Bass Master "K"
New member
And just to double check, you said that you've turned up the buffering in Cubase, does your specific soundcard have a buffering area in it's control screen that you can turn up, and if so have you tried that?
H
hottrocker
New member
Popping sucks!
For starters DMA choice is heirarchal. SO you would want the DMA set to 1. It starts with 1 by priority and works up. So the lower the number the better.
The problem with Win98 is that it wasnt really ready to do PCI. It has a half baked PCI steering method that may give you clicks and pops. Point in fact the Soundblaster that was in the same case with all the same hardware under 98 became pop free under XP. The reason is that PCI steering was greatly improved in the later version of XP. But that is not the only way to fix the problem. When a sound card pops most people dont blame the OS they blame the card maker or the mother board maker. In this case I would look into who made your mother board and get the latest patches.
Being that pops can occur for many reasons this would only be a step in the troubleshooting process. None the less a great thing to do. Some pops are the result of voltage building up on the connector just like a capacitor. It loads up on voltage and hits a flood threshold and then lets the voltage slip. Many things can cause this but primarily it is from the buildup of dirt and oil on the connectors. This sounds like your problem because the situation occurs during track loading to the drive. otherwise it would not end up as part of the wav. So it has to be happening during insertion.
The other thing that worries me is the drive being partitioned. I would strongly suggest that you have not one but two drives. One dedicated to just track loading. This will result in the waves being in one contiguous file. Not all broken up and scattered across your drive. The act of having to write to many locations on the drive might cause a pop. But your getting lots of pops so I think it is a connector problem. Try seating the board in a different pci slot too. That cant hurt. But to clean the boards female ports you will need to remove the card from the case and use tuner cleaner, otherwise known as contact cleaner. You can get this at radio shack. Spray it out and let it dry. Wipe the connector blade with that or isopropyl alcohol.
I would suggest moving to XP as well. It took care of my pops , although mine happened at playback.
For starters DMA choice is heirarchal. SO you would want the DMA set to 1. It starts with 1 by priority and works up. So the lower the number the better.
The problem with Win98 is that it wasnt really ready to do PCI. It has a half baked PCI steering method that may give you clicks and pops. Point in fact the Soundblaster that was in the same case with all the same hardware under 98 became pop free under XP. The reason is that PCI steering was greatly improved in the later version of XP. But that is not the only way to fix the problem. When a sound card pops most people dont blame the OS they blame the card maker or the mother board maker. In this case I would look into who made your mother board and get the latest patches.
Being that pops can occur for many reasons this would only be a step in the troubleshooting process. None the less a great thing to do. Some pops are the result of voltage building up on the connector just like a capacitor. It loads up on voltage and hits a flood threshold and then lets the voltage slip. Many things can cause this but primarily it is from the buildup of dirt and oil on the connectors. This sounds like your problem because the situation occurs during track loading to the drive. otherwise it would not end up as part of the wav. So it has to be happening during insertion.
The other thing that worries me is the drive being partitioned. I would strongly suggest that you have not one but two drives. One dedicated to just track loading. This will result in the waves being in one contiguous file. Not all broken up and scattered across your drive. The act of having to write to many locations on the drive might cause a pop. But your getting lots of pops so I think it is a connector problem. Try seating the board in a different pci slot too. That cant hurt. But to clean the boards female ports you will need to remove the card from the case and use tuner cleaner, otherwise known as contact cleaner. You can get this at radio shack. Spray it out and let it dry. Wipe the connector blade with that or isopropyl alcohol.
I would suggest moving to XP as well. It took care of my pops , although mine happened at playback.
Bass Master "K"
New member
Good suggestions to add to the pile hottrocker.
My next suggestion for Neil is going to be to pull all the cards but the video card, and move the soundcard to a middle slot and boot up from there and see if that solved the problems, then add cards and test after each one which is a pain in the ass. I thought that the single HD could be a problem, but wasn't sure if it would actually add the click to the waveform and I am having a hard time tracking that answer down. But I have heard the the slave/master relationship of devices can screw the clocking which will add the click to the waveform.
