Popping noise in protools.

[raximus]

Hey everyone, i have protools 8, new intel iMac and a digi 003R+ which is daisy chained off a Maxtor One Touch 4 Plus (MAC>DRIVE>DIGI).

I am getting horrible popping noises when playing back in protools. I have about 14 tracks running with 2 - 4 plugins on each.

After all this popping pro tools "unexpectedly closed" and i had the option of relaunching it.

I know all about raising latency during mixing etc so i've done that. I also have the ignore errors that may cause pops and clicks checked but its still doing it.

Any ideas?

[MessianicDreams]

Yes.

Pull the buffer size down as low as you can until PT starts telling you to put it up, and unclick that "ignore errors" check box.

What the checkbox says is it tells PT to ignore any errors that may cause pops and clicks - so instead of stopping playback and telling you what the problem is, it keeps playing back and giving you pops and clicks!

[bradch00]

I have been running my iMac implementation with a projectMix I/O for a couple of years (on two different iMacs, one new alluminum, one late 2007 intel) with the projectMix I/O connected to the FW800 port using a 6 to 9 pin FW cable and the Maxtor One Touch connect to the FW400 port on the iMac from the FW400 port on the One Touch. Reason for this configuration was popping, clicking and general mayhem when I first converted from a PPC iMac, that had only 2 FW400 ports.

Just a thought.

[raximus]

So what should i do then? Is it the drive?

[bradch00]

Which port have you daisy chained into on the iMac? (FW800 or FW400)?

The iMac shares the FW bus internally between the FW800 and FW400 port. This created a lot of grief for me (popping, cracking and eventually PT shutting down).

[amizel]

So if that is the case the FW 800 is bottlenecked down to FW 400 speed and a basic solution is to get a FW card for the pci slot so it's on it's own bus.

[bradch00]

So if that is the case the FW 800 is bottlenecked down to FW 400 speed and a basic solution is to get a FW card for the pci slot so it's on it's own bus.

Yes that would be a good solution on a Mac Book Pro, however there is no pci slot on an iMac.

What could be tried (if not done already) is to daisy chain the the 003 through the drive BUT into the FW400 port on the iMac.

[raximus]

The new imac only has firewire 800. My drive only has 400. I have to use a converter cable. So its Imac FW800 > Converter cable > Fw400 Drive > Digi 003R+

Is there a chance that its ram? I have 2GB

[bradch00]

Probably not the memory, have you tried chaining through the FW800 interface of the drive, in other words;
iMac >FW800 >FW800 Interface on the MAXTOR > FW400 Interface > 003?

I am suggesting that configuration because of this thread at DUC;
http://duc.digidesign.com/showthread.php?p=1407491

[raximus]

The firewire drive only has 400. I checked on the compatibility website and it said that this is doable, therefore I went and bought the double FW400 drive because its all my local store had (I'm in New Zealand)