Crackles and pops nightmare... a story of our time?

For some time now, I have been unable to run any project in X1 without crackles, pops and audio dropouts.
With no real idea of what the problem might be, I have tried all sorts of things in search of a remedy (adjusting latency, buffer sizes, sample rates, removing exotic plugins, freezing soft synths, minimising gain everywhere, not using ProChannels, deactivating unused devices, inputs and outputs, ensuring all potential background tasks are not running... and I'm sure there are other things I might have tried if I knew more about computers and audio)... all with no success and much exasperation.
Anyway, I was contemplating a complete reinstall of X1 when, in a kind of haze of desperation, I noticed, on the Playback and Recording tab in Preferences (visited for the nth time), the "Use Multiprocessing Engine" option. Since I run on a dual core, I had this checked. I consulted the Help to see what this option was actually giving me and decided it would not hurt to uncheck it and see if it made any difference.
The immediately visible effect was that my pretty 8-column CPU display in Sonar was now a single monlithic block... but it was stable, not constantly murmuring and popping all 8 columns into the red from time to time.
Since then, touch wood, my crackles and pops have ceased and I cautiously look forward to happier times.
Should I have known this already, I wonder? Does this indicate a fault in my installation or would it be in my configuration? Or am I just dumb (I could be dumb).
This posting is sharing more frustration than wisdom, I guess - more heat than light - but forums are for sharing, right? and I hope it may help others out there. Thanks for being there and for listening.

Hey, I wish you all the best that you do indeed have happier times ahead - cracks and pops are truly a nightmare.

Your story made go to the manual and check a few things, but I ended up searching the best source of information (yeah, this forum).

I learned 2 things that I'll give a try:
 - set processor scheduling to programs not background (which is what all audio tuning guides tell you), but Cake says not (http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.ashx?m=1239881)
 - really high end machines might be better off changing the ThreadSchedulingModel setting in the AUD.INI (http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.ashx?m=2095428)

Thanks for getting me started on that.

Silicon Audio


These days, most cases of clicking & popping relate to deferred procedure calls.  Download DPC Latency Checker and report your findings.

Yeah, this is one of the tools to do your homework, in case you haven't done it yet.
 
Here's another good one: http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon 
LatencyMon gives a lot more information than DPC Latency Checker and is also freeware.
 
Cheers
 
 

Disabling the multiprocessing engine has been one of the most "popular" ways of getting rid of crackles. That has always puzzled me, as I've thought the multiprocessing engine should help to use the PC's resources more efficiently, not hog them. But obviously I've misunderstood the concept.

GIM Productions


Hi,you can try to disable any WiFi and Lan device on your mobo.Second you can check if your thread scheduling modeling is set at 2 in AUD.ini.Best

Yep. Did all that and tried o, 1 and 2... no joy.

Kalle Rantaaho


Disabling the multiprocessing engine has been one of the most "popular" ways of getting rid of crackles. That has always puzzled me, as I've thought the multiprocessing engine should help to use the PC's resources more efficiently, not hog them. But obviously I've misunderstood the concept.

Same here

CakeAlexS


Adding the multiprocessor engine setting was one of the first things I did when I bought Sonar X1. When I realised my crackles and pops persisted I did about a day of research and came to the conclusion that Intel Speedstep should be disabled (either in BIOS or Windows). Then Sonar rocked....

If I hadn't done that I possibly would have posted a new thread entitled "Goodbye" about a month later....

Worth noting none of these issues were anything to do with Cakewalk, it was Intel and my misconfiguration initially.
Of course keeping drivers and firmware up to date is a must.

Cheers

Alex

Too shy to go anywhere near the BIOS... tried it once, completely disabled my machine.
But I did run Uniblue's driver scanner and updated all drivers accordingly.

Mooch4056


Running your audio from s seperate hard drive AT LEAST 7200rpms or faster also can get rid of the pops and clicks.

just another thing to try

Thanks, Mooch. I would not have thought that... in fact, I recently moved my X1 projects folder out of an external drive onto my C: drive in hopes of better performance.
 
Is there a wider case for keeping projects external?

One reason why switching to a single core can seem to fix the problem relates to other posts in this thread referring to the Windows power plan and speedstep, etc.

When Sonar runs on just one core, the workload is such that it forces the CPU core to stay at or near 100%, which prevents power management from clocking it down.  When the CPU is changing power state, you get clicks.

So, just as Anderton mentioned, it's important to change the Windows power plan following his instructions.

I to am plagued with pops, When I am recording I probably don't get much more than 30 sec without a pop which records, so I have to keep punching in. I use to have a small prob with X1 with it. Never a prob with version 7, 8,or 8.5. Now X2 is terrible with pops and hicups. I hope they will fix this soon. Along with the small micro drag of a clip which wont move even with snap turned off. it just click back in place unless I move it further than I want. Again this did not exist in X1

StarTekh


Skarda: what your system specks >? guylemec: do you need help in the bios/speedstep>?

 

You REALLY need to check your system DPC latency with one of the tools mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Honestly, it's the first place to start.

guylemec

Since I run on a dual core, I had this checked. I consulted the Help to see what this option was actually giving me and decided it would not hurt to uncheck it and see if it made any difference.
The immediately visible effect was that my pretty 8-column CPU display in Sonar was now a single monlithic block... but it was stable, not constantly murmuring and popping all 8 columns into the red from time to time.
Since then, touch wood, my crackles and pops have ceased and I cautiously look forward to happier times. 

Thanks helped me....
 
meh

FreeFlyBertl


 - set processor scheduling to programs not background (which is what all audio tuning guides tell you), but Cake says not (http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.ashx?m=1239881)
 - really high end machines might be better off changing the ThreadSchedulingModel setting in the AUD.INI (http://forum.cakewalk.com/fb.ashx?m=2095428) 

Thanks, FFB.
I've set it to Programs now.
Changing the ini file setting didn't seem to give any benefit but I reckon mine is not a high-end machine anyway.
I feel happier to leave it at the default.

Skarda


I have an I7, 950 3.07 ghz win 7 64 bit, 12 gig ram, soild state hard drive. it has some pretty good horse power. After reading the above, i went into my bios and disabled speedstep. will test later... hope this helps. but it does not seem like my pc should need such help

Is the SSD your only hard drive?