Popping/clicking Clarett 8PreX
 

My Macbook Pro (specs below) running PT 2018.4 paired with the Clarett 8PreX was used on a location recording. I listened back to the tracks and on one of the tracks in a few places, there are some noticeable click/pops. I have come across this while running tests with this setup in the past, but it seemed to go away with a focusrite firmware and PT software update. They would present themselves while monitoring, too, in the past, not just while actively recording. Looks like it didn't go away. I had to run sections through iZotope and remove them manually. Ouch. Screenshot of the clicks in iZotope as an attachment. They're the really obvious thin vertical stripes across the spectrum.
Any idea what it could be? I need this to be a solid recording setup.

Macbook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports), 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3. MacOS Sierra 10.12.6.

Re: Popping/clicking Clarett 8PreX
 

I would suspect static discharge having to do with the microphone and/or cabling.

Re: Popping/clicking Clarett 8PreX
 

Key info would be IO Buffer size and clocking and are you using aggregate IO?

If recording live with no artist monitoring through Pro Tools get the IO buffersize as large as possible.

Especially sure you are not using Aggregate IO... it’s easy to end up with this selected by mistake as the playback engine and then have clicking issues with that. I would delete the aggreagate IO device to avoid this.

Is there any external digital audio or clocking source? Doubt that is the issue here.

Re: Popping/clicking Clarett 8PreX
 

Thanks for your response, Darryl!

I believe that "Focusrite Thunderbolt" always has to be selected as the playback engine when using it, otherwise you won't hear anything coming out. Sessions sometimes default to the Aggregate I/O when I open them and the interface is connected, and I know this because I won't be able to hear anything when playing back and have to go in an manually change the playback engine. Though I can run a test to see if this is indeed totally the case.

90% of the time I am using PT I am doing editing and not using an interface (and monitoring through headphone out on my laptop). Should I still delete the aggregate I/O? And if so, how? I haven't bothered to look up what it is, but I'm usually using it by default when just editing, but maybe I don't have to.

When referring to I/O buffer size, do you mean the H/W buffer? I currently have it set to the highest setting at 1024 samples.

I had the person who was doing the recording do all of the "recording best practices" on my computer: turn off wifi, no other programs running, do not allow disks to go to sleep, etc.

Stuff like this is maddening because it's so intermittent. Focusrite gave me some test to do, but just because I run it without any noise doesn't mean it won't come back.

Thanks again!