my powerful pc is a-popping and a-clicking......help!!

frigsam · Post by **frigsam** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:03 pm

Here's the deal. I've built a pc using an AMD Athlon X2 3800 processor, 2 gigs of RAM, an AGP vid card with a good gigabyte mobo. (and two good sata drives-of course) My interface is a Motu 828mkII and I use a firewire card with a lucent chip as recommended by Motu. My drivers are up to date and I've done a lot of work to streamline this system for audio.

For some reason I'm getting pops and clicks with just one track of audio with a reverb plug-in at 44.1k. I raise the buffer setting and the clicks go away but then I have serious latency issues. This system should be laughing at one track with reverb. That said, at a high buffer setting it performs pretty well. 40 tracks on ableton with heavy effects on each track. (musically very stupid but good to test things out)

My firewire card is on irq 10 as 9 is used by acpi. My sata cards are set to dma. Is there something I'm missing? I've done a lot of work on setting up bios but nothing seems to have an effect. This is my first build so maybe I've done something stupid somewhere.

I've also tried this with Kristal audio (a freeware DAW) and have the same issue.

Anyways, hopefully I haven't left anything out. I will be very grateful for any help!

Thanks

frigsam · Post by **frigsam** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:20 pm

the performance meter doesn't spike while I'm hearing the pops.

earl parameter · Post by **earl parameter** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:21 pm

i think the only thing your missing is that there really isn't anything to be done about lowering latency at this point in computer evolution. raise the buffer (to the best middle ground between latency and glitching) and nudge the tracks after recording. you can monitor without the latency with the motu so its actually a very minor issue.

and if im not mistaken its a TI chip that is recommended by motu. but that could have changed. its a been a while.

its nice to see people actually doing their homework. you should honestly and sincerely pat yourself on the back.

steven

frigsam · Post by **frigsam** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:45 pm

thanks for the encouragement steven.

I'm still not convinced that I should have to live with this latency though!!! My old 12" powerbook could record 8 simultaneous tracks with no pops and no latency. And my bandmates dell only has issues when we get to 30-something tracks with some effects. This system is way more powerful.

I'm wondering about the firewire card. The motu website does say lucent or texas instrument chips are ok so I bought the one lucent chip card available at newegg.......it was a cheap ($10) card made by syba. I kept telling myself that "just because it's cheap doesn't mean it sucks!." Was I wrong?

earl parameter · Post by **earl parameter** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 8:53 pm

all digital systems, even dedicated ones, have latency. i don't like the expression, but its the "nature of the beast" (too metalhead for me). it takes time to process. period. you can get latency down but until there is a huge leap in process dev its a fruitless fight. we ALL have to do. even the guys your talking about need to do it. its just close enough that they don't bother or they don't know to look out for it. they most likely have phase issues that they just don't know to look for or the issues just happen to not sound bad (it does happen).

i don't mean to burst your bubble (another stupid expression i would never use otherwise).

"no pops and no latency." not possible. but i can see why you might think its true. if you were to have recorded one at a time (and not all of them at once) and each time you played to the previously recorded track you would see each track stagger in time. it might have been minimal but its there. and when you push more tracks and start using virtual memory (exceeding your ram) then it gets even worse.

you might still have some options to get it down though. like killing everything you have running in the background. keep that machine offline so you can go without a virus program etc...

this should get you started

http://www.musicxp.net/tuning_tips.php

i've been awake way to long. i hope all of that made sense. its time for some sleep.

syrupcore · Post by **syrupcore** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:37 pm

buy a good firewire card with a return policy. if xptweaks doesn't fix it I bet that will.

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 10:51 pm

could be a lingering sata issue as well.... a year or two ago there were some serious issues with pops and clicks with sata.... this thread on the SONAR forum is 2 years old, but could be relevant....

frigsam · Post by **frigsam** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:16 pm

well, I've been at it for a while and still no improvement. I'm getting steady crackles with just one track of audio (even without effects) on what should be a very powerful system.
I used powerstrip (a pci utility) to adjust my vid card latency, I've gone through each of the steps to improve performance.... I'm not sure if it is an sata issue? Both of my hd's are sata.
this is really bugging me. my little powerbook is kicking this systems ass....which is just wrong!!

