condenser crackles

[stupidfatnugly]

I notice sometimes my babybottle crackles or pops when loud stuff is recorded. It doesn't clip the meter just crackles.

especially when trying to double a vocal do I notice this. wtf is that all about?

 

[dgatwood]

If you're using an interface with outboard pres (or some mixers with built-in interfaces), then chances are, you have a gain staging problem, and you're clipping your preamp without clipping your converters.

Failing that, you may be overdriving the FET in the mic or you may be hitting the capsule so hard that the diaphragm smacks against the backplate. What sorts of SPL levels are we talking about here?

 

[Shadow_7]

If there is a pad switch, you might turn it on? It helps it deal with higher SPL levels. Although I don't know why vocals would be over driving it, unless you've got the mic 1" from the vocal cords.

Another possibility is that you're not using a pop filter and you're creating unintentional wind noise on the mic.

I've got a bit of a crackle in my system, but it's almost certainly 99.9% sure to be my HP4 headphone preamp. If the gain feeding or exiting it is too hot it makes it sound like my cheap PC speakers are blown. And while they may be, they don't normally exhibit that trait. Oddly I never seem to have that same issue on my studio monitors. Even on those dreaded BX8's (pre BX8a's).

 

[stupidfatnugly]

the baby bottle has 133db SPL rating.

and I do have a pop filter but I try to sing as close as possible to pick up less room noise cuz my room is small.

I just have the mbox2. No seperate pre.

Am I ruining the mic? I think I just don't like this much sensitivity in a mic.
it picks up everything!

 

[snellular5]

the baby bottle has 133db SPL rating.

and I do have a pop filter but I try to sing as close as possible to pick up less room noise cuz my room is small.

I just have the mbox2. No seperate pre.

Am I ruining the mic? I think I just don't like this much sensitivity in a mic.
it picks up everything!

Ill have it

But try standing back a bit and see if that helps.

 

[Shadow_7]

I just have the mbox2. No seperate pre.

Am I correct in assuming this is a USB device? And it sounds like you're multitracking with it. That can cause crackles due to bus bandwidth and realtime priority settings / abilities. Minimize the number of tracks in question. Disconnect from any networks, close all apps except the audio one, to include right click, then exit on most of those icons in the corner, turn off auto updates, yada yada yada. (assuming PC / windows). And see if that helps. I used to get little clicks before I enabled realtime priority in linux. Which was most evident when using the network at the same time that I was recording.

Some other things that might influence the sound is having a relatively unshielded cable draped across a CRT or LCD display. To include the cable between the external device and the computer.

Although given that it's dependent on the SPL of the content, it might be the mic. Aided in part by proximity. If the room is an issue, you might try recording your vocals from inside your car. Or a decent closet with a plethora of soft and sound dampening contents. And various other ways to have a treated room on the cheap.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

I did just try to record a bass line from my keyboard while my Mogami instrument cable went across the keyboard of my laptop and it sounded really crackly. Is that what you're talking about?

It is a USB device and I'm having this problem independent of the mic now. so it's something else.

 

[Shadow_7]

Mogami's are normally beefy on the shielding side. At least the quad core version is supposed to be relatively immune to that noise. But yeah, that's along the lines of an issue that can cause that result. Just like you don't want to keep your hard drives on / next to the powerful magnet in your speakers (Or CRT television). You also don't want your cables to run that way either, they will be influenced by it. Along with other things that can contribute like if you live next to a broadcast tower, cell tower, first responder, .........

For me, I had a little electret mic that I had planned on just clipping to my LCD of my laptop and record rehearsals that way. But the cable draped across the LCD at a point where the counter / clock in ardour does it's thing and the changes in video in proximity to the mic cable created little clicks of varying strength depending on how many digits on the clock changed. Just like how the strings on a piano with the peddle depressed will sympathetically vibrate with a given sound, electronics seem to exhibit similar behaviors. Shielding and distance are how you handle it most of the time. But you don't have control over some of that when it's inside your interface (or mic). But you do have some control over distance between devices and cable runs. Most of the time anyway.

 

[dgatwood]

I did just try to record a bass line from my keyboard while my Mogami instrument cable went across the keyboard of my laptop and it sounded really crackly. Is that what you're talking about?

It is a USB device and I'm having this problem independent of the mic now. so it's something else.

Sounds like the infamous USB pops and crackles problem. If you're lucky, it might be a problem specific to just one USB controller (your system may have more than one), in which case changing to use the other USB port might help.

Failing that, unfortunately, USB crackles are often difficult to track down and correct. Try going to the manufacturer's site and look for newer drivers. If that doesn't help or if there are no newer drivers, the next thing to do is check for anything sharing an IRQ with the interface. Disable unused crap in the BIOS (e.g. that serial or parallel port that you haven't ever used and never will) to free up IRQs and see if you can resolve the conflict that way. If you don't see IRQ conflicts, this could be something more complex like too high a PCI bus latency timer setting, a crappy graphics card driver that holds interrupts off for too long, etc.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

how far do I need to keep my hard drive away from my monitors? does it matter even if the monitors are off? (I just use headphones for tracking.)

