Hi Gerry,
I haven't had issues lately and was pretty happy with my setup but I completely recabled my entire Control Room and did a number of updates. Hence i need to thourougly test everything before going into production mode ...

Do I understand the problem correctly that when you get crackles you get it in the first few seconds of the first recording after opening Sonar? If it does not happen there, it doesn't crackle later either?

Rob[atSound-Rehab]
Hi Gerry, 
I haven't had issues lately and was pretty happy with my setup but I completely recabled my entire Control Room and did a number of updates. Hence i need to thourougly test everything before going into production mode ...

Do I understand the problem correctly that when you get crackles you get it in the first few seconds of the first recording after opening Sonar? If it does not happen there, it doesn't crackle later either?

Yes. This is different from the intermittent playback crackles we've discussed before. This is far worse, because you can be recording a vocal which sounds great, then to find it's filled with constant crackles. If you open a CWP file and record for 1 sec and it doesn't crackle then it won't all of a sudden start as long as you don’t close and reopen file. 
 
You don't have to close Sonar or reboot, just open a new CWP or even the same one and you can then get crackles. It's like a faulty initialization of the file on opening it. Once you get this sort of crackle, every single recording after that will crackle until you close and reopen the file.
 
If you haven’t installed the new firmware, I’d caution you on even trying it, because as someone else posted the AVB is quirky about rolling back the firmware, I experiences the same nightmare. Right now I’m using the latest Oct 2017 software and the previous firmware Sept 2016. I still get the intermittent crackle, pop, or glitch in playback, but I can deal with that. It goes away

Thanks for the detailed info. I will keep a close eye on this during my test phase today and tomorrow.
 
I'm on the latest firmware and actually intend to stay there (fingers crossed) as MOTU introduced some nice features when you have several units network via AVB (e.g. like channel name forwarding which makes handling large setups much easier).
 
BTW, we might have discussed that before but does it also happen with all other USB devices unplugged except for the MOTU??? The reason I bring this up again is that I repeatedly have problems with the Roland A-Pro MIDI controller which is connected via USB. Although working perfectly by itself it has some really negative influence on other devices e.g. I could not launch USB control software of other devices while having the A-Pro on until I moved that to a different port on the main controller ... and I also remember getting crackles in the MOTU recordings due to the A-Pro being switched on and just sitting there idle. I discovered this by pure coincidence but back then it was fully reproducible. (Hence I will part with this controller pretty soon ...)

Rob[atSound-Rehab]
Thanks for the detailed info. I will keep a close eye on this during my test phase today and tomorrow.
 
I'm on the latest firmware and actually intend to stay there (fingers crossed) as MOTU introduced some nice features when you have several units network via AVB (e.g. like channel name forwarding which makes handling large setups much easier).
 
BTW, we might have discussed that before but does it also happen with all other USB devices unplugged except for the MOTU??? The reason I bring this up again is that I repeatedly have problems with the Roland A-Pro MIDI controller which is connected via USB. Although working perfectly by itself it has some really negative influence on other devices e.g. I could not launch USB control software of other devices while having the A-Pro on until I moved that to a different port on the main controller ... and I also remember getting crackles in the MOTU recordings due to the A-Pro being switched on and just sitting there idle. I discovered this by pure coincidence but back then it was fully reproducible. (Hence I will part with this controller pretty soon ...)

You definitely need to do the crackles test I put in my first post. If you use Alt-F you can close and reopen a file in about 5 sec, no need to reboot Sonar. It'll take about 5 or 10 min to fully test it. If it passes that test use it.
 
I did try lots of USB variations and even bought a USB hub which ties up 1 USB 2.0 slot. I have 9 USB devices, 7 are on the hub and the AVB is in a 2.0 slot (I've tried different ones) and a midi interface used only for Studiomix automation is in a 2.0 slot. I plug my backup HD's i only at the end of the day for backups and always disconnect it while using Sonar. 
 
Keep me posted!
 

 

For the last 5 months I've used the old firmware from Sept 2016 with no crackles, like I described in the first post.
 
 I started using CbB about 3 weeks ago with no problems. Today I upgraded to the latest AVB software and new firmware. I did my usual test as outlined above and noticed the crackle problem is still there. I then reverted back to the old firmware and left the software as the latest and the crackles went away. 

After all this time I'm surprised that MOTU has still dropped the ball on this issue. Has anyone else noticed this problem or found a solution?

The problem is finally fixed after I installed the newest firmware and software
MOTU Pro Audio Installer 4.0 (76926), MOTU AVB 1.3.4+617 for UltraLite AVB and Stage-B16
 
I'm using CbB 2018.07 with all Win updates current

Hi Gerry,
 
Glad this issue is resolved.
You might want to change the thread title... so folks know it's been resolved (those that don't read thru the entire thread).

gmp
The problem is finally fixed after I installed the newest firmware and software
MOTU Pro Audio Installer 4.0 (76926), MOTU AVB 1.3.4+617 for UltraLite AVB and Stage-B16
 
I'm using CbB 2018.07 with all Win updates current

Thanks for the update, Gerry!
I had an eye on that over the entire year but did not run into it with the MOTU 1248 AVBs which I mostly use (it's different hardware/firmware although probably similar inside to a large extent)