Weird crackle sound. Cubase + m-audio fast track

[ivebeentired]

Hello, I recently purchased an m-audio fast track ultra 8r. Everything seems to be fine except for one big problem. When I record any amount of tracks there will be a mysterious cracking/popping sound. It sounds like I hit a mic with a drum stick almost, or I turned on phantom power. It will be on all tracks at the same time so I'm pretty sure it's an issue with my computer. It will happen in under a minute and keeps happening every 30 or seconds or so. I can see when the noise is happening on the wave, but it wont make the meter move. I unplugged all mics and recorded silence and it still happened and still doesnt move the meter, but you can clearly see and hear it. I've messed around with the device setup a bunch and nothing has gotten rid of it. I'm using a dell laptop with up to 4 gb of ram. I've done my best to turn off any unnecessary applications. Don't know what else to try, if anyone has any advice it would be appreciated soooooo much! thanks!

 

[ranjam]

Quick guess? Clipping. But if it happens on recorded silence, what else can you try? Mess with the latency setting. What have you got to lose? Another thought; even with no mic input, where is the volume control on the M-Audio? If it is up, you could be passing noise thinking you were sending silence to the laptop. Is the laptop internal soundcard shut off?

 

[CoolCat]

i been reading up on some of this computer terminology-

clicks and pops....here's one idea?


it said if you lower the buffer size too small, the pc has to work faster and pops and clicks can be heard....if you increase it too much, you get delays/hi latency etc..etc..

setup your pc to works for ..er...your pc...

i notice some are default at 512 some are 1024 that I've come across.
i'm learning myself so thats all i can say...but noticed it said clicks and popping can occur


another one is having other stuff plugged into the USB bus, "clicks and pops' can be heard if the CPU is "polling them", sharing the bus...most recommend all other USB devices be unplugged and the internet unplugged when recording because Audio like this is very taxing on the CPU & RAM..