Clicking and distortion until making a change to audio engine

[dbrohrer]

Hello!

This is my first post to any of these forums, so please excuse if I leave anything out - I will try to be thorough!

The issue I have been running into first began happening to me when running PT 11. Basically, once I start adding in digital instruments, especially Kontakt player instances of strings, brass, or even Session Drummer 3 (not in Kontakt), all audio suddenly begins to have constant clicking sounds. This happens seemingly randomly. Some sessions don't even have digital instruments and still begin doing this. The clicking is present during playback, but also when paused and just playing a digital instrument. Once the clicking starts, it only gets worse, until eventually playback is a distorted mess, even sounding like tritones are being played.

Once the clicking has begun, it is there to stay until I restart PT OR change my playback engine buffer size to something else, and then back to 1024, almost like just refreshing it fixes the problem.

I have been searching for an answer to this, but have been unable to find any post that can give me an answer on how to fix this. I thought it was a problem with my low-RAM computer, so I bought a new PC with the below specs, and upgraded PT to 2018.

Computer specs:
Processor: Intel(R) Core (TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20 GHz (8th Gen, 6-core)
RAM: 32 GB (31.9 usable)
System type: 84-bit
OS: Windows 10 Professional 64-Bit
Using ASIO4ALL as playback engine
PT installed on 1 TB M.2 SSD, which also holds the OS

I have done all Avid-recommended Windows optimizations, and am not using dynamic plug-in processing. Disc cache is set to Normal.

I thought that 32 GB of RAM, upgrading to the newest PT, and an amazing processor would fix this issue, but it still happens.

Attached is my full PC setup (upgraded motherboard to Gaming 7, and Windows to Professional).

Thank you all in advance for the help - the whole reason I bought this brand new PC was to fix this, so the fact that it is still present is frustrating. Hopefully this can help others as well!

[dbrohrer]

Here is a link to a video of what is happening: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eZe...ew?usp=sharing

Thanks!

[BScout]

Using ASIO4ALL as playback engine

Get a real ASIO audio interface. You are running into the limitations of your audio card.

[dbrohrer]

Thank you so much for replying so quickly. I currently have a Scarlett 2i2 and a Behringer UMC1820 interface. Would I be able to use those? They are USB audio interfaces.

To be honest I'm not sure how an interface is used in the context of a playback engine.

Should I look up high quality audio cards to find a solution?

I appreciate your help, they don't teach this stuff in college!

[BScout]

Yes, both of those have ASIO drivers. Use one of them.

The quality of your audio card/audio drivers dictates the performance ability of your system. Focusrite has had problems with the Scorlett drivers which I don't know if they've properly sorted.
ASIO4ALL is a quick fix to use audio interfaces that don't have the required ASIO drivers but it is not a solution if you are trying to truly use a system for any level of performance. You audio interface needs optimized audio drivers that can only come from the manufacturer of the audio interface.

Some well known, extremely well written audio drivers are for the RME audio interfaces. But since you already have some other audio interfaces, you should try them first.

[albee1952]

I'll toss out one more thing to think about; The power supply is a tad small(at 550 watts) and it is possible that the cpu is starved for current(check the 12V rail amp rating). I had a 550 watt PSU in my second i7 build(was a 950 cpu in an X58 motherboard) and the rig was constantly running out of power and throwing errors. On the advice of a friend that is a PC wiz, I upgraded the PSU to 700 watts and problems went away.

Will it fix your rig? I don't know. But I do now recommend 700 watts as the smallest for an audio machine

You might also look into the motherboard specs and see what RAM options exist. For example; my X79 rig can run quad-channel RAM and that means 4(or 8) matching sticks of RAM. If your motherboard is capable of quad-channel, its possible you might get a performance boost if you added 2 more sticks of RAM(exact same brand/model/part number), and which slots you use may also be important. Just food for thought