why do my tracks sound like a old record?

  • Thread starter Thread starter blackbeltjones
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blackbeltjones

New member
hello,
im new to this home recording game. i have a pentium III 1.0 ghz
and 256 of ram. based on the good reviews on this forum i got
an audiophile 2496. i downloaded demo versions of pro tools, acid, cakewalk guitar, sonar and n-track. trying out these programs to find one i want to buy.
the problem i am having is when i try to record my guitar the
play back always has lots of clicks and pops in every program
execpt n-track. for some reason n-track sounds fine.
i know my problems have something to do with the buffer settings, but i am having trouble understanding how to set them.
i feel like i have tried every setting possible both in the program and in the m-audio control program. i have also read all the posts
i can find in this forum about this but all the good advice has not helped this problem that much. with the setup i have all of these programs should work, right? so any advice would be very helpful.
thanks
 
thanks for the link
this brings up some new questions.i would like to keep my os as it is because i do use my system for other things besides recording.
would it help if i ran a dual boot system, one partition with my normal win98 and one with win 98 or 2000 using these tweaks for recording- or do i need another hard drive?
also, does it matter that about 5 diferant things are set to irq 5
including the audio card?
 
blackbeltjones said:
...also, does it matter that about 5 diferant things are set to irq 5 including the audio card?
Click to expand...

I would bet the house that an IRQ conflict is your problem...trying to get your audio card on it's own IRQ is the first thing that you should do - then, if that doesn't work, try some of the other tweaks

regarding the dual boot issue...I can't really comment on that as I have a separate computer for recording....
 
A dual boot system would probably be more of a headache then it is worth. Adding another hardrive for storing your music and useing when recording helps. IRQ settings useing window's 98 IRQ steering allows more then one device to be set on an IRQ but uses the free ones when two devices are trying to use the same one. Before you try to set them up yourself their are some rules and some of them have to be set on certain ones. Go to microsoft and search for IRQ steering and settings their are articles on setting up stationary IRQ's and disableing the pci IRQ steering. the devices that have the same IRQ's are usually sound devices so your modem mic not the modem itself , soundcard, midi, mic, line in are probably the ones that you see with the same IRQ you have 15 IRQ's to use but some have to be set for system devices ie clock, bios, processor modem, nic and set at the proper IRQ.
 
i disabled the nic card that was also on IRQ 5 but this did not help
i have also tried some of the tweaks listed in the link above and others that i have read in this forum like- disabling power managment, use diskkeeper 7 to defrag hard drive, turning off screensaver, ect. but none of this seems to fix the problem.
i think the problem is the buffer settings. the help files that come with these programs just say to mess around with them until
it sounds good...some buffer sizes seem to sound better than others but n-track is the only program that sounds good -cakewalk and protools sound very bad. the buffer settings in n-track are the default..
i guess what im asking is a how do i set up the m-audio panal and the audio settings in these programs. i know that each computer will have differant settings but even some basic info on how to start would help alot.
thanks
 
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