Help with DAW problems.

Just the headphones?

First order of business is to remove and replace the headphone plug vigorously a few times. It may simply be a contact issue.

If that doesn't help... are the headphones plugged into your sound card or your mixer?

best,
mike

Have you been chewing the cable again?

Hi Janet,

Sorry about your DAW problem.  Do you hear the same crackling through your speakers?  Can you burn the song to a CD and see if the crackling is on the song or just through the headphones? 

Just to get back into CH mode for a moment:  You're not having Rice Crispies for breakfast are you?  They might be causing your crackling noise.   

Good luck,
Jan

Jan, we were typing at the same time.  See my post above about the speakers.  I can try the CD idea. Thanks!  And nope, I drink a fruit shake for breakfast, but good try! :)

Very simple test,  does it still crackle using Windows Media Player?  or any other non-Sonar app?

Yeah, it's weird when you answer someone and then look and find out one or two more people commented in the meantime BEFORE your post.  lol

I did change the buffers recently to take care of some latency I'm getting on the mic and in that project with the piano.  Actually, it started then, but I never put that together.  Hmmmm...  And yes, it was working fine up until a few days ago. 

bapu

Old55

I thought I was the first one responding and I wound up being fourth or fifth.

And I thought my 1/2 finger typing method was slow.....

Your half-finger typing method?  I'm not sure I want to know what that's about. 

Just Sonar, Mike.  I haven't tried other programs yet (not quite awake yet this morning when I messed with it.) 

Janet, get your speakers hooked up ASAP and start narrowing down the possibilities.

Finally....


Permission to derail the thread.

Oh, you use X1?

Old55 goes home with the prize today.  It was the buffers. 

I first tried listening to music in other programs, then tried another project in Sonar (thought I'd DONE that before with no luck!), then came back, changed the buffer back to 256 instead of 64, where it was before...and no crackles!

I guess that won't help my latency problem, but I can live with that.  Makes me curious, but at least I don't have to buy anything right now.

Thank you!

Bubba...the cheese is in the freezer.  Sorry.  I'm afraid there's no becan right now though.  Rarely is, I'm afraid. :(  The half finger must belong to Bapu, although I have no idea how it got there.  You ARE being a good boy and only eating good-for-you things, though, aren't you?  Yeah, I thought so.  If I'm not careful, I may have to get more strict with myself too. :(

Thanks guys!  You're great!  :) Carry on with your weightier CH matters now.

Not to deviate too far from the typical CH path here, but I've had the same problem with crackling, drop outs, etc. in different versions of Sonar.  In my case, Sonar was not the problem.  For my rig, the issue was that the drivers for my audio interface gave me problems if I tried to reduce latency too low.  Even though the manufacturer claimed that their product was capable of extremely low latency, it really wasn't.  I went through a few different audio interfaces before I finally settled on something that would work for my DAW at the latency I wanted.  The very same audio interfaces that failed me have worked for many others here in these forums.  A friend of mine had similar issues and found that, as long as he didn't drop the latency too low, he could live with it. 

When I'm laying down tracks, I'll keep it simple with minimal VSTs in use.  I'll freeze tracks I can freeze and I might even bounce down and record in a separate project so I'm using only a minimal amount of system resources.  Later, I'll crank the latency back up and whip out the VSTs.  During the mixdown, latency doesn't really matter.

And yes, I'm eating healthier.  (Emphasis on "er")

Ed, yeah me too.  But I didn't have to go on a trip...just get a sit-down job this summer, close to my daughter-in-law who cooks way too well!

Bubba, I've never had problems with this sound card and I've done projects with 20 synths loaded.  Not quite sure what's going on with this one, since there are only 5 or 6 and 2 vocal tracks.  I'll have to check into it.  (And '-er' is a step in the right direction!)  :)

Thanks Tim.  I do have a small mixer and haven't had this problem before.  I'll need to do some more looking around I guess. 

Come to think of it, there was a small racoon, one red sock, and a Goodyear blimp stuck to the back of my head this morning.  It was sparking and crackling when I pulled it off.  The racoon, I mean.  The blimp is still holding on tight.

I had forgotten all about that.