I read about the motherboard driver update at a different site. There were different opinions about it's usefullness on motheboards from the last few years, but at this point anything is worth a shot. Neil has been here a long time and is a good contributor to this community. Let's hope we can get this solved.
My next suggestion for Neil is going to be to pull all the cards but the video card, and move the soundcard to a middle slot and boot up from there and see if that solved the problems, then add cards and test after each one which is a pain in the ass. I thought that the single HD could be a problem, but wasn't sure if it would actually add the click to the waveform and I am having a hard time tracking that answer down. But I have heard the the slave/master relationship of devices can screw the clocking which will add the click to the waveform.
I read about the motherboard driver update at a different site. There were different opinions about it's usefullness on motheboards from the last few years, but at this point anything is worth a shot. Neil has been here a long time and is a good contributor to this community. Let's hope we can get this solved.
Alejo
New member
My God... It´s full of pops!
Hello again,
I came back from the store with my brand new 80 GB HD, 7200 rpm´s, to try to avoid clicks and pops that were driving me nuts.
Well, it seems that they are more obvious on the new HD. I have even freezes of 3 seconds. Cubase is still installed on the old HD, but I copy all my songs (one and a half, to be honest) to the new HD. What it came from that was pretty dissapointing.
I came back to the old HD and I monitored some clicks and pops, but not sudden stops and collapses, like on the new one.
I checked sample rate in the sound card (512), buffer size in SX (from 128 to 256, none was valid), buffer number (all I found there), conflict between devices (as I readed from this thread before), low latency unchecked on SX, and the oil level on my VW Polo. Nothing, rien, nada, niente, nichts.
I connected the new HD as master, using a UDMA 66 MB/s cable in the first one of my two IDE ports. Windows told me that everything was ok after the installation.
I am still wondering why the new HD is slower than the old one. I even hear clicks when hearing the sound of a little pop-up from a developer of a plug-in that I have installed in Cubase, inviting me to visit his page!. After realizing of this, I went to hear if the WMedia player worked properly. Thanks God, the Divine Jeff Buckley was singing as prodigiously as always.
I have no idea of what´s happening. I don´t believe it is a misconfiguration of hardware.
Please, If you have some ideas, share them with me.
Specs:
Win XP Pro
Cubase SX (Now There is 11 audio tracks, 1 minute, with EQ and FX´s)
audiophile 24/96 Sound Card
80 +20 Gb HD
128 RAM
PIII 733 Mhz
Thanks a lot,
Alejo.
Hello again,
I came back from the store with my brand new 80 GB HD, 7200 rpm´s, to try to avoid clicks and pops that were driving me nuts.
Well, it seems that they are more obvious on the new HD. I have even freezes of 3 seconds. Cubase is still installed on the old HD, but I copy all my songs (one and a half, to be honest) to the new HD. What it came from that was pretty dissapointing.
I came back to the old HD and I monitored some clicks and pops, but not sudden stops and collapses, like on the new one.
I checked sample rate in the sound card (512), buffer size in SX (from 128 to 256, none was valid), buffer number (all I found there), conflict between devices (as I readed from this thread before), low latency unchecked on SX, and the oil level on my VW Polo. Nothing, rien, nada, niente, nichts.
I connected the new HD as master, using a UDMA 66 MB/s cable in the first one of my two IDE ports. Windows told me that everything was ok after the installation.
I am still wondering why the new HD is slower than the old one. I even hear clicks when hearing the sound of a little pop-up from a developer of a plug-in that I have installed in Cubase, inviting me to visit his page!. After realizing of this, I went to hear if the WMedia player worked properly. Thanks God, the Divine Jeff Buckley was singing as prodigiously as always.
