Crackling sound in studio monitors

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brendanmcd22

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I have been experiencing a problem with a crackling sound coming from my monitors during playback in Logic or when I listen to music on itunes/youtube/etc.

Here is my setup:

Soundcraft M8 Analog mixer->Presonus Firestudio->Macbook Pro 13" 2.26GHz processor->Krk Rokit 6 powered monitors. Everything except the computer is plugged into a Furman m-8x2 power conditioner. The power conditioner is plugged into the wall. I have 2 Rapco balanced cables going from the main outs on the Firestudio to the balanced trs jacks on the monitors. The monitors are sitting on styrofoam cutouts (my ghetto version of mopads I guess lol). I always turn the power conditioner on first, then the monitors. I bought everything new this summer but just set it up a couple weeks ago except for my Firestudio (got it almost 2 years ago but haven't used it a ton).

I have tried everything I can think of to eliminate the noise....using different outputs on the Firestudio, removing the styrofoam, trying new cables, plugging the monitors into a different power source, plugging the power conditioner into different outlets and nothing seems to eliminate this crackling noise. When I power everything up and put music on, it sounds fine for about 10 minutes, then the crackling comes in. If I turn the system off and restart everything then essentially the same thing happens again. What is interesting is that I was using my friend's Bx8a monitors to mix a project last year and had this similar problem, although not as bad as now. I was still using the same Firestudio then. He still has the monitors and they work fine, never had any problems going through his mixer. That would lead me to believe that something is wrong with the outputs on the Firestudio, but it would be quite strange for all 8 inputs to work flawlessly and all 10 outputs to be problematic.

Anybody out there have any idea what the problem may be?
 
I think I would wouls first suspect something with the firewire connection.
If you can put a cd player or another source into your mixer and playback system and it work fine that either the digital connection is problematic or ther is something electrical component wise funky in the interface.

Since it seems to effect all outlets I would first suspect the digital connection.
It could be as simple as a timing / clocking issue or an actual flaw in the firewire chips and setup in your computer.
Do you have another computer you can hook it up to and playback a CD from the cd /ROM?

Generally those types of sounds are where the data stream gets broken from clocking errors or data transfer errors.
Your computer program may be setup as playing 44.1 saple rate and the firestudio as 48K or something.
I am not familiar enough with your unit to know where the different clocking info is set up.
 
Yeah...look to your digital signal not the monitors for the cause.
 
I had a problem like this, but it was more of a static sound in the monitors. I fixed it by plugging my laptop into one of those three prong to two prong adapters with no ground prong. Might try it.

Trump
 
Thanks for the input. I did notice the sample rate on the Firestudio was at 48kHz while the computer was at 44.1. I changed that so they matched and the static/crackling sound was still there. I'll have to try the adapter trick. I'm also going to try going through a different audio interface and see if that changes anything.
 
I had a similar problem, but it turned out not to be my monitors and to be my Fast Track Pro,. Later on I got a slightly different problem, and it was my amp I was using to power the monitors. Jeeze, maybe my monitors are just killing my interfaces, aren't they? <_<
 
Ok so I changed the sample rate of both the Firestudio and computer to 96KHz and I haven't had any problems for an hour now...strange. There is an occasional pop or crackle during playback but it is isolated and not abnormal.
 
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