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  #1  
Old 08-12-2004, 12:46 PM
Ray Campbell Ray Campbell is offline
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Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
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Default Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

I'm having a problem when routing audio through a bus to another track. I (intermittently) get a static-y crackling noise.

I first noticed it using Melodyne and thought that it was a problem with their RTAS Melodyne Bridge (since their website had a note about it crashing PT).

Now I'm getting it with Reason while trying to render MIDI into Audio via ReWire.

It seems to be an artifact of the audio coming in. If there's no audio, there are no crackles. When some audio passes through, there's a couple of seconds of these static noises that come through -- like pulling a sweater over your head (for those that have hair ).

It will work fine for a pass, the next pass there will be crackles. Quit Reason & PT and relaunch (or reboot) and it's fine again for a pass or two, then crackles again.

Very frustrating.

PT|HD hardware
PT 6.4
OS X.3.4 (Panther)
Reason 2.5

Ray

Update: I just had a similar experience routing audio in through the 192 I/O into an AUX input, then through a bus to an audio track, except it was *continuous* crackling. This time, merely selecting a different bus fixed the problem rather than restarting.
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  #2  
Old 08-13-2004, 08:14 AM
Ray Campbell Ray Campbell is offline
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

Well so far I've:

- Run DigiTest with all passes
- Created a new, empty session, and "track transferred" all the tracks into the new session. Still crackles.
- Did a "Save Copy As..." to a new partition, copying all audio and data. Still no love.

Nothing seemed to work. I tracked it down to what appeared to be a single track with the "send" in question. With the send fader popup open, I could see meter activity even when stopped, and the crackling coming through on the corresponding Aux input.

In what I thought would be a feeble (and useless) process, I:
- created a new audio track,
- copied all the audio from the offending track to the new track via Cmd-Opt Drag,
- duplicated all the plugins via Opt-Drag,
- Set up the sends:
Send 1 to reverb, which has never had the crackling, and
Send 2 (Bus 3), to the Aux Input with a PitchBlender plug on it.

Well, this seems to have fixed the problem. I've worked for the past hour or so with no further crackles. Which, quite frankly, mystifies me.

Can an individual track in a session become corrupted somehow? Not the audio files, because they're the same files, but somehow the track in the TDM mixer?

I hope this is finished, and maybe this will help someone else "bypass" this problem.

If anyone has any bright ideas what may have gone wrong, I'd like to hear it.

Ray
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  #3  
Old 08-15-2004, 08:42 AM
Tom Pfaeffle Tom Pfaeffle is offline
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

I am having this problem also. My situation is a bit different. I am using Pro Tools as a mixer using busses as summing sections for groups of instruments (drums, guitars, bass, etc.) not using sends but using busses as outputs. Then creating stereo aux inputs and setting the input to the appropriate buss pair.

I am running a dual gig G4, HD3 system, Control 24, PT 6.4. I recently installed PT 6.4cs5 and started getting this same crackle on random tracks after a few passes.

When clearing meter red peaks by either the "clear peaks" button on the C24 or manually clearing peaks by holding down "option" and clicking in any meter ladder, pro tools unexpectidly quits.

These problems only seem to have cropped up after installing the 6.4cs6 update.

Help Digidesign!
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  #4  
Old 08-16-2004, 07:08 AM
Ray Campbell Ray Campbell is offline
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Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

Well, my problem has not been resolved. It seems changing the bus routing, or altering a plugin in some way will clear up the problem for a while, then during playback at some point it returns.

My problem seems to be related to one particular track.
It is configured as:
* Insert: BF76
* Insert: Aphex Aural Exciter
* Send: Bus 1&2 (to sterto AUX w/ reverb inserted)
* Send: Bus 3 (to mono AUX w/ PitchBlender mono-to-stereo inserted)

The AUX with PitcheBlender also has a send to Bus 1&2 for Reverb.

The crackling shows up on the Bus 3 Aux track (with PitchBlender) and also on the Bus 3 send meter on the audio track in question.

Nothing on the Reverb Aux (except as comes through the send from the crackling Aux track).

Recently, I have tried
- Deactivating the Aural Exciter plugins
- Creating new audio files for all of the audio on the track in question (via AudioSuite Duplicate)

I assume from the lack of responses, this is not a common problem, but some advice and/or suggestions would be appreciated.