I'm about to go buy another frewire card but somehow I'd be surprised if that was it.....

stevedood · Post by **stevedood** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:43 pm

Is this with Ableton only or with any DAW software package you are using?

frigsam · Post by **frigsam** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 7:44 pm

it's with live 4 and krystal audio (a freeware i'm messing around with until I decide on a program....probably cubase sx3) It behaves better w/ ableton but only marginally.

Also, I just switched to a better firewire card and it's still happeneing. hmmmm....

Oh how I'd rather be tracking.

thanks for all the advice! Sam

syrupcore · Post by **syrupcore** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:02 pm

if you've done all the xp tweaks and all the 'obvious' stuff like defragged and made sure there not an assload of stuff running in the background like antivirus, then this really starts to suck. I'd probably go about it in this order but who am I?

1. make sure you have updated drivers for everything, particularly your bios and video card
2. download a spyware sniffer. some one here can recommend one. if that doesn't find something...
3. Format the drives and reinstall windows. If that doesn't do it...
4. start eliminating hardware. If you have onboard video, try removing the agp card and plugging into that (I might try this first actually). pull out one of the ram sticks, pull out the other, moving slots..., remove one of the hard drives, try the other... you get the idea.

what's cool is that it's just a machine so eventually you'll find the problem. what sucks is you'd rather be tracking.

frigsam · Post by **frigsam** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:20 pm

thanks for the advice.
the computer is offline-it's dedicated for music and there are never other programs running.......
i'm wondering if it could be something very basic. I'm a former mac user so this windows thing takes some getting used to......

i've noticed that sometimes the motu won't start up because another program is running and when I try to see what's running it's an open folder or the control panel....???? also when I close a file in ableton it automatically opens up another file.....AND sometimes when I open up ableton it tells me that another rewire program is running.....I don't get it.

it's friday night. i'm sitting in front of a crappy computer. I have so many lovely instruments in the next room,gathering dust........and I don't have a girlfriend.

MT · Post by MT » Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:34 pm

What about downloading a demo or two of another tracking package, like Tracktion 2, etc. and seeing what's up?

Slider · Post by **Slider** » Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:40 pm

frigsam wrote:

it's friday night. i'm sitting in front of a crappy computer. I have so many lovely instruments in the next room,gathering dust........and I don't have a girlfriend.

Look on the bright side.
You live in Oakland, and I believe Zachary's Pizza is still on College Ave.
Then...
I would check your ASIO drivers. Make sure your using the correct MOTU drivers with your app.
Also certain AMD\Motu combo's are bad news.
I have an Opteron AMD that does not work with motu (PCI), no matter what.
Clicks and crackles everywhere.
If you have another soundcard laying around I'd give that a try just to see if that solves it.

earl parameter · Post by **earl parameter** » Sat Jul 29, 2006 5:01 am

"i'm sitting in front of a crappy computer."

" sometimes the motu won't start up because another program is running and when I try to see what's running it's an open folder or the control panel....???? "

there is most likely nothing wrong with your computer on a hardware level. its the way its setup. if your having all of those other issues with running more then one application then you probably have the o.s. installed poorly or wrong. you should consider learning how to reformat and reinstall as suggested before.

windows machines do NOT run like mac machines. you need to spend a lot of time with it to get it to run smoothly. thats why there is such a price difference. in order to run serious audio on a windows box you will have to learn windows first, at least to some extent. every system i have ever setup had to be fine tuned. there are so many options that there is no way to cover all of the possibilities of what is wrong with your system. as everyone is saying, you need to start eliminating those possibilities and/or start completely over.

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my powerful pc is a-popping and a-clicking......help!!

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