabled USB, everything. Still there. Even when I'm not recording. I'm beginning to think it may be a static or inteference problem in the break out box or computer. Its dring me crazy. Any other suggestions? I'm open to ANYTHING. I'm desperate. :(

Cheers, Neil
 
Neil, I can't believe your still having trouble man, I didn't realize that your stuff wasn't running right still or I would have tried to help you more, although I have been gone the last few months except for the occational pop in with all this house stuff. Let's get this solved for ya. I'm no gaurenteed expert, but I will help you all I can.

I'm sure you have posted it before, but would you post your system specs and soundcard and version of Cubase. Also, is there a consistant time that you hear the popping? ie...if you play a song and you hear a pop, when you back it up a few seconds and replay it do you hear the pop in the same place or is it totally random popping?
 
Bass Master "K" said:
Neil, I can't believe your still having trouble man, I didn't realize that your stuff wasn't running right still or I would have tried to help you more, although I have been gone the last few months except for the occational pop in with all this house stuff. Let's get this solved for ya. I'm no gaurenteed expert, but I will help you all I can.

I'm sure you have posted it before, but would you post your system specs and soundcard and version of Cubase. Also, is there a consistant time that you hear the popping? ie...if you play a song and you hear a pop, when you back it up a few seconds and replay it do you hear the pop in the same place or is it totally random popping?
Click to expand...

You are a good good man Bass Master K. Thankyou for all the effort you've made in helping me with this.

My specs are.......

Athlon 1800 with 256 mb ddr ram, 7200 HD (the Hard drive is partitioned into two, if that makes a difference). My Operating system is Win 98se.

My soundcard is a Gadget Labs Wave 8/24 (Old, but the guy I bought it off of never had a popping problem. I saw it working before I got it). I have downloaded and installed the most up to date drivers, which are two years old now due to Gadget Labs closing down.

The popping is completly random. I load up Cubase (32, version 5.something) and it starts straight away. On the recorded wave there is the popping - it comes up as a line in the waveform.

Once again, Cheers. Your conribution to this BBS, and particularly this section is invaluable to everyone.
 
I just want to make sure I fully understand.

So the popping is appearing randomly throughout your songs, but you can see the pops in the audio wavefile? So the pop is actually "pressed" into the audiowave and once it is there it stays there? So for instance if you had a chorus and your singing "Cubase rocks the house" and you hear a pop over the word "rocks", when you stop it and back up and replay it, you will hear the pop in the exact same place?

What kind of instruments are you using to record? Does this happen with MIDI? Audio? Both? Any Mics? Do you notice it happens more with a particular setup or instrument?

Have you ever ran your CPU system resources meters while your tracking? It will sap a bit of your power while you do it but it would also tell you if your system is spiking which can cause problems. Running one hard drive can also cause troubles, but I am not sure if they would cause the problems you are describing so I am looking into that more.

Lastly, when you watched the previous owner use it did you see quite a bit of material played on it pop free? Or is it possible that he just pulled out a 30 second clip that didn't happen to have any on it?

Sorry for so many questions, but I figure since I only check on once or twice a day we might as well get as many of them taken care of at one time so we don't drag this out longer than it has to be. :)
 
Attatched is a shot of my screen in Cubase. The pops are quite clear in the waveform - I set the gain lower than usual to extenuate this.

I don't use Midi, so don't know if this problem will affect the midi side of Cubase. I do know that it happens regardless of what input on my interface I use (its an 8-input interface).

From the picture you can see my system resources which never peak much higher than they show. When I saw the card being used before I bought it the guy had an Athlon 800 with 256 mb of sdram. He was running about 12 tracks of audio with no clicks or problems at all. Like me he was using Cubase 32 in Win 98se.

I'm just going to try to upload some sound clips.......
 

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Please excuse the poor playing and recording.........

To hear more pops and crackles try
. These guys are a punk rock band I recorded in Febuary.

Cheers for all the questions Bass Master ;) .I hope I've answered them well........
 

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Hey Neil, I thought the mp3 sounded good. While punk is not my main gig I listen to it once in a while and your getting some quality results there!

I can see where this is a big problem. The clicks are all over it.

I am looking up info in a few places, and I put out a call for help in another. I'm hoping by this time tomorrow I will have some good suggestions for you.
 
Unreal. I can't believe you'd go to so much trouble.

Cheers Bass Master K. If I'm ever in your area, I'll be forever in your debt!

Thanks again.

Neil
 
No problems Neil, your a good member of our community here, if we can get you up and running the time is well spent. I am still waiting for a few answers to some more complex questions I had regarding a fix that would be a bit of a pain in the ass, so let's start with some stuff you can do without removing cards and testing.

