My firedpod is being ridiculous.. help?

S

Strave

New member
So every channel crackles a bit when sung into at loud volumes. (It's not clipping... it's a subtle like background crackle)

It's not the mic because I tried two.

It's not the preamps because there are 8 and it happens on every one and the brick does it as well.

it probably isn't the converters for the same reason ( I don't know much about converters though)

It's not the cables because I tried 3 of each type.

Mic -> cable -> preamp -> converters... the whole chain is covered so what could it be... and why would it only crackle when the vocals are loud? (again, it's not clipping)

Do you think it needs to be repaired?

Thanks for your help.
 
I am not clear on why you are sure it's not clipping. Are you using some kind of digital metering? Check your record levels as well as your input meters while you are recording. Is the crackle being recorded? What do you mean it's happening on all channels? Is it one mic making all the channels crackle simultaneously?
 
jake-owa said:
I am not clear on why you are sure it's not clipping. Are you using some kind of digital metering? Check your record levels as well as your input meters while you are recording. Is the crackle being recorded? What do you mean it's happening on all channels? Is it one mic making all the channels crackle simultaneously?
Click to expand...

Hey... the firepod has clipping LEDS... and I am using it at a pretty low gain...additionally the waveform doesn't even come close to a normalized level. I've used the firepod on a couple projects now and this just recently happened. it's definately some kind of problem.

What I mean by it happens on all channels is if I move the mic to any of the other preamps/switch mics/cables... any combination of anything will produce the sound. In addition... sending the brick through the line ins also does it.
 
it could be your comp cause mine was doing the exact same thing causei was using it with a acouple big plugins and a vst instuments. so i thought it was a computer problem and put another 512 mb of memory in my comp and the problem went away : )
 
logan said:
it could be your comp cause mine was doing the exact same thing causei was using it with a acouple big plugins and a vst instuments. so i thought it was a computer problem and put another 512 mb of memory in my comp and the problem went away : )
Click to expand...

I was thinking it's a possibility... the only thing that negates it is that it doesn't happen when the source is quiet... so it's not a constant degradation of sound.
 
Even though no one really cared... I figured it out.

Even though I was able to record at 6 ms latency for a while, I guess my computer hit a point where it couldn't anymore, so I had to move it up to 10. 10 ms got rid of it. Anyways, if you have the same problem, play with latency.
 
The firepod is very easy to use.
You should also play around with the CPU options as well. read up on the documentation to get a good idea of what you should set it to.
PM me if you have any firepod specific questions... i have used this thing for a while and know a good bit about it.
 
Yeah, I've been using the firepod for quite a while as well... but I never would have suspected that a latency which worked perfectly fine for 6 months would all of the sudden stop working. Anyways, thanks for your help.
 
Latency will be directly affected by however many real-time FX/plugins you have running while using it. The crackle and clipping is your CPU not being able to handle the workload.
Also, using any other PCI devices that hog CPU Hardware interrupt time is a no-no.
 
I don't want to start an argument because this is not worth it, but latency has nothing to do with the amount of real time plug ins you run. I was recording one vocal track when the clicking and popping started happening. Two weeks previously I had recorded a number of 25-35 track songs with AT LEAST 15-20 bins full of lexicon reverb, equalization, and compression, not to mention additional effects. No problems then. I agree that somehow my CPU is hauling more now, but it has nothing to do with effects.

Let me reitterate what happened. I was recording huge track sessions with many effects with no problem at 6 ms latency. No hardware changes were made. Almost no software changes were made. All of the sudden, I have to use 10 ms latency minimum with one vocal track. I have a really fast computer. I doubt this can be explained, so you don't need to try. The solution was increasing the latency and doing so stopped the problem so we're good.

Thanks for your help though.
 
mine did the same thing when i first got it. but then i switched the setting in the firepod's control panel from high to med, & it totally cleared that up.
 
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