White Noise/Static during playback w/Mbox & PT 6.4

[Josh Greenberg]

So here is the dilemma,

I have a dual 2.5 gig processor Power MAC G5, an MBox with ProTools 6.4, and Event 20/20 Bi-Amplified monitor speakers, just to give you an idea of the set up. The problem is that anytime I try to play anything back, I get this painful white noise/static through my monitors. Now, I figure it is some simple prefs or hardware fix, but I have been fiddling with this thing for 2 weeks now and can not figure out how to make it work properly. I want to get my monitor speakers up and running so I can make use of this new system I just got. Can anyone help me with the annoyance. I will need every posible fix laid out as well, because it could be many different things, I am not really sure, but from what I hear, this is a problem many people have.

PLEASE HELP ME!!!

Josh Greenberg
[email protected]

[walkdaplank]

what other software (plugs, etc...) are you running? Are you sure that everything has been updated? At times, if plugs are not updated to the current system (10.3.2, PT 6.4), then things get screwy.

how are your cables?

[Josh Greenberg]

No plug-ins are being run at all, this a completely zeroed session as for faders and plug-ins. I am just trying to play back a single audio file dry in Pro Tools and I get this loud obnoxious static out of my monitors on playback, plus, I just purchased the whole system, so as for plug-ins being updated, I just got the disks and installed them, so...I figure they are where they should be anyway, but i don't think that should have any affect on it. Thanks though!

[DigiTechSupt]

Hi,

Go to Setups>Hardware Setup and make sure that your clock is set to internal. Does the same thing happen if you load and play the demo session? Is the noise only during playback or does it also occur when Pro Tools is not playing back? Are you using a dedicated audio drive and does this happen if you use your system drive instead? Have you tried moving the Mbox to another USB port on your G5? You may also want to try updating the firmware in the Mbox to make sure that it is healthy. You can find the updater here:

http://www.digidesign.com/download/mbox/

Let us know what you find,

Thanks,

Digidesign Tech Support

[floriand D]

i have exactly the same problem with my digi002r. the clock is set to internal. it happens with both harddrives, the internal and the external. i use a powerbook g4 1,5ghz. this problem makes the work really hard and the band u record usually dont like that screaming noise on the headphone.

[Piers Gibbon]

myself and at least one other DUC-er have an ongoing discussion with the good folks at PT about a similar issue on our systems


with us it seems to be directly related to airport use..either on the network or internet


just a thought that might help you troubleshoot


good luck

[tiktok]

**WORKAROUND AT BOTTOM OF POST**

I'm having the same problem (white noise/static during playback, also incoming analog audio isn't recognized on either MBox channel, although monitoring through the box does work) with my Mbox and an iBook (OS 10.4). It happens with my sessions, new sessions I create for testing, and with the PTLE test session. I haven't installed any plugins, and I'm using a dedicated external audio HD. When I connect the Mbox and the audio drive to my home recording setup, an iMac running OS 9, I don't have any problems.

I've reset the I/O setup to defaults, on all four tabs, reinstalled PT, uninstalled PT using the installer (although I did get a message that some items couldn't be removed because they were in use, no other apps were running), and reinstalled PTLE 6.4. Personally I was wondering if the preferences for the I/O setting had been corrupted somehow, since I was using some sessions which had been created or edited on some 002 systems, but I would have thought the reset to Default or reinstall would have fixed that.


Update: I just installed PTLE on another iMac running OS X, and I'm not having any problems on that third machine.

Second update: creating a new user, then reinstalling into that user's account fixed the problem.