I usually put my mbox2 on top of my hard drive. bad?

should I just get longer USB cables and spread everything out further?

 

[dgatwood]

how far do I need to keep my hard drive away from my monitors? does it matter even if the monitors are off? (I just use headphones for tracking.)

I usually put my mbox2 on top of my hard drive. bad?

should I just get longer USB cables and spread everything out further?

None of those things should matter significantly. They certainly shouldn't produce pops. Chirps, maybe, if the hardware is poorly shielded, but not pops. I think it is highly unlikely that what you are hearing is interference.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

. I think it is highly unlikely that what you are hearing is interference.

maybe I blew my headphones speakers then.

should I reformat my computer?

I'm still covered under warranty for the mic, should I send it in, even if I'm not sure that's the problem? I just tried to record drums with it recently, maybe I screwed it up then.

 

[dgatwood]

I suppose it is remotely possible that your headphones are bad, but I would be surprised. To find out for sure, when you hear a glitch, try backing up a few seconds and play it again at a lower volume. If you hear the same glitch, then the pop is part of the recording. If you don't, then the problem is occurring during playback (and might be the headphones, but I still would be surprised).

The problem is definitely not your mic. It can't be the mic if you get the same symptoms when using a cable to a keyboard. I'm about 99% sure that the problem is a compatibility problem between the interface and your computer.

To fix the problem, try the following in order until something works:

1. Try hooking your audio interface up to a different USB port.
2. Try turning off wireless networking while you record.
3. Try unplugging all other USB devices to see if they are causing the problem. Oh, and do not even think about recording to a USB hard drive.
4. Go into BIOS (usually you hold down a key immediately after turning the machine on) and disable every port that you don't use regularly.
5. Read this:

http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgrading/change-irq-settings.htm

and follow the steps described to adjust your computer's configuration so that your USB controller does not share an IRQ with anything.
6. If it won't let you change IRQ settings, see if it is possible to change the IRQ mapping in BIOS.
7. If not, read this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299340/en-us

and reinstall Windows with ACPI disabled, then repeat step 5. Note that this solution is something of a last resort and may decrease how long you can run your laptop on battery.

Did I leave anything out?

 

[stupidfatnugly]

Oh, and do not even think about recording to a USB hard drive.

I have a Storcase Rhino USB hard drive that I bought at Guitarcenter for like $250. What is wrong with it?

why not even think about it?

thanks dgatwood for all your time

 

[Shadow_7]

I have a Storcase Rhino USB hard drive that I bought at Guitarcenter for like $250. What is wrong with it?

why not even think about it?

thanks dgatwood for all your time

Using two interfaces on the same bus maxes out the bus and leads to issues for things that require realtime priority. Like recording audio. That and some devices just don't like sharing. More of an issue with USB since it's a relatively slow bus. But also problematic with firewire. Not so much with IDE, SATA, but it can slow things down a bit. Like copying files across partitions on the same drive, versus two different drives on separate IDE channels.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

so they're obviously plugged in to different USB ports But, you're saying if I have one thing(either the interface or the hard drive) using USB; I should have the other thing, not using USB?

Can I convert the hard drive or interface I have now or do I have to buy new?

 

[Shadow_7]

The way that I normally work it, is that I use the USB drives as archives / backups. And try to keep my harddrive that came with the computer free of clutter. The one inside the box is normally faster anyway. Factor in the extra power draw from a USB device and less is more.

 

[dgatwood]

That's a good way to do things. USB hard drives are fine for backups, but the CPU overhead is pretty significant, making them poor choices for recording or other real-time tasks where keeping the CPU too busy can mean the difference between things working ant not working.

 

[stupidfatnugly]

well, before I got the external hard drive protools wouldn't work at all.

my external hard drive does have firewire ports aswell - I just checked - but I don't know if my laptop does. my laptop has 6 USB ports; a mini 1394(this should be it right?); one with a phone symbol next to it and another one that looks kind of like the phone port but it has a symbol that looks kind of like this:

[]
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I also have a graphics port; one similar to the graphics port; a round port and an SD/MMC. Are any of these firewire? Would I be good if my interface went to a USB port and my external hard drive went through firewire 800?

 

[Shadow_7]

The 1394 should be the firewire port. The big phone looking one is ethernet / networking. Using it over firewire should be better, but if it's a slow system to start with, you might not be any better off. Probably not an issue on 2GHz boxes and better, but if you're near 800MHz, possibly problematic. But part of it depends on what's enabled / disabled on the system. Windows enables pretty much everything by default. Which is problematic by itself.