Crackling-distortion problem when recording, Alesis Multimix 8 USB 2.0

alekos

New member
Hello, I have an Alesis Multimix 8 USB 2.0 and I get a very annoying crackling while recording, specially when recording my grand piano.

I am pretty sure is not a latency problem, since DPC latency checker gives a good signal, about 130 microseconds at most, never peaking even on the yellow zone.

I have also changed the buffer but this does not change the problem a bit.

I have tried disabling the soundcard in the motherboard from the BIOS, with no luck.

My PC is under windows XP SP3, with 3GB of RAM and an intel dual core with 2.0 GHZ. I have also installed a Vista Windows in another partition experiencing the same problem (just a curiosity, on Vista, the latency was doubled!). I have also tried a clean reinstall with Windows XP but the problem persists.

My mics are SE2200A, powered with 48V phantom. I have checked the wires and cross checked both micros, always obtaining the same problem.

Also tried disabling ethernet cards and wifi's from the device manager, as well as optimizing settings for performance in control panel but with no luck.

I have no peaking or clip signal in the mixer leds. Everything seems fine, but still when I record the grand piano, I obtain a recurrent distorted sound.

I use Cubase 5 with latest ASIO drivers. Cubase does not show ASIO or DISK high performance in VST performance, so I guess the PC is not stressed at all. I obtain this noise even when recording a single track, no matter if 16 or 24 bits or whatever the sample rate.

Playing with the mixer, I have noticed that I am able to get exactly this noise in an isolated way if I turn the MAIN MIX control to its maximum and HDPH/CTRL RM to zero. With this setting, headphones on and MIX TO CTRL ROOM on, I play the piano and only hear this noise. At this scenario, the leds do not clip. Then, if I give some nonzero level to HDPH/CTRL RM I start to listen the piano on the headphones still with the noise. I go to lower levels on MAIN MIX and of course the noise is not so high, but even with a minimum MAIN MIX the distortion is noticed in the recording. This procedure was only to isolate the pure noise with no music, just to help identifying it.

Another weird thing is that the output from MAIN MIX OUT seems clean. The dirt comes from the PHONES channel (headphones are checked to be working properly). And, of course, the distortion becomes recorded in Cubase.

I will appreciate any help!

Do you think my Mixer is broken? Maybe I am doing something wrong with the levels? I don't know. I am not an expert, just a piano player
 
I have the same problem!

Hello, I have an Alesis Multimix 8 USB 2.0 and I get a very annoying crackling while recording, specially when recording my grand piano.

I am pretty sure is not a latency problem, since DPC latency checker gives a good signal, about 130 microseconds at most, never peaking even on the yellow zone.

I have also changed the buffer but this does not change the problem a bit.

I have tried disabling the soundcard in the motherboard from the BIOS, with no luck.

My PC is under windows XP SP3, with 3GB of RAM and an intel dual core with 2.0 GHZ. I have also installed a Vista Windows in another partition experiencing the same problem (just a curiosity, on Vista, the latency was doubled!). I have also tried a clean reinstall with Windows XP but the problem persists.

My mics are SE2200A, powered with 48V phantom. I have checked the wires and cross checked both micros, always obtaining the same problem.

Also tried disabling ethernet cards and wifi's from the device manager, as well as optimizing settings for performance in control panel but with no luck.

I have no peaking or clip signal in the mixer leds. Everything seems fine, but still when I record the grand piano, I obtain a recurrent distorted sound.

I use Cubase 5 with latest ASIO drivers. Cubase does not show ASIO or DISK high performance in VST performance, so I guess the PC is not stressed at all. I obtain this noise even when recording a single track, no matter if 16 or 24 bits or whatever the sample rate.

Playing with the mixer, I have noticed that I am able to get exactly this noise in an isolated way if I turn the MAIN MIX control to its maximum and HDPH/CTRL RM to zero. With this setting, headphones on and MIX TO CTRL ROOM on, I play the piano and only hear this noise. At this scenario, the leds do not clip. Then, if I give some nonzero level to HDPH/CTRL RM I start to listen the piano on the headphones still with the noise. I go to lower levels on MAIN MIX and of course the noise is not so high, but even with a minimum MAIN MIX the distortion is noticed in the recording. This procedure was only to isolate the pure noise with no music, just to help identifying it.

Another weird thing is that the output from MAIN MIX OUT seems clean. The dirt comes from the PHONES channel (headphones are checked to be working properly). And, of course, the distortion becomes recorded in Cubase.

I will appreciate any help!

Do you think my Mixer is broken? Maybe I am doing something wrong with the levels? I don't know. I am not an expert, just a piano player

I also have the same problem! :(

I have an Alesis Multimix 8 USB 2.0, runnig in a Macbook pro 16GB RAM, SSD, i7, using Ableton 9.6.2 and it takes 2 minutes after playing and the sounds starts cracking and popping. The latency increases to a second and after reseting the mixer and the laptop it starts well but few seconds later the annoying sound starts again.

I also tried formatting and reinstalling the OS but it was unsuccessful. The CPU of my laptop is running using only 3%.

I've notice there are lots of other audio interfaces of differents brands advertising powerful DAC's in which seems to be that the Alesis is just unable to deliver what it promises.

Does anyone has Alesis Multimix USB 8 that works?
 
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