I have no idea of what´s happening. I don´t believe it is a misconfiguration of hardware.
Please, If you have some ideas, share them with me.
Specs:
Win XP Pro
Cubase SX (Now There is 11 audio tracks, 1 minute, with EQ and FX´s)
audiophile 24/96 Sound Card
80 +20 Gb HD
128 RAM
PIII 733 Mhz
Thanks a lot,
Alejo.
Alejo
New member
news
Ok, these are the latest news:
I formatted the new HD and installed SX and SCard drivers on it. The sample rates in both are pretty high and I still hear clicks and pops
Anyway, these dissapear as soon as I mute tracks, being inexistent when I monitor only five tracks.
If you don't come with a brilliant advice (as usual) i would have to think in less elegant solutions, like mixing tracks together or convert them in MP3's, to realease load to the PC.
I am still searching for a new RAM. I hope that's the solution.
Again, thank you guys for your help. I hope one of these days I will contribute to this forums also with ideas, instead of questions.
Cheers,
Alejo.
Ok, these are the latest news:
I formatted the new HD and installed SX and SCard drivers on it. The sample rates in both are pretty high and I still hear clicks and pops
Anyway, these dissapear as soon as I mute tracks, being inexistent when I monitor only five tracks.
If you don't come with a brilliant advice (as usual) i would have to think in less elegant solutions, like mixing tracks together or convert them in MP3's, to realease load to the PC.
I am still searching for a new RAM. I hope that's the solution.
Again, thank you guys for your help. I hope one of these days I will contribute to this forums also with ideas, instead of questions.
Cheers,
Alejo.
Bass Master "K"
New member
Hey Alejo, first thing I would do, were I you, is head over to www.musicxp.net and perform the suggested tweeks. XP is a great OS for digital music and that site will more than likely fix whatever is causing your problems.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
Good luck and let us know how it turns out.
Alejo
New member
Thank you, Bass Master.
N
NYMorningstar
Recording Modus Operandi
Alejo, mo RAM. Just for XP alone you need more than 128 MB. Mo RAM, Mo RAM, Mo RAM...
Alejo
New member
...exactly. and up to 240 MB when playing back my 11 tracks song. I realized of that yesterday night.
I must upgrade, but my motherboard does not accept a P IV processor, and yesterday I saw it also prety loaded (it´s a 733 Mhz).
So, I am gonna borrow another RAM from a friend to see what happens. If the problem persists, I sould think on changing the whole motherboard, because that would mean a processor problem. I don´t buy the RAM now until I don´t see the results, because the one I have now is a PC133 and I cannot find motherboards able to house this and a P IV. If I buy now the RAM, may be I have to throw it tomorrow.
Sorry for this dense explanation. And thanks for your comment.
I must upgrade, but my motherboard does not accept a P IV processor, and yesterday I saw it also prety loaded (it´s a 733 Mhz).
So, I am gonna borrow another RAM from a friend to see what happens. If the problem persists, I sould think on changing the whole motherboard, because that would mean a processor problem. I don´t buy the RAM now until I don´t see the results, because the one I have now is a PC133 and I cannot find motherboards able to house this and a P IV. If I buy now the RAM, may be I have to throw it tomorrow.
Sorry for this dense explanation. And thanks for your comment.
L
lomky
New member
You know, I had a look at the jpg wavefile. i'm sure my experience is completely unrelated but I will give an FYI. I have a Delta 1010 and it is working fine, I wanted to increase my recordable track count so I went and bought a ART Di/o. I record, what do I find? Pops everywhere (just like the jpg), the solution, changing the clock to internal in the control pannel. Like I said FYI.
Alejo
New member
Thanks. I had already that option checked. Still wandering what does it mean FYI...
