Recording Windows sounds WITHOUT cracks'n'pops.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chrisulrich
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Chrisulrich

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Dear Anyone.

I've got an AMD Sempron processor, 1GIG RAM, an ASUS ASROCK motherboard and Windows XP Pro SP2. And an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Soundcard, complete with latest driver.

Now I've just become the proud LEGAL owner of Cubase Studio 4, complete with dongle and manuals etc., but I'm having to go through the learning curve with it. Which, for a guy with a brain like mine, is comparable to an ant climbing Everest. Because I'm disabled, I've been offered a spot on a Computer Music Course virtually free - but I have to take in a CD with some tracks I've written on. And I can't make any 'what-you-hear' recorders record what I've written properly!

To create the tracks, I've used Voyetra Music Maestro Notation Package and Windows GM sounds. I've got NCH Wavepad, Audacity, Windows Movie Maker. I've tried Wavepad and the recorded version of the tune sounds like it's shivering - imagine singing in sub-zero temperatures. Audacity has more pops and crackles than a firework display and Movie Maker - which is interesting - has the audio volume control greyed out. You can't turn it up. I have no idea why. Voyetra Music Maestro DOES have a 'RECORD' button on it, but I've an idea - that's all it is - that it's for sounds being INPUT through the soundcard. The picture's of a little microphone and all it records, even while it's playing the MIDI file you've created (I know that should more accurately read 'the sounds generated by the MIDI file you've created, I know MIDI in itself isn't sound) is the faintest of background hisses.

I've got the Samples setting on the M-Audio control panel at 4096. Have tried higher settings, the recordings still 'shiver'. Lower settings, you get pops'n'crackles using Wavepad, too. I did a CTRL-ALT-DEL so I got the little green window on the taskbar showing me how much processor power's being used. Virtually none! Whatever the problem is, it's not processor power - the little window remains 99 percent empty, even while the recorder's shivering/pop'n'crackling to its heart's content! It's JUST the recorded version that's got the problems. The version you're LISTENING to is 90 percent fine, but there ARE very faint pops in the background. They're a LOT worse on the recorded sound versions! And you don't hear the shivering you hear on the Wavepad recorded version.

I'm not a techie, so please be gentle with your answers. I'm just a disabled guy who can think of tunes and is trying to record a version of them - even if only on basic sounds - so I can hopefully get on a course!

Yours head-scratchingly

Chrisulrich
 
Hi Chrisulrich,

My setup is much simpler than your and i still don't suffer from pops and crackles that often. I run a celeron, 512 RAM with a 1.4 Ghz processsor...I use Audacity as my maing DAW program and do not have your problem...

Im pretty sure that Cubase 4 comes with ASIO4ALL drivers, but what you could do is install ASIO4ALL drivers and i believe that these drivers work well with CONEXANT hardware...

http://www.asio4all.com/

Once you install asio4all keep decreasing the buffer values until you hear pops and crackles...As soon as you get this reduce it back a little and that would be your point...

If this does not solve the issue your other bet is to check and make sure of all your levels. All the inputs and outputs MIDI and whatsoever..Reduce all the levels increase them slowly and find the right level...

Im sure there will be lots of helpful people here to help you out...

Cheers
J
 
What's CONEXANT mean, f'starters....

Dear Jacksonfreak.

I don't know what CONEXANT means and I can't find a definition of it anywhere - I'm not good at the techie stuff, sorry.

ASIO confuses me greatly (not hard to do!) Do I use it INSTEAD of my soundcard's driver, or AS WELL AS my soundcard's driver, or do I have to find a special version of my soundcard's driver that is ASIO-compatible?

If it's INSTEAD of my soundcard's driver, I tried that, once, with my old card, a Soundblaster Live 5.1. Could never get the soundcard to find the ASIO driver, so I reinstalled the Soundblaster driver and was still pops'n'cracks central, but that's on a different machine.

What's stunned me is that you're running Cubase on 512 meg, I'm getting other people telling me I need a quadcore to run Cubase.... How the heck are you doing it!?!

Please, if you read this, pretend I've never heard of computers until 5 minutes ago and explain things a bit!! I'm utterly determined to get the hang of the techie side of this stuff, but I really don't know how to get started as yet.

Yours hopefully

Christopher Burke.
 
You do'nt need a quadcore to run the basics of Cubase4. I run it on a Pentium4 notebook I still have around from time to time.

