I plan on recording my vocal ensemble every week when we sing so everyone can listen back to critique. I'm using a cheap HP Pavilion dv6 laptop with an i7 and 4GB RAM with an Edirol UA25EX interface. I'm simply opening a brand new session and recording a stereo config. Nothing fancy. No effects.

I noticed on the recordings that after about 15 mins of continuous run time, it gets a consistent jittery pop and click, like when you have latency set far too low. I think it was on WDM at about 30ms - which 30ms could be causing the issue (I only quickly just set up this computer with X2 and used defualt settings). I didn't get any dropouts at all. I noticed that the speed appeared to be increasing. Pitch remained constant but I swear we weren't singing that fast... There are also the odd pop or click here and there in the first 15 or so mins before everything clicks into crazy zap jitter mode.


It sounds like maybe a clock sync issue and the samples are being cut short? Where would be a good place to start troubleshooting this one? I don't have a lot of spare time so hopefully you guys can point me in the direction faster than lots of trial and error.


I am recording on to the C drive as this laptop only has one HD which could be the issue too. Would a USB HD be a better option? I don't have eSATA available else I would use that.


I'm set to the default sync settings - "Full Chase Lock", record buffer size 256, anything should be changed here?



I've never done long recordings like this before so don't really have an troubleshooting experience with it and it takes maybe half an hour even to test each new theory out!! Hence some guidance could cut my time down significantly.


Let me know if I need to supply any more info. Cheers

I think you should review the interface documentation.

That interface comes with drivers for Windows 7 and Windows 8 that are ASIO drivers, and those should do a much better job for you than WDM.

I recommend that you do the following:

1.  Make sure you have the latest drivers for the audio interface installed.  Here is the link to the downloads page for your audio interface:

    http://www.rolandus.com/p...details/970/downloads/

2.  Once that is done, go to the Windows Control Panel>Hardware and Sound>Sound>Manage Audio Devices - and make the Edirol the default audio device for playback and for recording.

3.  Now, go into Sonar, and close the Quick Start dialog box that pops up, then hit the letter 'P' on your keyboard to go into Preferences.  This is where you change settings in Sonar.

4.  Once in Preferences, click on Playback and Recording.  Once that opens, you will see a box labelled Driver Mode.  It seems like you have that set to WDM.  Click on the little arrow in the box, and click on ASIO.  Now click on Apply down at the bottom of the dialog window.  

5.  Now, click on Devices, and remove any checks that may be present for WDM and check all the boxes for your Edirol interface.  Click Apply.

6.  Now, click on Driver Settings.  There are a few things to do here.  First, the playback and recording timing masters should have been changed for you to your Edirol interface when you changed driver modes to ASIO.  Just make sure that is the case.  Now, you can have many different settings for Sample Rate, but whatever you set it to here MUST match the settings for your interface (we will get to that in a little bit).  I recommend you start with a Sample Rate setting of 44.1 for now.

7.  Still on the Driver Settings dialog window, click on the button called ASIO Panel.  This may or may not do anything.  Different vendors have different ways to get into the settings screens for their audio interfaces.  Some companies have you use buttons like this ASIO Panel button, and some have you instead use an icon that sits in the system tray at the bottom right corner of your Windows desktop screen.  So, if you click on ASIO Panel and nothing happens, do not worry, it just means they didn't use that method for accessing the interface settings.  If this is the case, click on Apply and then close out of everything - all the way out of Sonar and go to the next step.

8.  Review the audio interface settings.  OK, if clicking on the ASIO Panel didn't do anything. then look in the system stray for an icon for your audio interface and double click on it to open it up.  Either way, you should now have the settings screen for your audio interface up.  Since you set the Sample Rate in Sonar to 44.1, you need to do that for the audio interface too.  If you have a parameter called ASIO Buffer Size, or just Buffer Size, set that for now to 128.  (Some interfaces use something else for this, and you would need to read the documentation for your interface to get that).  The idea here is to start with a combination of Sample Rate and Buffer Size that should give you reasonable latency without audio dropouts and crackles and noise, and hopefully those settings are not too aggressive for your system.

