Pops and Clicks in playback

[photomatt]

Using Mbox2 mini through windows 7 and pro tools le. Have 4gb of DDR3 ram, core duo 2.2ghz processor. I keep the CPU RTAS usage under 30%. Playback engine settings are set to 512 samples and 2 processors. DAE playback is set to Level 2 and Normal Cache. Recently I've been noticing a lot of pops and clicks in playback. They aren't recorded, and never show up in the same place twice. I can also hear them even when not in record enable mode, and not playing anything back. What could be causing this, and how can it be fixed?

[BradLyons]

Do you have a secondary hard-drive?

[photomatt]

Yes, 2 actually, but I'm recording and saving directly on the computers internal hard drive.

[Fastermouse]

First!



You should never record to your system drive.

IMPORTANT! You MUST use a secondary hard drive (not your main OS drive) for recording and playback of audio in Pro Tools. Recording or playback from the OS drive is known to be problematic and the cause of many different error types. If you are using your system drive and encountering errors, the first thing you should do is get a compatible drive. USB drives are not supported and are known to be problematic, so please do not use them with Pro Tools. If you're recording or playing back from a USB drive and are getting errors in Pro Tools, please switch to using a compatible external firewire drive or internal SATA/ATA/IDE drive and disconnect the USB drive.

[TOM@METRO]

Is this a 64bit OS?

[photomatt]

Thank you all for your input (sorry, was working in jamaica the last 9 days!). It is windows 7, but it's not running in 64 bit. I have ordered an external drive that runs esata, so that should help. I have been noticing a lot more errors lately. So hopefully when I move all my files to the external, everything will be irie! I'll also add that everything I'm using is all legit, paid for, and digidesign approved. Wanted to throw that out to rule out other additional issues that can be caused by 3rd party and cracked software. Thank you all again for your help! I will repost once I move everything over.

[sw rec]

if you already have 2 other internal drives, why not record to one of them?

[photomatt]

I was concerned about lag and speed issues since they're external with usb 2.0, but relatively low speed. I purchased them for photo storage, so speed wasn't a major concern for me at that point.

[sw rec]

Yeah, USB drives won't work anyway. Externals need to be firewire.

[TOM@METRO]

Originally Posted by sw rec

Yeah, USB drives won't work anyway. Externals need to be firewire.

Or eSATA. At least they work for us.