Cant understand why I am getting cracking noise on recordings and playback, Help!

My first thought is a driver issue, have you tried to record/playback with the onboard sound? Does that work?

Hi Guys thanks for your help.
 
The driver I got from the Zoom website. It does say its for windows 7-10. I don't think that's the issue as if I use the R16 with Guitar rig directly there is no issue.
 
For Driver mode I have got it set to ASIO. To be honest I don't really know what the other settings are for. I have just tried setting to the other options and got a variety of error messages for some of them. Apart from the ASIO setting I cant get any audio playback or recording.
 
I have just started a new project with the usual settings I use and recorded a short strum pattern no problem (no plugins just dry audio). I did notice that when I doubled the sample rate to 96khz(max R16 can cope with) a bug crept into sonar. it recorded the audio but the play cursor froze. had to reopen sonar to get it working again.
 
The problems that I experience come pretty early on in the project when I start setting up AD2 and adding guitar rig. Again this would point to an overloading cpu, but given I am only talking about at most 2 audio tracks and then 1 version of AD2 running( AD2 outputs set to individual tracks in sonar)
 
Like I said I just feel like my computer should cope with this.
 
Any thoughts?

Have you done the R16 firmware update? Also if you have FL Studio ASIO installed there will be problems; you'll need to uninstall it.
 
I concur with the others this sounds like a driver problem. It's very similar to what happened with a friend of mine who was using a TASCAM US-366 and used its drivers, but had ASIO4ALL installed. Once he uninstalled ASIO4ALL everything worked fine.
 
Check in Device Manager under Sound, Video, and Game Controllers. Disable any audio drivers that don't relate to the R16, particularly any "HD drivers" relating to the graphics card.
 

gcolbert
You may want to ensure that your wireless LAN and blue tooth are disabled.  Both of these can cause interrupts that will create clicks and pops, even when the CPU is just idling.

Excellent point, and that opens the larger discussion of problems with a "new" computer. It will usually not be optimized for audio, and as Brando points out, there will often be "useful" (haha) accessories that degrade performance, and all kinds of background tasks running (from iPod Helper to various Adobe auto updates).

Are you using the latest version of Splat (2016-11)?

A new computer is like a new car. With an old car, the kinds of things that fail (belts, gaskets, filters, hoses, brakes, fluids) are mostly predictable. With a new car, the engine could fall out.
 
The biggest problem with new computers is the superfluous crapware they come pre-installed with. Whenever dropouts occur and the CPU isn't near capacity, it's usually some other software that's at fault. Wi-fi is the #1 culprit on laptops, but anti-virus "real time protection" is another. Windows itself performs a lot of tasks you don't need, some of which can gobble resources (mostly I/O), such as search indexing. All of this stuff is enabled by default, and it can take awhile to clean up a new computer.
 
Start with LatencyMon. If you're lucky, it'll quickly point you to the culprit(s).

I don't know if my experience with a Gateway PC (an Acer product) would help in this case. I had to check out several different USB port assignments for the keyboard,mouse and interface before it worked reliably without crackling.

Hi Guys. Thanks for all your help. I have been working through your suggestions and here is what I have found. A big problem here is that the fault is intermittent.
 
First I...
 
Updated R16 firmware, disabled Wifi, Bluetooth and all audio drivers I could find (ther than the R16)  removed McAfee. perhaps a moderate improvement but not much, problem definitely still persisting.
 
then I...
 
Ran LatencyMon, it basically came back with a report saying I shouldn't have latency problems. (although I did have some hard pagefault' s)
 
Set about uninstalling any apps that looked unnecessary, amazon, twitter etc. Again maybe a slight improvement but not much.
 
The magic bullet seemed to come when I changed to the high performance power plan as suggested by eikelbijiter.
 
The CPU usage as displayed in Sonar shot straight down.
 
I thought it was problem solved but the next time I started sonar the problem was back. I closed sonar, unplugged and re-plugged in the R16. When I opened up the my project everything was fine again.
 
There's now no doubt in my mind that this isn't the CPU overloading. Given that restarting the R16 seems to solve this, I think this must be a driver problem as suggested by several people.
 
Cactus Music, seem to suggest that I could use a different driver with the R16. I must admit I have know idea how to do this. I thought you had to use the driver that came with the interface.
 
Can anyone point me in the right direction for downloading a driver and setting this up?  

The November update includes improved WASAPI support under windows 10. 
You can easily try it with no damage done. Just go to the Preferances/ Audio settings and change ASIO mode to WASAPI exclusive. 
See what happens. You can always switch back. 
I'm not optimistic that this will help as your right in that generally you should always use the ASIO driver that is supplied with your interface. I would not even suggest this but I have read of many Zoom owners having issues with the drivers on this forum . These things tend to be because possibly Sonar is a little more picky about drivers than other DAW and audio applications. 
 
But the best way to proove your issue is driver related would be to borrow a "known to be good" audio interface like a Tascam etc and see what happens... my guess would be smooth sailing. 

+1 for the WASAPI driver suggestion. I recently bought a used Dell Latitude E6430 with an I7 processor and 8 gigs of RAM. The specs aren't spectacular, but it's a pretty solid machine (considering that I gave less than $200.00 for it). I'm running SPLAT and a host of 3rd party synths with no problem using the WASAPI driver. I'd think your machine would run well using that driver.

Hey. I tried switching over to the WASAPI Driver as suggested. It's too early to tell for sure but at first it seems to be working. I am going to keep testing with this set up and see how I go.
 
I have noticed that if I come out of high power mode the WASAPI driver just wont work at all. Can anyone explain that to me?
 
Long term it might be worth me investing in a new interface that runs better with Sonar. Has anyone got any suggestions? Im not looking to record more than one instrument at a time. Not into the extreme high end of the market but would like to purchase something of reasonable quality.
 
In the mean time, thanks for all your help in resolving this.