HELP!!! PTLE Glitches that ruin days of work!!!

[JohnDipper]

I've got an 002Rack, 1GHz Titanium PowerBook with 768Mb of RAM, and a Glyph 160Gb NetDrive with an 8Mb cache.

I have been recording vocal overdubs, and have noticed that little glitches and horrible saw-tooth style spikes appear (only for maybe 10 samples at a time) on otherwise nice vocal parts which are almost sine waves.

Initialy, I thought this maybe a power-spike, but, after a days worth of thorough illiminatinon, testing various things like Kettles, gas cooker igniters, central heating boiler pilot lights, and light switches, I have narrowed the problem down to Pro-Tools / the 002 Rack and I am sure that it is something that is happening after audio enters the 002Rack.

I'm using Pro-Tools version 6.4 and have done a fresh re-install to OS X 10.3.5 with the Bomb Factory plugins installed.

ALL cables are balanced and have been tested.

It seems that I am recording in (on any input of the 002Rack) and these really bizarre sharp transients suddenly appear - I have checked back and realise that this has been happening since January. :-(

I have ruled out power fluctuations as much as I can - all appliances bar the recording equipment being turned off,and all other circuits in the house being turned off at the main fusebox. (These tranisents or glitches also appear in sessions I have done at several other locations, and so cannot be to do with my electricity supplier).

I have done a clean install of OSX and updated to 10.3.5 and installed PT 6.4 and the Bomb Factory plugins.

All the transients look identical, so I wonder if it is a AD converter issue. Each section of the transiet/glitch is exaxctly 1 sample long - soes this lend any clues?

It only seems to happen on one 'side' of any particular waveform - as in, if you are recording to a stereo track, it is in the same phase on both channels.

I have been recording my own band - and these clicks have meant that 2 weeks of recording had to be done instead of 3 days!!!

If anyone has any ideas I woul dbe VERY VERY eager to hear them.

Thanks in advance,


John

[El-Kamfer]

i think i have the same problem with me stuff.

think you can post a picture ore maybe a sound file of this thing-....?
i`m just curious how it looks and what it sounds like...

[El-Kamfer]

It looks to me like its something similiar to the problem i`m having.

i have no clue what it is... i also have tried about everything.. different cables.
different locations...

I even tried a ups thing, but the problem still occur.

as i said.. i have no clue, but a friend of mine gave me the idea
that it might be the harddrive ore something..
that the harddrive, somehow.. don`t write fast enough.. and that it kinda "stumble"
so these clips appears.. hmm.. i dunno....


i zoom in on the area with the clipp on,
and i use the pen tool and just "write" the thing away...
and that can be exhausting with 10 minutes song

[·[-_-]· Richon]

i know this wouldn't help.... but i spend almoust 3 months fixing the same problem with 2 PC desktop conected to the M-box... sudenly changing the OS to a new one make the difference and all noises and glitches went away.... maybe you schould try instaling an older OSX... maybe it works

[wildstar]

Are you able to test out your rig on a different computer, or recording drive? It's a pain in the ass to install everything and try it out, but that would really help pinpoint the 002 as the culprit. Or can you borrow somebody else's Pro Tools interface and try recording onto your computer/drive set-up with another Digi interface?

El-Kamfer mentioned the drive as the potential soruce of trouble. That could be... Have you searched this forum for similar problems?

Sounds like a little bitch of a problem. I'm almost afraid to take a close look at some recent recordings.... Did you HEAR the problem first, or dig you notice it VISUALLY during routine editing? Are these glitches giving you audible distortion and/or artifacts?

[DigiTechSupt]

Did any of you try the 'General Troubleshooting' suggestions in the sticky at the top of this forum?

You should start there - this may be caused by corrupted preference files.

Also make sure that all drives have been formatted using the OSX disk utility and that journalling is OFF unless you are using Pro Tools 6.9. All wireless, bluetooth and Airport cards should be disabled before running Pro Tools.

Please let us know if this resolves the issue or if you have any further insight into the cause of the problem. Please list your complete system specs, including any peripherals attached to your computer.

[mr_e]

i have this same problem, but at the bouncing stage.

at first it was just one or two glitches here and there (which is still unacceptable) that i could pencil out but now when i bounce the same mixes there are numerous glitches and i am not gonna go back and edit every single bounce i do. that is just ridiculous.

i have tried all of digidesigns "solutions" and none have worked. this includes bouncing without plug-ins (you really shouldn't have to do this anyway i mean come on.)

also, where is this "sticky at the top of the forum?" you mentioned.

i came to the conclusion a while ago that it was a harddrive problem but now that i found this thread i think maybe it is a bigger bug than i origiinally thought.

before i go and buy a new harddrive and reinstall everything, does anyone have a fix that works?

[DigiTechSupt]

mr_e - are you sure all Airport, wireless and bluetooth devices are turned off or disabled?

Please post more info on your computer model, OS and PT versions and any peripherals attached to your computer (hard drives, printers, etc.).

[mr_e]

I am running a dual 533mhz G4 with a Digi001. OS 10.3.8 and PT v.6.4. There is a Western Digital firewire drive and a Que CD burner connected. No airport, bluetooth, wireless, nothing.

I thought the problem might be the firewire drive, but when I copied the sessions to my harddisk i still got glitches. a friend of mine suggested that it might be the fact that for some stupid reason I started new sessions to "master" the tracks and audio files were located outside of this folder, but i have had this problem on other sessions when this was not the case.

I have decided to purchase a new internal and external harddrive. i hope this helps. otherwise I will have to conclude that it is some combination of my machine and os x, since i never had this problem in os9. this would be a shame since the osx protools is much more stable with my dual processor.

[cheekypaul]

One question that hasn't been asked is , is there anything else running whilst you use Pro tools LE?

not as straightforward as you may think.

1st, go to utilities, open up CONSOLE. Arrange your record window and have aview of console at the same time. do you see anything update on the screen as you see a spike appear?

2nd, go to your account in the SYSTEM PREFERENCES, go to start up items, make sure there are no applications starting up at start up!

3rd, what else do you have installed? pay attention to any other programs that deal with time, audio or visual aspects.