Pops and clicks

They will have installed new video drivers. Perhaps these are doing some intermittent work in the background. You might like to try the DPC latency checker to see if there are spikes in your system.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Cheers, Peter.

try a different slot for your Pci or pcie card which ever you have..

I can't tell you what the problem is but I can tell you I'm in the same boat.  I get pops an clicks in Sonar X1b at irregular intervals but averaging about once a minute.  It seem to occur in Sonar but not in Reason or Record by Propellerheads.  It also only seems to occur through my m-audio USB interface and my m-audio firewire interface but not the sound card in the computer.

I did try running this tool

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
And I see bad spikes at about the frequency that I would have noise but I didn't yet try to see if those peaks occur simultaneously with the noise.

What OS are you using? If Vista or Win 7 do you have Aero enabled? Remember X1 is coded to take advantage of the high end cards.

Odds are you should do first what Peter says and try the DPC Latency checker to see if your new card's drivers are a culprit. I tried switching to an NVidia GT 220 last year and the DPCs were awful, ended up going back to the GeForce 9500 card. 

I need to amend my symptoms.  I do in fact hear the clicks and pops in Propellerheads Reason but only through the M-Audio Fast track pro, not through the computer's sound card.

The noise usually (but not always) coincides with red spikes in the DPC Latency Checker.

I think the problem in my case is not related to Sonar but either the m-audio drivers or my computer.  I've been using m-audio for quite a while so I'm reluctant to blame them but I'm new to Win7 also so maybe there's an issue with m-audio drivers under Win7.

If I could figure out what's causing the latency spikes in my computer that might fix it also.  When I disconnect the m-audio device the spikes still occur.

iiftmlis


I need to amend my symptoms.  I do in fact hear the clicks and pops in Propellerheads Reason but only through the M-Audio Fast track pro, not through the computer's sound card.

The noise usually (but not always) coincides with red spikes in the DPC Latency Checker.

I think the problem in my case is not related to Sonar but either the m-audio drivers or my computer.  I've been using m-audio for quite a while so I'm reluctant to blame them but I'm new to Win7 also so maybe there's an issue with m-audio drivers under Win7.

If I could figure out what's causing the latency spikes in my computer that might fix it also.  When I disconnect the m-audio device the spikes still occur.

WiFi?

Hi, are you using the same drivers in Sonar and Tracktion (meaning ASIO, WDM, WASAPI, MME) ? Have you tried to ajust latencies ?

Regards

Congrats! Good feeling isn't it? When in SONAR, you may also want to (temporarily) disable your ethernet card as well. They may get rid of that one last spike.

Have you made sure any motherboard monitoring is switched off? I found Gigabyte's EasyTune caused these problems on one PC and Asus' Probe on another. They basically kick out motherboard data at regular intervals with no regards to the applications running so can cause audio spikes. 

If the video card has HDMI outs, disable HDMI audio.

No HDMI audio and it's a desktop.
What puzzles me is that i have no problems of the sort in both Reaper 4 and Sonar 8.5.3.

Thanks for the tips guys. :)

PeterMc


They will have installed new video drivers. Perhaps these are doing some intermittent work in the background. You might like to try the DPC latency checker to see if there are spikes in your system.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Cheers, Peter.

I'm not sure if it is conclusive, but I did try this and when I disable the video card the peaks seem to disappear. I guess I should have gone for a better replacement graphics card (?). The new one that I have installed is a Radeon 5450 1GB card. 

@ emwhy: Thanks for the tip, i will try that.
What i did to test it in the 3 DAWs, X1, Sonar 8.5.3 and Reaper 4 (beta version just for comparision)
- New project.
- One track with EW Pianos.
- Import a midi item, the same for the 3.
- Fx Bin -> ArtsAcoustic Reverb -> choose a preset.
- leave the AAR GUI open/active/whatever:)
- Press play in transport
- Results by DAW:
X1- random clicks. It gets worst when i change something in AAR or even if i open an explorer window.
8.5.3- Nothing wrong happens, can change parameters and presets when playing, oh, clicks when i change presets on the fly
Reaper 4- All normal as far as i can tell. I think Jbridge works better than BitBridge.

Also, a member posted here a thread about clicks using Altiverb, i'll check it next.
Edit: Checked it and it seems that Altiverb 6 doesn't work in a x64 DAW on a X64 OS.

Just to be clear, i'm not pointing the finger at X1, i'm just trying to figure this out.
It can even a problem with AAR, i'll check their forum.
P.S. AAR does have a 32/64 bit toggle switch, it doesn't matter which one is enabled though.

@ Marshall: Sorry for using your thread it wasn't on purpose, i thought we had the same issue that's all. Anyway, if your previous graphic card was a nVidia one and they didn't clean up the nVidia drivers from the system they could be conflicting with ATI drivers. I think nVidia has an app to clean up their drivers off the system.

Marshall: i agree the card you have should work ok.. usualy NEW
motherboard chipset/inf drivers for the os your running (from) the
motherboards home page support and the latest video drivers will
do the trick, try that 1st, need help ask .. hehe

@ Peter: You could be right, i remember when i had an ATI card, there was an ATI application called CCC. That could be culprit.