9.  OK, now everything should be set for both your audio interface and for Sonar, to use ASIO drivers and your audio interface, and have some middle of the road settings balancing performance against sound quality.

10.  Now go back into Sonar, start up a new project, and see if your audio issues have been resolved.

Please post back with any questions, and also with the results of trying the above.

Hopefully, I haven't missed anything.

Bob Bone

Thanks, Bob! There are a few things I can tweak from that detailed list you provided there. I'll do so when I get a chance and report back. Cheers!

Hi Matt, I don't know if it's the same issue but I have a similar issue with my HP DV6 laptop.  I use a Motu Ultralite.  Everytime I run music, or a video I get what sounds like a loop.  This is where the sound drops out and then a noise feeds back.  It doesn't happen a lot but it can be annoying and maybe speaker destroying.

I will keep an eye on this post to see what the outcome is??

Ben

And, of course, in addition to Bob's (as always) excellent suggestions, there is the obvious "turn off your virus protectors and any wireless connections (Internet and Blue tooth)

When I see "Cheap HP...." I'm guessing it came loaded with "Extras" including virus protections and "system health" programs and third party programs that might be trying to butt in...
Best,
Rob

Not sure on the X2 stuff but I would also turn off the Auto Save feature if its on.

Also some other thoughts,
I like to make sure if it is used for anything outside of recording, go in and do the usual disk clean-ups, defrag, etc...

Keep other WIFI devices and cell phones away from it when recording

Make sure its plugged into a good clean power source for long recordings.  Ive had issues in the past where when say the Bass and Kick drum would hit the same time it would surge power in the building by hammering the PA System and then cause pops/clicks and spikes in the Wave form when recording.

Watch out for poor cable (Especially with inexpensive XLR cables) connections that might cause it from vibrations caused during playing.
 
ADDED
If you are just hitting record and then going to play and let it go,
Id also jack the Buffers up cause latency wont be an issue
 
Go over, Hit Pause and Save as ya get a chance during the session

How full is the HDD on it?

If that's all I was using the computer for, Id go and do a complete Out Of The Box restore on it and remove all the stuff that's been loaded on the system not required.

If you are using Windows 7, you can use a free program called DPC Latency Checker to graphically show any latency spikes present on your system.  If present, these spikes can come from either application/service software that is running or from badly-written device drivers for things you wouldn't ever suspect, or even from hardware.

I had occasion where latency spikes on a laptop were finally chased down to be from having the laptop battery installed in the laptop.  The battery pack was pretty much toast - not really holding much charge anymore, and somehow, in some way, it was causing spikes to the point of causing massive audio dropouts.

Other things could be things like wireless transmitters on some laptops.  These can cause latency spikes as well.  I learned to always make sure the wi-fi transmitter was turned off when using my laptop for audio processing with Sonar.

In Windows 8, some of the internals changed, and last time I checked, the DPC Latency Checker was reporting errant values.  I found other people had also reported this, and the recommendation was to use a different program, also free, called Latency Mon.  That does a great job as well of reporting latency issues.

So, depending on which version of Windows you have, try one or the other of the above, as a diagnostic tool in figuring out what is going on in your system.

Bob Bone

The pops and speeding up sounds like missing samples. The fact that it happens after 15 minutes makes me wonder about some Windows settings for what to do if you're not interacting with the machine.

I have my laptop set to run at top speed all the time, battery be damned.

So no Powersaver options.
You may have to look at both Windows AND vendor utilities here.
No screensaver.
No Power Saving on: CPU, hard drive, Display, nothing, period.
There are BIOS's which talk to Intel chips about throttling, so you may need to look there as well.

It's going to be a mildly long list, but you need to defeat all the settings that could cause Windows to dial any of your performance settings down due to the passage of time.

wdm is not native in windows vista or later.  wasapi mode replaced that - it's Microsoft's answer to asio.  so, only run in asio mode or wasapi mode.  think about getting one of these: http://www.alibaba.com/member/anian.html and slapping a second hdd in the laptop.