Most consumer soundcards will not have ASIO drivers. It is a low CPU, high performance driver used by pro audio interfaces. But your Audiofile should have them. Under your device setup, under audio device, you should have something listed like ASIO Multimedia, or ASIO Directx device. Dont use that. You should have one listed like ASIO M-Audio or M-Audio ASIO or something like that. Select that driver to use. IT will make a big difference. Once that one is in use, report back.
 
Chrisulrich said:
Dear Jacksonfreak.

I don't know what CONEXANT means and I can't find a definition of it anywhere - I'm not good at the techie stuff, sorry.

ASIO confuses me greatly (not hard to do!) Do I use it INSTEAD of my soundcard's driver, or AS WELL AS my soundcard's driver, or do I have to find a special version of my soundcard's driver that is ASIO-compatible?

If it's INSTEAD of my soundcard's driver, I tried that, once, with my old card, a Soundblaster Live 5.1. Could never get the soundcard to find the ASIO driver, so I reinstalled the Soundblaster driver and was still pops'n'cracks central, but that's on a different machine.

What's stunned me is that you're running Cubase on 512 meg, I'm getting other people telling me I need a quadcore to run Cubase.... How the heck are you doing it!?!

Please, if you read this, pretend I've never heard of computers until 5 minutes ago and explain things a bit!! I'm utterly determined to get the hang of the techie side of this stuff, but I really don't know how to get started as yet.

Yours hopefully

Christopher Burke.
Click to expand...

Hi Christopher,

Ok don't worry about the CONEXANT stuff, its the just the hardware manufacturer of your soundcard (almost like a chipset). The ASIO is NOT a substitute for your originally soundcard driver instead its just a supplement software that works with your driver in order to bring better sound to your soundcard by minimizing latency issues (pops crackles and the like)....

I hope that made sense to you :)

Now moving on yes i do run Cubase SX3 on 512 Meg...Its crazy i know, there are times when things get a bit sticky and lag behind but im working on a budget here and can't upgrade at the moment. But thankfully i don't suffer from pops and crackles...

--------------

Like Hard2Hear pointed out....Open up Cubase 4, click on Devices ---> Device setup--->click on vst audiobay--->and then click on M Audio ASIO or M Audio...(for me this would be CONEXANT cuz thats my hardware manufacturer)....Underneath that it will tell you the input/output latency as well....Click on apply and exit out of that....That should solve your issue...

Also check all your volumes just to make sure nothing is clipping etc etc....

All the best
J
 
If you're using M-Audio's ASIO drivers (or really, even their WDM drives) and you are having trouble with pops and crackles at 4096 samples, something is very, very wrong. Usually, this means that your M-Audio card is sharing an IRQ with a card whose poorly written drivers are holding off interrupts for an obscenely long amount of time. My bet would be that your M-Audio card is sharing an IRQ with a graphics card or a USB controller. (On a laptop, my guess would be a Wi-Fi adapter, but that's kind of unusual on a desktop.)

Try moving the M-Audio card to different slot. Try every slot. Even if you were using a 5-year-old computer, you should be able to easily get that down' to 512 samples glitch-free while recording just a couple of tracks and not playing anything else back..... Since your system is relatively recent, you should be able to do much better than that, even. Bear in mind, most of the time, I record at 96kHz/24-bit with a buffer size of 128, or 256 if I'm playing back 32 tracks with a truckload of effects. 4096 samples is pure comedy. At 44 kHz, that's almost a quarter second round trip latency by the time you factor in software latency through the audio path.... :D

If it doesn't work in any slot without glitches, you may have to manually change the IRQ steering to force it to be on its own IRQ.
 
Thanks everyone for your help thus far, but now nothing records at all :-(

Dear Everyone.

I'm not actually using CUBASE to write the music in at the moment, because I'm waiting for my course in how to use it to start - in about 10 days! - and right now I feel like Buzz Lightyear trying to fly the Starship Enterprise. I think I'm going to wait for the teacher to tell me what to do before I hit any more black holes! I'm using my Voyetra Music Maestro Notation Package, my mouse to put all the notes in and Windows GM sounds to play them back on.

Went into Cubase and changed the setup so it's now using the M-Audio ASIO Driver, just by following the instructions here, thank you very much for those. And all the pops'n'crackles on playback vanished! Wonderful.

Thing is, the capability of WavePad to actually 'see' the sound to record it vanished too! I'm now getting the following error message: There is a problem with your sound hardware. To install mixer devices, go to Control Panel, click Printers and Other Hardware, and then click Add Hardware.

