Could someone kindly refresh my memory . . .

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chessrock

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I know this has probably been covered at least a couple billion times . . . but what is it again that causes the "crackles" and "pops" that some of us get from time to time when recording audio on to our computers.

I've been noticing an ever-increasing amount of it as of late. If you zoom in on the wave, you notice these little "spikes" sticking out of them. Like a thorn sticking out of an otherwise nice, smooth wave. Like it's got a sore. Poor thing. :( I've noticed I can fix the waves pretty easily with the pencil in sound forge, but it gets tiring after a while.

Anyway, could anyone remind what it is that causes this phenomenon? Any quick fixes I could look at before calling my good buddies over at M-audio technical support (they love me over there)? Again I apologize for asking a question that's been to the ground.

Thanks!
 
Well here's a couple: Input level too hot= clipping, buffer setting too low, some graphic cards- try turning the graphic accellerator down. Just a few to get you started.
 
One important source is whan the buffer for the soundcard driver gets read from before it fills up, creating discontinuties in the data that manifest as sudden unnatural changes from one level to another.
 
too much stuff going on in the background, or conflicts with the ol via chipset and sblive...they hate each other...
 
you need to adjust your memory per channel and the buffers, and be sure the asio driver is on if your using a asio program. what soundcard do you have? a quick fix is to get the steinberg de-clicker it works perfect, i've had a few pops here and there before, steinberg de-clicker is simple and it works.
 
It has been alleged that the VIA KT-133a chipset has a particularly hateful relationship with certain sound cards.

Last week I put together a machine based on this very chipset. It has been designated for game playing only, I have not done any recording on it nor are likely to do so. But I did find out that another alleged defect, namely VERY slow IDE access with a particular Southbridge chip, is in fact true. This particular Athlon 1.4 is fine when actually playing games, but any sort of disk access is horribly, horribly slow.
 
Sometimes onboard USB can cause snap, crackles and pops as well.
 
If it's a new problem and getting worse, defrag your hard drive.

Twist
 
twist said:
If it's a new problem and getting worse, defrag your hard drive.

Twist
Click to expand...
and use Diskkeeper 7 its the besk wat to defrag. with the regualr windows defrag it doesn't do a very good job with diskkeeper you won't ahve any fragments
 
Wow. Thanks everyone. Some good info. there. Great links, Tom. Thanks a whole lot. Wish I was more computer literate, but I suppose I can stumble around and try to figure this stuff out.

I'm using a Delta 1010LT with an AMD Athlon XP (1.47 ghz). Using Windows XP.

Can I just download Disk-keeper 7 off the Net? I have noticed that defragging seems to help the problem immensely, but only for a few hours and then the problem comes back.

Anyone got any 2-minute tutorials on how to adjust my buffer settings? Is that something I would do from the Control Panel (Windows) or is it a software thing (Cool Edit, Sound Forge)? I though buffers were those things you see at the car wash. :)
 
Alright, scratch that. I went to CoolEdit's settings, and here's how it reads:

*Play/Record buffer: total buffer size = 4 secongs using 8 buffers.

*Playback buffer size: 1 seconds.

*Playback buffers: 10

*Recording buffer size: 2 seconds

*Recording buffers: 10

Would changing any of these values help things do you think?
 
I don't have Cool Edit Pro. I run Cubase and sound forge. You should have some kind of test in your sequencer that will determine the proper buffer settings. Also, I have an Audiophile 24/96 and I did call Delta M Audio support once and they were very helpfull
 
Hi Chess,

Have you downloaded any new drivers from
M-audio lately? Is there anything else that
has changed in your system? I find that
increasing buffer size while recording has
helped my system.

Good Luck!

Mike
 
Thanks. I'm just curious to know what I should increase my buffer sizes to.

Do I increase them all by 10, 20, 100? These numbers really mean nothing to me. :) For all I know, buffers are a manufacturer of Aspirin that is specially coated not to upset your stomach.

Any specific numbers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hey Sonny! I did optimize Windows for "best performance for background" from "best performance for programs." This kind of seemed like a backwards thing to do, but that's what I read in one of the links Tom Hicks provided.
 
I read that article as well, which makes me wonder if Win2k Adv. Server would be better suited for audio work than Win2k (cost issue aside). I'm not sure if the server variant offers more performance options for background operations other than 'background' or 'programs' like Win2k Pro, but it seems like it should.
 
Chessrock, you don't want the buffers any bigger than they have to be, this just creates more latency, normally. you've got to have a buffer sync test for your settings or at least a drop down menu. If so, start out slow, work your way up till you have no problem. Also, try upping your buffer on the m-audio control panel. Your probably just one click away....like always.
 
Hey, thanks, Joedirt.

I just upped my DMA buffer on my M-audio controll panel from 384 to 512. I will see how this works out.

Thanks to all for taking your time to help me out. I will do my best to return the favor if/when I can!

- Chess
 
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