Okay, clicks and pops I thought were gone...please clue me in..

  • Thread starter Thread starter djelf
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djelf

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Yeah, I've done all the performance tweaks that I've found, have a MOTU 24i into a 1.6g P4 with 700-odd K ram, and have adjusted the buffers pretty high on the 24i, and have had some luck, but now, after a couple inactive months, have all this crap in the recording of a single guitar track. This is not a dedicated system by any means, but I try to keep it relatively clean, and am just wondering of other things tha could be causing this, cause I've heard of everything from power sources to having my hard drive to close to the sound card. so any pointers/refreshers would be so much appreciated.
 
Have you tried increasing you latency? ... or if you are using WDM drivers, have you tried running the Wave Profiler?

Porter
 
yes to both, although I don't really know what to do after running wave profiler, besides just playing with the slider, and even when I increase the latency to horribly high levels, I still get pops in my recording. The input meter doesn't peak, so I don't think it's an input level problem.
 
Are you running MTC at all? I had some problems transferring songs over using MTC, there were clicks and pops.. or do you have an option of running ASIO drivers?

Porter
 
Have you had stable operation in the past with the same setup?
What is your word clock setup?
Wayne
 
damn, I'll try to guess what you'er talking about...MTC, is that Midi Time Clock or Code or something, anyway, I don't think I'm running it.

Word Clock: what and where is it? I'm not sure about that.

The record timing master is set to 24i's PCI-324 card, playback timing master to SOundblaster, does that have anything to do with it? I'd like to know about the work clock thing...

I've maybe made some progress through manipulating the buffers in 3 areas, 2 of which are in MOTU's console (a buffer dropdown and another buffer size selection), or maybe it was setting the streaming at 32-bit, left-justified? I didn't even (and still don't) have much of an idea of what the heck that is, but I saw somewhere someone saying to set it at that ( I previously had it set at 3 bit).

Jeepers. I went into BIOS and tried disablinv ACPI mode, and Windows wouldn't boot...do I have to reinstall the whole thing to get it to standart PC mode?

Anyway, there's four little tangents there, maybe this is getting resolved, but if you guys'd fill me in on what some of those terms and manipulations refer to, I'd really appreciate it.
 
djelf said:
The record timing master is set to 24i's PCI-324 card, playback timing master to SOundblaster, does that have anything to do with it? I'd like to know about the work clock thing...
Click to expand...

Could be the case... have you setting the playback to the 24i's PCI-324?

Porter
 
I'm not familiar with the Motu, presumably it is both your converters and sound card and is the master word clock for recording. However, what about on play back -via the Sound blaster? I could see a situation where you record some tracks with motu as master (so far so good), then while playing back those tracks and recording some more, there could be trouble. The new tracks still need motu as master, but the playback needs S/B as master.(?) There can only be one master or you get clicks.
1) Are the clicks recorded on to the tracks? (You should see them in the waveform if so, and they would always happen in the same spot -not random.) If not, that part is ok.
2) Why not use the Motu for playback master also? Might solve the clock problem (if that is the cause) and you would also have better playback quality.
Wayne
 
Yeah, this might sound silly, but I'm just using my dinky-ass system speakers to monitor what's going on (they actually sound pretty decent, and usually I'm just laying down basic ideas or pre-production stuff), and I don't know how to route things so my MOTU will send through those speakers, as they are going out of my Sounblaster....so I output from the MOTU's analog outs through my guitar amp, for lack of a better powered monitor, and have been doing fine, besides a little buzz and pain in the ass.

So using different clocks would do that, eh? hmm...someday I'll get a decent full band live recording out of this stuff.

Thanks a lot for straightening me out on this stuff.
 
I had this problem the first time I used Sonar... trust me, it was anoying! Once I started monitoring with the same sound card and had it set up as master for recording and playback it worked.

The reason I've got my Sound Blaster in my computer is for 2 reason... it has a Joystick port, plus when I want to use Net Meeting over the net, I just use it for a microphone, because I can't be bothered to set up one of my Rodes to use... plus it is a bit of an overkill :D

Glad you got it all sorted out.

Porter
 
Silly question -- What OS are you using? The reason I ask is that I had the same problem once I switched to Windows XP. Reason -- XP takes over the IRQ assignment of the PC and tends to share several cards on the same IRQ. Many dedicated sound cards require their own IRQ by itself.

Long story short, the easiest solution is to turn ACPI mode in your BIOS & Windows, then assign IRQs manually. I wouldn't suggest this if you are at all uncomfortable with fiddling around in these areas of the PC as, once you've turned off ACPI, the only way to turn it back on is to scrub the drive and reinstall Windows XP...
 
Gutch said:
Silly question -- What OS are you using? The reason I ask is that I had the same problem once I switched to Windows XP. Reason -- XP takes over the IRQ assignment of the PC and tends to share several cards on the same IRQ. Many dedicated sound cards require their own IRQ by itself.

Long story short, the easiest solution is to turn ACPI mode in your BIOS & Windows, then assign IRQs manually. I wouldn't suggest this if you are at all uncomfortable with fiddling around in these areas of the PC as, once you've turned off ACPI, the only way to turn it back on is to scrub the drive and reinstall Windows XP...
Click to expand...

Gutch,

I think that you will find that onyl XP Pro has that option (ACPI). I'm running XP Home... which is working fine for me now... besides If I monitor using Input Monitoring with the one sound card I get a really low latency... plus I also Direct Monitor so I don't have any problems at all now..

Porter
 
Thanks, Porter! It figures that by upgrading to the XP Pro version, I ended up with more trouble!!! Should've just stuck with Win98! :)
 
With WinXP, you're better of leaving ACPI on. WinXP handles ACPI much better than Win2000, and much better than you... ;)



Have you tweaked XP right? Check out www.musicxp.net

And with a MOTU card, I would think about getting some better monitors and get rid of the SB as playback timing master.
 
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