constant popping in recording

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Ivyy

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I have just begun recording music and sermons at my church. I have some experience with recording and mixing however nothing prepared me for this unique situation. From the monitors to the board it was a mess. Nearly everything now is as it should be. Except for this.

I am running the mixed audio signal split into stereo through a monitor line to the line-in on the integrated audio card on the mother board. (This same situation arose when we used a soundblaster pci card.) The processor is 1.5ghz 640 megs of ram running Win XP Pro SP1 and the program we use is Sound Forge 7.0. The problem I am experiencing is that there is a constant square shaped form on the wave line and is recurring @ 4 times per .0001 seconds. It is not audible at 16 bit which is what the sound card supports. But it is still shown in the recording.

My question is: Is this a normal occurrence? If not, what could be causing it?

Second: How do I remove the audible clicks that are produced from having been recorded at 32 bit? Noise reduction has not helped. Any good plug-ins?

I also have Adobe audition. Would that be a more suitable app. for this situation?

Any help would really be appreciated.

Sarah
 
First of all when you use integrated sound card, pop and click come free with it. When you start thinking of recording in a computer, first thing you do is to get a decent sound interface. Then your square wave, if it is not audibel dont worry about it, must be some mild noise generated by your soundcard, or could be dither if you enabled it. But you certainly need a good recording card.
 
What happened was that when I came into the picture about 3 months ago, we did have a soundblaster card. I cannot remember which one it was. But it went out about a month ago, so ae're using the integrated card until we can get another sound card.
 
Some programs have buffer settings for the sound card and you will have to use that for that integrated sound card..your best bet would be to just go out, buy a sound card that will do what you need it to and be done with it.
I would also be sure to go into the bios and disable the onboard sound as well. It should be under "integrated devices" in the bios. You may already know all this but just thought I'd say it just in case.

As far as your editing application, I'd stick with Audition for it's ease of use!
dlv
 
pop ,noises

I,have the same problems as he does what are the good sond cards to record music I just bougt a sond blaster and I get the same noises as before now some said it could be my burner please some one help me people make recordings every day and they are good why can't I
 
Ivyy said:
I have just begun recording music and sermons at my church. I have some experience with recording and mixing however nothing prepared me for this unique situation. From the monitors to the board it was a mess. Nearly everything now is as it should be. Except for this.

I am running the mixed audio signal split into stereo through a monitor line to the line-in on the integrated audio card on the mother board. (This same situation arose when we used a soundblaster pci card.) The processor is 1.5ghz 640 megs of ram running Win XP Pro SP1 and the program we use is Sound Forge 7.0. The problem I am experiencing is that there is a constant square shaped form on the wave line and is recurring @ 4 times per .0001 seconds. It is not audible at 16 bit which is what the sound card supports. But it is still shown in the recording.

My question is: Is this a normal occurrence? If not, what could be causing it?

Second: How do I remove the audible clicks that are produced from having been recorded at 32 bit? Noise reduction has not helped. Any good plug-ins?

I also have Adobe audition. Would that be a more suitable app. for this situation?

Any help would really be appreciated.

Sarah
Click to expand...


Can you do a print screen to make a jpg of the wave pic? Not sure if I have any clue, but if people can see what you're talking about it might make it easier to troubleshoot. I'd also think seeing square wav would be a buffer issue, although there's alot of unkowns like what kind of computer, how much running in the background, type of onboard audio, ect. Might be something that can be cured by a new driver... or a higher quality sound card. I suppose you could try downloading other freebie apps like crystal audio engine and see if the stuff shows up in other recording apps too along with whever you already got. You wanna try recording with other apps though not just play back, otherwise you'll probably be seing a similar wave...

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/index.php
 
Sound Blaster cards run natively at 4800Hz if you have your software set for a different frequency (ie 44.1kHz), the sound blaster is forced to do conversion on the fly. This could translate into undesirable artifacts in the recording. I don't know as far as the internal sound chips out there (other than most are plain junk that will pick up noise from the PCI bus), but with a sound blaster card you would wanna keep your frequency set to 4800 until you are ready to burn to CD (which needs to be 16 bit @ 44.1kHz).
I hope this helps

-Ken

...Edit to add... You should be able to zoom in on the wave form in Sound Forge and remove the clicks, would be very tedious but could be done.
 
After giving more thought to your problems with clicks, this can sometimes be a problem of disk throughput, specially if you only have one hard drive. A typical setup for audio recording would include a second drive for the audio data only, and having whatever software you use point to that drive for it's directory (ie drive D: with no folder in the way give it the whole drive or partition it and dedicate a whole partition to the audio). All software and your OS should be on drive C:. Using one drive causes interruptions to the audio stream any time any other application needs to read or write to the drive (stuff running in the background). Having a separate drive eliminates the data stream interruptions that would normally happen in a single drive setup. Laptop users could invest in a external FireWire drive for this purpose. Also note that you want to make sure you have DMA enabled for your drives.
http://img32.photobucket.com/albums/v95/crankz1/UDMA.jpg
Also defragment your drives at least once a week .... You'd be surprised at how fragmented a drive will get when working with audio (multiple takes .... sounds bad ... delete it .... try that again) get the idea?
Don't forget the 4800Hz Sound Blaster issue also.

Hope this all helps

-Ken
 
Thank you all so much for your help. It is very much appreciated. I will check out everything. I looked at the buffer level and it is more than sufficient. Here is a screen shot of the square wave form in all my recordings. The only apps that are left running during recording are necessary apps like the recording program. Everything else is closed/disabled - even the virus software. The audio card is an Avance AC'97 audio card. I know it's junk. But until we can get a new soundblaster card we're stuck with it. The squares do show up when recorded with Audition and with Sound Forge 7. Tonight I will be checking to see if I have a separate hard drive to devote to the audio being recorded. At this time the apps and the audio all go to the same drive. Thanks, Ken, for providing that screenshot to enable DMA. And yes it is enabled. I am downloading Crystal Audio Engine and will test that out this weekend.

In the meantime, any suggestions for a plugin or app that will remove these clicks from the incorrectly recorded files? The popping is so subtle, that the utilities in audition won't pick them up. They are low volume, but consistent.

Thanks again,
Sarah
 
Also check the IRQ settings in use on the computer, it may not be conflicting however a different setting may help solve this problem

-david-
 
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