As you all know, there isn't a Printers and Other Hardware button on Control Panel. What it's looking for is Windows Mixer. The only input options I've got on Wavepad are Windows Record Mixer and Line In. Neither of them are the M-Audio Control Panel versions - it doesn't seem able to 'see' those any more - but it WAS seeing them before I changed to ASIO, because it was recording sounds, just not doing it very well. Which means it CAN see them, if you know how to make it do it.

I've tried using Windows Movie Maker to record stuff and the little volume slider you get when you click on the MIKE symbol (it's labeled 'Line In') stays greyed out. But I vaguely thought that M-Audio took over from Windows Mixer, am I wrong in this?

I don't know if this will mean anything to anybody, but when I try to use MP3myMP3 to record what I'm hearing - as the site says it should do - you can't slide the volume controls in the MP3myMP3 software up. Doesn't matter where you slide them to, the moment you take your finger off the mouse they go back to zero and stay there. So maybe all of this is pointing to one common problem, if anyone knows what that is I would be mightily grateful! Of course it might be a bad piece of software but, assuming the software works if all the bits of XP it needs to work with work, it might be a pointer.

Where does one get a copy of Windows Mixer from, anyway? My computer's drive came with XP Pro preinstalled, and no backup copy. I've GOT a copy of XP I can use if anything happens, but shall we say it was delivered to the Internet by Jack Sparrow and leave it at that?

Tried contacting the MP3myMP3 site, haven't had any reply yet. Gawd, doesn't all this sound pathetic. All I wanted to do was record a couple of pieces to prove I can actually write music!

If anyone knows any other recording software I can use to turn what I'm hearing into a soundfile which I can convert to an MP3, PLEASE feel free to tell me!!!

Yours hopefully

Christopher Burke (a.k.a. ulrichburke.)
 
Hi Chris,

Great to hear you figured out the pops and cracking problem... ;)

Your windows mixer can be found in the control panel under sounds speech and audio devices--->click on sounds and audio devices & make sure you tick "place volume icon in the task bar"....click apply...you should be able to double click it now and it should come up...:)

As for a simple recorder..You could try audacity (its free and simple to use)...Just google it and it should come up...:D


Looking forward to hear some of your stuff man.

All the best
J
 
I'm very sorry, all of you - I swear Windows Mixer isn't there.

And I think I can prove it! Y'see, it doesn't matter what recording program I click on - Wavepad, MP3myMP3, Mixpad, Mixcraft 4, Windows Movie maker, gotta give me credit for trying! - I get the same error message:- There is a problem with your sound hardware. To install mixer devices, go to Control Panel, click on Printers and Other Hardware, and then click Add Hardware.

So, more as a diagnostic tool than in any hope of getting anywhere, I installed Power Mixer. Now this piece of software is supposed to take over all volume functions and I was hoping it would substitute for the missing mixer devices. It hasn't - it wasn't ever going to be THAT easy, now, was it! - but it has thrown up a trio of interesting facts.

There's 3 columns labelled M-Audio Delta AP Multi, M-Audio Delta AP 1/2 and M-Audio Delta AP S/PDIF. Each of them has 4 little sub-headings: Volume Control, Wave, SW Synth and CD Player. Now the Wave, SW-Synth and CD- Player sub-headings in each column have ticks next to them, obviously indicating they're working. BUT - the Volume Control indicator up the top of each little column has a CROSS next to it, obviously indicating it's not working/not activated. And down the bottom there's a bunch of 4 controls - SPDIF Interface, Recording Control, Wave and M-Audio Delta AP Mon Mixer Recording Control - which all have crosses next to them. Which I reckon could be the crux of the problem. BUT, on the M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2496 control panel, I've turned every volume slider up to full blast. I can't find any more controls to turn up!

So the prob. is - why are the abovementioned controls not activated? I've tried the last version of the M-Audio driver and the current version and, in desperation, the Windows Vista version (even though I've got XP Pro) just to see if that made any difference. It hasn't. On Power Mixer, the controls I've stated stay inactive/broken, however you want to look at it.

The only program that lets me try to turn them up is MP3myMP3 and if I slide the volume sliders up, the moment I take my finger off the mouse button they slide straight back down to zero again. If I keep my finger ON the mouse button while recording, to keep the volume numbers high, I think it must be only a COSMETIC high-ness, not real, as nothing still records.

In total, as ALL the supposed recorder programs I've downloaded are coming up with similar error messages/problems, there's SOMETHING going on. Quite what it is or how to cure it, I don't know. I reckon if we could find a way to turn the Recording Control up, something might actually record, what do you think?

Sorry this prob. hasn't been cured yet. Thanks in advance

Yours respectfully

Chris.
 
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