N
NYMorningstar
Recording Modus Operandi
FYI = For Your Information. The whole 733mhz scene was scary for me. I bought a computer once from a company on ebay and it was supposed to be a PIII 733mhz processor. After using it for 2 months it burnt up on me and I sent it back to them. They returned it to me again in working order and it started doing weird stuff, pops, freezes, almost like it was infected with a virus. I took it to a shop and found out it was an overclocked 566mhz celeron chip. Ouch! I hope that's not the case with your computer. Although RAM right now is dirt cheap, you may be right with waiting and getting a new computer. G/L
N
Neil Ogilvie
Still Learning.......
Sorry I haven't been around for a while - our server on our network contracted a virus and the boot sector was deleted. Thankgod my DAW isn't usually hooked up...... Does mean that the only computer I have at home hooked up to the internet is a 10 year old 486! Great.
At the moment I'm reading this all from college, I'll get back to you asap with any more progress (although I've got major exams at the moment, so could be a while. Sorry).
Oh yeah, I downloaded the new chipset drivers for my motherboard to try and solve the PCI BUS master issue, but came to nothing.
I once moved and cleaned my card before, but again, made no difference. If anyting, I thought it made it all worse, but I was probably just imagining.
As far as DMA goes, how would I go about changing the DMA settings on on a particular device? Is this done through the device manager?
This seems to be a thread everyones got stuck into. I hope other people are benefitting as much from the advice Bass Master K and Hottrock as I am!
Cheers for all the pointers. I'll get back with any more developments.
Neil
At the moment I'm reading this all from college, I'll get back to you asap with any more progress (although I've got major exams at the moment, so could be a while. Sorry).
Oh yeah, I downloaded the new chipset drivers for my motherboard to try and solve the PCI BUS master issue, but came to nothing.
I once moved and cleaned my card before, but again, made no difference. If anyting, I thought it made it all worse, but I was probably just imagining.
As far as DMA goes, how would I go about changing the DMA settings on on a particular device? Is this done through the device manager?
This seems to be a thread everyones got stuck into. I hope other people are benefitting as much from the advice Bass Master K and Hottrock as I am!
Cheers for all the pointers. I'll get back with any more developments.
Neil
Bass Master "K"
New member
I hope they are benifiting more, Neil, as we haven't been able to solve your problem yet! 
More ideas....When you get a chance to work on your system more, go into your soundcard control panel and look for any setting that is labeled with "clock" or "clocking" and see what it is set to. I am not sure if Cubase 5.1 has a setting for clocking as well, but search for it in the manual and see if there is a place where you can change it's setting. From what I have read you want the clocking set to "internal" but I don't know this for sure. The main thing is to find it and play with it a bit and see if that doesn't help things.
Regarding the card moving.....you mentioned you did it before. Did you try to fire up the computer with just the video card and the soundcard in it? Did you place the soundcard as close to the middle of the board as possible? These are suggestions I have read about for seeing if it's a conflict with your card and other things that are plugged in.
Good luck with exams and talk soon.
More ideas....When you get a chance to work on your system more, go into your soundcard control panel and look for any setting that is labeled with "clock" or "clocking" and see what it is set to. I am not sure if Cubase 5.1 has a setting for clocking as well, but search for it in the manual and see if there is a place where you can change it's setting. From what I have read you want the clocking set to "internal" but I don't know this for sure. The main thing is to find it and play with it a bit and see if that doesn't help things.
Regarding the card moving.....you mentioned you did it before. Did you try to fire up the computer with just the video card and the soundcard in it? Did you place the soundcard as close to the middle of the board as possible? These are suggestions I have read about for seeing if it's a conflict with your card and other things that are plugged in.
Good luck with exams and talk soon.
Alejo
New member
CORRUPTED PLUG-IN?
I think I found the problem, Bass Master K. I borrowed and installed a second 128 MB ram on my Pc, and it goes much better(actually XP needed it), but clicks appeared as often as before in my song.
In this point I monitored a constant 100% load on the processor, even when stopping the song!. This high load always stays there.
