It doesn't just crackle - it explodes!!

OK, it doesn't explode but audio sure is noisy!

I have a small laptop that I use for live gigs and I have used it for years with a Echo Indigo DJx soundcard which so far has worked rather well. The lap top is some dual core thing with Win 7 X64. Nothing is hooked up and internal audio device is disabled.


I have just reinstalled everything, trying to clean up the mess I've made of the system and there's not much installed besides Sonar, neccesary drivers and some utilities. I have always used it with ASIO drivers but when pressing space I get this insane crackling in the sound. It's useless. No matter what I set the buffers to it  starts crackling like there's no tomorrow. I tried WDM and it wouldn't even play along at all no matter what I did in the audio preferences. So I tried MME and it sounded fantastic. So apparently there's no physical issues with the audio card and the files are fine. 

Does anyone have simmilar expreience with Sonar and the Echo Indigo? And did you do something special to fix it? I'm all out of ideas. 

Please ask questions if something is unclear... which it probably is. 

Thanks! 

Hey Samhayman!


Thanks for that. This is weird indeed. Perhaps some bug. But, once again, since posting the first post I restarted the machine and Sonar and was able to successfully set it up with WDM drivers. Now it works perfectly - at least so far. 

I only use it for playback. If I need to perform I'm using something else but Sonar has been rock solid for years as a playback device on this machine. 

But I'm quite confused now, why did it suddenly work after fiddling around with it for so long?! I hope it remains that way. 

I too think it's a Sonar issue. Everything Windows play back sounded good. 

go figure

He he Jimbo, you may be right. It sure seems like it sometimes

Perhaps its the ghost in the machine?

I don't think its a bug. Crackling is usually caused by your computer or soundcard not being able to process the audio information fast enough. 

You should not be using MME mode. You need to use ASIO mode. Make sure you have the latest driver for the Echo Indigo. In the Indigo's control panel, set the ASIO buffer to 256 or 128 samples, whichever gives the best results. 

daveny5


I don't think its a bug. Crackling is usually caused by your computer or soundcard not being able to process the audio information fast enough. 

You should not be using MME mode. You need to use ASIO mode. Make sure you have the latest driver for the Echol Indigo. In the Indigo's control panel, set the ASIO buffer to 256 or 128 samples, whichever gives the best results. 

I know what you mean and on one hand I agree. What baffles me is this - and actually it's the same reason why I'm here on my laptop having a cigarette break while restarting my PC...


I just exported a 1m48s Wav for my client to preview. Opened it in Sound Forge and it started crackling and hearing dropouts.


I have Win 7 Ultimate 64bit, Intel i7, SSD hard drives, RME Babyface.

In the soundcard menu (not Sonar) I set samples to 1024 - that's HUGE but I still work with Sonar at a latency of around 23ms. I'm happy with that. I do heavy orchestration so I try to be kind to my CPU.

But why then, once I export, exited Sonar (since I chose not to share audio drivers), do I have crackling and dropout with Sound Forge playing a tiny Wav file?

I expect my system to handle this very easily!! So I don't know what to think whether it's hardware, software, the ghost or Windows being Windows...


EDIT: In my case this happens very very rarely. So perhaps I'm expecting things to run perfectly all the time.

daveny5


That doesn't sound right. I use 256 samples on my old Delta44 and I get 5.7ms latency and clear audio. 23 ms would not be usable to me. Are you using ASIO mode (and I don't mean ASIO4ALL)?

Yes I'm using ASIO not ASIO4ALL.

I know it doesn't sound right. When I was having constant problems due to my DPC Latency spiking up to 2000µs every 2secs - I was reading a bit here and there esp on RME forums and people were saying they go down to 64samples which translates to around 1.3ms.

I fixed that when I discovered it was my video card - now DPC never goes up beyond 87µs.

I don't understand anything about Hardware. I like to think it's because I use very heavy orchestra samples (like EWQL).

These settings work for me. I have between 80-120 MIDI tracks playing simultaneously each loaded with CC# data (particularly - modulation and aftertouch) and it runs smoothly without a glitch.

But like I said above - sometimes, very rarely it just goes a bit mad. But all it takes is a restart.

I would like to pay an expert on these things and set my system to optimum but the country where I live, there is no computer guru that specializes in DAWs systems. :(

Pragi


Wow pow,
you have  80-120 MIDI tracks playing simultaneously incl. Effects aso?
The RME babyface is an usb wonder.This are really a lot of different midi-tracks 
for an usb interface.
Pragi

Yep! It's a lot of tracks - that's why I don't complain about the 23ms latency.


As for effects, I start with 4 buses - 1 bus each for strings, brass, woodwinds and percussion. Then I 'Send' these 4 buses into a 5th bus with a sonitus reverb. So I only use one effect to help me with sonority and giving the orchestra sections some depth while composing.

During mixdown, I bounce all the track to audio and use a different reverb on each of the 4 buses.

It's an orchestra - so all I need to get for realism is good panning and depth so I don't use "fancy" effects so to speak - unless of course I'm going for the epic sound where I need to compress etc those big-sounding drums and percs.

But yes all this runs without a glitch :)

Hey guys!


Thanks for your input here. I try not to learn much about computer trouble. I'd rather spend the bran capacity on more interesting stuff. but I appreciate your thoughts on this subject as it still baffles me.

Anyway, seems like ASIO drivers are a no go. I have all the latest patches for Win7, the latest Indigo drivers and the latest Sonar build. I have never been able to set Sonar to use WDM drivers with this audio card - and frankly I haven't tried that hard since ASIO worked. Why it doesn't work now, I have no idea, but it's definitely a software issue. Perhaps there are some Windows update that have screwed this up, IDK.

Anyway, for some reason, after the aforementioned restart last night the WDM drivers suddenly worked. It defaulted at 20ms latency so I left it there since I was just going to use it for playback anyway. I'm happy to say that the system performed very well! I even forgot to plug the power supply into the wall socket and it performed for two hours straight on battery power without any hickups what so ever. not bad for an old frankenstein of a machine!

So I'm not going to mess any more with the ASIO drivers as long as the WDM drivers work. I will experiment with ASIO and shorter latency in Ableton Live. 20ms latency is a little much when using MIDI controlers. Hopefully it will be smooth sailing from here.

Thanks for all the input