Ray
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  #5  
Old 08-19-2004, 05:50 PM
Ray Campbell Ray Campbell is offline
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

Well, I was hoping to just put my head down, finish the track that I'm working on, hopefully getting a BTD without any crackling, and move on, assuming that my problem is the result of a corrupted session or some file in the session.

I plugged in a guitar to record a track, and... crackling at the 192 I/O input now !!! Nothing going on, nothing playing, just static.

On a hunch (and because I was running out of DSP), I turned off Automatic Delay Compensation, and all the noise went away.

Time will tell if it stays that way.

I did install latest 6.4.cs5 and 6.4.cs6 updates in an attempt to resolve this.

Could this be caused by ADC, or perhaps some plugin that has not been properly updated for ADC?

Ray
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  #6  
Old 08-19-2004, 07:33 PM
music music is offline
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

I am having the same problem. Intermittent crackling or static with everything. I called digi and they suggested I work on my scsi chain. I have a scsi 128 atto card, a digidrive, and two internal wide drives. I am buying terminators and I put on a new scsi cable. I have not tested non-scsi drives yet. Is your system scsi based?

Other than that I have seen a few threads that might point to adc.

Not sure yet. I am still working on it.

All the best. If you find an answer let me know. I will do the same.

Thanks,

Keith
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  #7  
Old 08-20-2004, 06:02 AM
TCDet TCDet is offline
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

I started noticing this as well (CS5 and CS7 PI-cs6)
FW drive. Went to my scsi drive & it was less but still happening.
This happened a while back in my jaguar / mix system. I never had this in 6.4 until the cs updates. (???)
OS 10.3.4 G4 dual 1Mhz 1.5Gb ram
HD3, atto 128 & FW drives (never used together)
Maybe trash all the digi database & prefs out?
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  #8  
Old 08-20-2004, 06:34 AM
baro baro is offline
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

Westerday I started having that crackles trying to transfer film mix thru Dolby Surround Plug-in's Lt Rt ,via AES/EBU to DAT. I had them even over the reference level part from the beginning? Avoiding Dolby plugs and their busses it stopped.No matters if ProTools is running-I just got crackles in digital out if there some signal on it -1000hz tone for example! I did trash database and prefs , no difference.
Maybe Dolby Decoder buggs the IO setup somehow , I don't know?
OS10.2.8 G4 Dual 867 1g ram PT6.2 HD1 192I/O.
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  #9  
Old 08-20-2004, 11:08 AM
losttimestudios losttimestudios is offline
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

Same problem of cracking and bursts when Native Instruments B4 (as RTAS) and Midi track to drive the B4 are instantiated. Prior thread suggested crackling problem was w/ the B4. Now, I have my doubts. Digi: Any fixes?
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  #10  
Old 08-20-2004, 11:30 AM
PTUser NYC PTUser NYC is offline
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Default Re: Crackling Audio Through TDM Bus

Hey everyone,

Crackling is the sound you hear when you don't have a constant stream of digital information arriving on time, and clocked correctly.

There are lots of causes.

A bad clock, drives that can't deliver enough bandwidth in time, plug ins getting hung up in their calcuations, almost anything that can go wrong with a digital audio stream will cause crackling.

When de- and then re- instantiating a plug in cures the problem, then you can guess that the problem was with the plug. When resetting the clock fixes it, you have sync errors.

For example, I have a kludged fix for Reason under OS9 that includes a cheap audio card to route Reason OUT of and into the SPDIF input of my converters to bring up in Pro Tools. It works pretty well, but from time to time I get crackles. Simply going under the preferences menu in reason, and selecting something other than the audio card, and then the audio card again fixes it. Obviously the card isn't staying in sync with sound manager or something.

The point I'm making is that the symptoms may be similar, but the causes of the problems in this thread may be diverse. I hope there is one easy fix, but for the benefit of those trying to troubleshoot, I thought I'd offer this advice:

Crackling is the main symptom of any number of problems in Pro Tools. Read other people's solutions and try them, but don't exclude your own theories on the basis of other people's discoveries and successes dealing with their possibly unrelated clicking?
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