No ideas left

  • Thread starter Thread starter vanwykw
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vanwykw

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I've been trying for six months to get rid of a crackling/static noise during playback with my US 224. The crackle is audible regularly - almost constantly, during playback from any source. (the problem started in the last six months. I've run this setup succesfully for two years.)

The 224 works fine on another computer, but produces the crackling when hooked up to my DELL Inspiron 8000. The DELL's own internal ESS Maestro card plays back without a hitch though.

I have tweaked all the XP settings for audio; have uninstalled all other USB drivers that might be competing for bandwith; have disabled the internal soundcard; have installed the latest Tascam driver several times, and have also reinstalled XP with no other applications loaded and I have even cleaned my USB ports in case of dust.

The crackling remains.

I have no ideas left short of buying a new PC

Any suggestions will be much apreciated.

System: (4 years old)

Dell Inspiron 8000, 700mhz, 384mb ram, 80GB external firewire HD at 7200rpm, internal 10GB HD at 4200 rpm.

Running XP pro SP 2 (problem predates SP2)
 
you have several probelems with the dell.
1..ideally you need 512 ram.
2. the internal drive is slow .
theres no need to throw it out. if it was working fine before check that - and this is what i suspect ....get a tech to check your drives
are dma enabled or possible to be dma enabled.
you probably did something that made windows (just a suspicion) revert to a slower hard drive spped thus the system cant keep up !
how many tracks do you get when the cracles appear ? if its a couple - i doubt dma. if crackles appear when lots of tracks are going its probably dma not set up properly. peace.
what multitrack software are you running ?
 
Thanks for the thoughts Manning, but the crackling occurs on playback from any source , commercial CD's etc. (ie its not a recording problem).

The setup had no problems two years ago when I was running Win 2000, and was also ok initially after installing XP. The only noise I had was an occasional pop or battery charging noise - not this constant crackling.

The ram and slow internal drive speed has not been a problem. ( I record one track at a time mostly, to the external firewire drive running at 7200 rpm)

Thanks again for your input though, any ideas are welcome at this stage!
 
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