First, have you checked your IRQ ports to make sure that your computer is not sharing your soundcard with some other device? This can cause a problem. We want your computer to treat the soundcard like it is a high priority and not let it play second fiddle to anything else.

You can check this by going to Start>programs>accessories>system tools>system information

Under Hardware Resources check out your Conflicts/Sharing and see if your soundcard is being shared with another device. If it is, then go down to IRQ and open that up and see if you have any IRQ ports that are open and note what number they are.

Here is where my knowledge is lacking for you. If there is a sharing of your soundcard, then you want to change the IRQ slot of whatever it is being shared with. I thought that you could do it through Control Panel>System>Device Manager>click on what you want to change and open it, then click on properties and then resources.

The thing is as I was looking at it there are some things that I had the option to change the IRQ port through the "Change Settings" button and other ones I couldn't. I thought there was a way to change any of them, but I can't remember how to do it.

Why don't you try this and see if there is even a conflict and if there is try to resolve it and get back to me. Hopefully I will have the other answers I was looking for by then.

Also, do you know if your HD is set up as the master and not the slave on it's hookup? Also, you may want to go into your video card and turn the accelleration back up to experiment. I recently read that with some video cards it actually will work better with the accelleration up depending on the card type. I thought I remembered you saying you had this problem before you turned it down. If you did then don't worry about trying it.
 
Wow, lots of good pointers there - I didn't even know my computer could do that..........

I checked the IRQ situation again. The Gadget Labs Wave Pro is sharing IRQ 5 with the "ACPI IRQ holder for PCI IRQ steering". I went into device manager and wasn't able to reassign the IRQ to the Wave Pro (as you mentioned), and I couldn't find the IRQ holder listed.

My IRQ's are listed 0-15 - should there be more I can use? IRQ 7 is solely used as a printer port, and I don't have a printer hooked up to that machine! Is there a way I can transfer it?

I have 0-7 DMA's also, 3 of which are free. Are these any good? The Wave Pro isn't listed on any of them...... Problem?

(kinda pulling on loose straws here.... sorry)

I change the graphics acceleration all the time, just to check, but to no avail.

As for my HD, I'm not sure if its the master or the slave. I do know how to check though (I looked at it when it went in). I've a funny feeling my brother (who I helped build the machine) set it as the slave. Is this the best thing for a single HD/ dual partition system?

Cheers for all the time your putting in Bass Master K,

Neil
 
See if you can switch your soundcard IRQ to the one that the printer port is taking and then go into your printer IRQ area and see if you can just reverse them. It might not even be necissary if there is not a printer plugged in. The main thing is just that the soundcard has it's own IRQ or at least is not being interrupted by something else sharing it's IRQ.

I am not sure about the DMA. I tried looking up info on that earlier and was not finding any useful info.

I believe that you would want your HD set to the master and have something like your CD drive set as the slave to it. Again, I'm not sure if that would cause audio clicks, but at a minimum since your taxing the HD so much by having one HD unit to read and write on it would give it top priority and make it's job easier. I am grasping at straws here as well. Basically what I have come up with is that this situation is most likely a clocking or a conflict issue...something that looks like it is happening inside the computer.

Another possible fix is to strip out cards and reinsert them one at a time testing things along the way but that is a big pain in the arse so let's see if we can't do this through the settings first. If we go to card stripping I can fill you in a bit more on what you probably want to do. I'm still looking up more info on the clocking side of things.

Let me know if your able to move the soundcards IRQ to the printer one, and if you are or aren't able to move the printer one.

Good luck!
 
I spoke to my younger brother (not the one who built the computer, he's at university) who is a bit of a whizz with computers (programmes in C++......... Means nothing to me) and he said that the Audio card had to share an IRQ with "ACPI IRQ holder for PCI IRQ steering" for it to be recognised by the motherboard. Apparantly this is the same for all PCI cards, which was right when I checked my network and graphics cards.

What I did notice when I was looking in my device manager is that my PCI system management bus didn't have a driver. So far with my computer I've not experianced any problems (except for this inane popping ofcourse). Anyway, I'm tracking down the drivers now, so can't hurt I guess.

I've still got to swap the slave and master roles around.

Get back to you when I've come across anything.

Cheers Bass Master K,

Neil
 
Hey Neil, I just looked at my net computer and I see the exact same thing regarding the PCI steering and this soundcard being on the same IRQ. Sorry to lead you on a goose chase there...I didn't realise what PCI steering was. I was hoping that was going to be it. Well, as I mentioned, the slave/master thing was brought up so lets hope that is what it is. If you saw it working right, this has to be solvable....
 
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