POPS and CLICKS (digital 'farting')
Sorry, this is uninetentionally cross-posted in the Sonar forum.
What in the world is going on?
Recently installed an M-audio Audiophile 24/96 with Pro-Audio 8 (I know old, but it came with my control surface, which is.. ) a (Peavey/Cakewalk) StudioMix. And I have so far untraceable intemittent pops and clicks. Under every configuration I've tried so far, I have gotten no consistent results. I have tried many different settings (buffers, latency, etc). I record a track and it sounds fine. Then I start over (or stop and start) and record the exact same track, changing nothing, and I get the 'ol pops and clicks. It happens on about 30% of takes. It happens regardless of input (ie guitar w/DI, mic through board, etc). And nothing I do seems to change that ratio (of good takes to bad.)
I'm about to do a demo with my band, so I would really love to get this figured out. So we don't waste time (and good takes!)
Some other details are below (what I know at the moment since I'm at work, ummm working):
Computer:
AMD 1.3
Via chipset
768mb RAM
2- 80gb HDD recently
ATI All in Wonder 8500 (acceleration off)
M-Audio Audiophile 24/96
Win98SE
Cakewalk Pro Audio 8
No other cards, all drivers recent to the best of my knowledge
Peavey/Cakewalk StudioMix control surface
set up with inputs to my very quiet soudcraft mixer, out of 2 aux sends, then to the ins of the control surface then into the Audiophile card.
Midi hookup for the control surface is through the midi on the Audiophile.
All levels (in the M-Audio utility and Cakewalk) have been checked a hundred times, are set plenty low, so it's not digital or audio clipping. And the pops and clicks appear at about the same rate (about 30% of the time) regardless of any of the levels settings as far as I can tell. So far I haven't stumbled across any single software setting that makes a difference.
I have followed all published troubleshooting ideas in the M-Audio manual and other official performance suggestions. (eg: making sure sampling rate and bit depth are the same throughout applications, turning off video acceleration, etc) but obviously am missing something.
The frustrating part is just how intermittent this is. How can I record a track, it sounds great, then erase the track (or delete the contents, or start a new project from scratch) using the exact same levels and then get (as my guitar player calls it) digital "farting?" Makes little or no sense to me.
Sorry to be so long-winded, just trying to be thorough. Thanks for any help!!!
Shawn
Proofread carefully in case you something out