Then I started to remove Fx´s from the tracks, until I reached to my voice tracks and I removed the compressor effect (a free plug-in found on the Net). Magically, the load on the processor went to a normal rate and I didn´t hear any noise.
I think that´s the problem, but I don´t want to celebrate this little victory until I don´t perform more tests. For example, I imported a full song from Radiohead and copied it 12 times in 12 tracks. I applied Fxs (except the compressor one) and EQ´s to it and I monitored them. So far so good.
Tomorrow I will buy the 512 RAM for sure. Thanks, NY Mornigstar.
My question is: do you have any news about conflictive plug-ins?. Could you recommend me a reliable compressor plug-in?.
Thanks again for your help.
Alejo.
I think I found the problem, Bass Master K. I borrowed and installed a second 128 MB ram on my Pc, and it goes much better(actually XP needed it), but clicks appeared as often as before in my song.
In this point I monitored a constant 100% load on the processor, even when stopping the song!. This high load always stays there.
Then I started to remove Fx´s from the tracks, until I reached to my voice tracks and I removed the compressor effect (a free plug-in found on the Net). Magically, the load on the processor went to a normal rate and I didn´t hear any noise.
I think that´s the problem, but I don´t want to celebrate this little victory until I don´t perform more tests. For example, I imported a full song from Radiohead and copied it 12 times in 12 tracks. I applied Fxs (except the compressor one) and EQ´s to it and I monitored them. So far so good.
Tomorrow I will buy the 512 RAM for sure. Thanks, NY Mornigstar.
My question is: do you have any news about conflictive plug-ins?. Could you recommend me a reliable compressor plug-in?.
Thanks again for your help.
Alejo.
M
memriloc
New member
Man, this's gotta be one of the most interesting threads for a long time...Helpful too!!!...Thanks for having major problems Alejo lol...
Bass Master "K"
New member
Alejo, I have heard of free plug-in's being buggy and causing crashes, but to have a plug-in that eats up your computer resources is something I have never heard of (other than some DX instruments that are CPU intensive, but even that is only like 6% a track). I hope that is the problem and great job on actually tracking that down! If it turns out it is the plug for sure, perhaps you could post it here so others can watch out for it.
As far as compressors go, I use a RNC compressor for my vocals and for some drums, and just use the Steinberg compressor for other less important stuff, so I'm not real familiar with other compressor plug-in's. There is a group that puts out free plug-in's that are considered by most I have talked with to be consistantly good plug-in's that are highly functional, look for them in the "VST effects" section of their website, they have a compressor there.
http://www.mda-vst.com/
Let us know if it really was that plug in that was causing all the trouble
As far as compressors go, I use a RNC compressor for my vocals and for some drums, and just use the Steinberg compressor for other less important stuff, so I'm not real familiar with other compressor plug-in's. There is a group that puts out free plug-in's that are considered by most I have talked with to be consistantly good plug-in's that are highly functional, look for them in the "VST effects" section of their website, they have a compressor there.
http://www.mda-vst.com/
Let us know if it really was that plug in that was causing all the trouble
M
memriloc
New member
VST Effects...
Can't tell you which are good and bad, but www.vstcentral.com has a huge list of pays and freebies...
Can't tell you which are good and bad, but www.vstcentral.com has a huge list of pays and freebies...
N
NYMorningstar
Recording Modus Operandi
Congrats on finding your solution. You can figure out the max RAM you can use at this site http://www.crucial.com/store/listmfgr.asp?cat=RAM
S
ScienceOne
New member
Ok ive got a pentium 4 with 512 mb of ram, and two 7200 rpm hard drives (in master/slave with the slave being the HD that records audio). While recording 8 tracks at once (drums) it pops and cracks AND takes FOREVER to render the tracks. The drummer will walk into the tracking room and the visual wave files are still being processed on the screen, as though someone was still in the room playing. When i play back, the sound and the little .wav picture are out of sync. WHAT THE HELL. Im using cubase sx.