RME Babyface clicks, mutes & peaks VU meters. Any Babyface users seen this?

Hello all,

I´m having an odd problem with my RME Babyface and Sonar. Quite often when I play a project, there´s a loud CLICK and then silence. The project keeps on playing and the CPU meters look normal but no sound is being output. However, when this occurs, the VU meters on the master bus of Sonar is constantly peaking and the relevant meters i TotalFX do the same.

If I click "stop" and try to play the project again, the problem sometimes goes away. However, sometimes stopping does not help and I have to restart Sonar or do something hardware-related such as changing ASIO buffer in order to get the sound working again but these fixes are always temporarly.

Some observations:

* The problem is very random and some days are a lot worse than others.
* It seems to happen regardless of which project I´m working on.
* I have had it on two different computers, Win 7 AMD 965 BE and Win 10 XeonE3-1270 (both clean installed).
* I first saw this problem several years ago on Sonar X-series when I got my Babyface. Before then, I was using a M-Audio Audiophile (PCI) and didn´t have any similar issues.
* ASIO / WDM / WASAPI does not make a difference
* The problem does not seem to be accected by latency nor cpu-load
* If I export audio during this condition, the exported mp3 will be silent except for some clicks.


Screenshot (note Digicheck bits and TotalFX VU meter being peaked despite fader position):


Since I´ve had this problem ever after I got the Babyface, it´s easy to think that it´s to blame. On the other hand, it seems everybody but me are happy with their RME´s so I´m beginning to suspect my unit being broken. I don´t suspect the computer since I´ve seen the problem on two different platforms.

So, any suggestions? Are there any other Babyface users suffering from something similar? Could the Babyface be broken?

Yes, drivers & firmware are updated to the latest version.
 
Changing the buffer size (tried anything between 64 and 2048 bytes) does not make a difference.
 
However, the problem does seem to be more prone to happen on heavier projectsbut I´m not sure, most of the projects I´m working on right now are quite complex.

Good point! USB power is always on though the CPU is allowed to throttle, I changed it to 100% so with a bit of luck, the problem might be gone :) !
 

Sanderxpander
Check your advanced power saving settings, especially if you're on a laptop. USB power should be on at all times and CPU power/speed always at 100% when working with Sonar.

I would go here, they have excellent support: http://www.synthax.com/index.php/contact.html

Latest version & all updates. But I used to see this more often with certain plugins, channel tools included. However now it seems more random.
 

sharke
I used to see this but not any more. Are you running the latest version of Sonar? Because there were a couple of plugins which caused this issue which have since been updated. I think it was the concrete limiter and channel tools. In fact channel tools used to do this to me all the time. 

lv455
* If I export audio during this condition, the exported mp3 will be silent except for some clicks.

This kind of rules out hardware/driver issues as the interface does not get involved in offline rendering  - unless possibly you're disabling Fast Bounce...? I assume not because MP3 encoding does not play nice with real-time audio export.
 
My first guess would be that some plugin or Audiosnap stretching is not playing nice with the 64-bit Double Precision Engine. I suggest you disable that for a while and see if the problem still occurs.

Sorry, I was a bit unclear in the posts above. No, since I disabled CPU energy saving features, I haven´t had a single hiccup. However, I have only done basic testing and sometimes I might have several days without any issues.
 
Edit: Good point, I actually had some "HD Audio" belonging to the GPU but I disabled them during my last trouble shooting session.
 
 

Sanderxpander
So it's still happening? Do you have any "HD Audio" drivers enabled in the device manager? That belong to your video card HDMI output perhaps? Try disabling those completely. 

I see you have a Babyface as well and since you´re the only one aware of with this issue except for my self, my theories about this being a Babyface issue suddenly got a little stronger. However, I don´t understand why this would affect audio exports.
 
Yes, latest version of Sonar (and Babyface drivers as well).
 

sharke
I used to see this but not any more. Are you running the latest version of Sonar? Because there were a couple of plugins which caused this issue which have since been updated. I think it was the concrete limiter and channel tools. In fact channel tools used to do this to me all the time. 

I am not sure what is causing your problems, you have gotten really good advice here too.  I do not normally export to mp3 but use flac and sometimes wav and have processed some large files and never had my Babyface act up in that scenario, or any situation for that matter.
It is possible you have a defective unit.
BTW:
I swear by RME having used their gear for over 5 years without issue, I now own three RME audio interfaces:
I have an RME HDSP 9632 at home with Sonar Platinum and Win 7 Pro on an i7 desktop with 18Gb of ram.
On the road I use a Babyface with my Laptop, a decent Lenovo with an Intel i5 and 8G of ram running Windows 7 Pro and Sonar X3e. Never had a problem with the BF on the road <close to a year of road time by now>.
This last trip I forgot my BF so I picked up the Babyface Pro.
Wow! what a difference, the Pro is incredible, it just seems to have more 'guts' is even cleaner, if that is possible and seems to have more headroom. Now that I am back home I want to try the BF Pro on my home machine in place of the HDSP 9632. Perhaps I will keep using the BF Pro at home too!
 
Check with RME and let us know how you make out. Cheers, Dave
 

Thanks, I might add that if the Babyface would be broken (I bought it second hand for several years ago), I would probably get the Pro. However, it seems that I´m not getting the Pro right away since my BF is working fine but the Pro seems to be a very nice unit indeed.
 

cw4davo
 
This last trip I forgot my BF so I picked up the Babyface Pro.
Wow! what a difference, the Pro is incredible, it just seems to have more 'guts' is even cleaner, if that is possible and seems to have more headroom. Now that I am back home I want to try the BF Pro on my home machine in place of the HDSP 9632. Perhaps I will keep using the BF Pro at home too!
 
Check with RME and let us know how you make out. Cheers, Dave