Ear Piercing distortion at random times

[Sunzate]

Ok so this is the most dangerous problem I've had with protools so far:

Recently, since updating to 7.3, there have been moments during recording when a short burst of EXTREMELY LOUD white noise has blast through the speakers and scared the [bleep] out of everybody in the room. It's dangerous, digital and unexplained. I have seen no errors or redlines to indicate that anything has gone wrong.
I need to know if this is an isolated incident, and that my computer is to blame, not protools. I will be pretty upset if this is a protools error. What the heck is going on?

Thanks
Adam

[wolfskin]

Sun, I have this problem every once in a while as well (very rarely)... My guess is that when you 'beat up' the computer with lots of plugs or lengthy sessions, it sometimes can't keep up. This is when I notice this occuring. Fortunately, my experience has shown that it is not the audio files, just a matter of the playback engine working hard...

If it happens more frequently as time goes by, I'd try shutting down PT and restarting the computer... Also, keep your hard drives de-fragmented, and try not to exceed 75% of the available space...

I'm sure others can post their experiences / suggestions which might be more useful, but her's a start...

[JMS40]

The "loud screech of death" rears it's ugly head from time to time. It's almost always plug-in related. For what it's worth, it happens on other platforms as well.
Do you have any 3rd party plugs installed?
The bundled TRacks was a recurring problem a few versions ago.

[Sunzate]

The "loud screech of death" rears it's ugly head from time to time. It's almost always plug-in related. For what it's worth, it happens on other platforms as well.
Do you have any 3rd party plugs installed?
The bundled TRacks was a recurring problem a few versions ago.

OH T-RACKS!
I have that. I haven't updated it lately either.

Digi - any advice beyond that? What's your official statement?

[JMS40]

How old is your version? I would check the IK site for the latest update you are entitled to.

Search the DUC for "loud screech of death" going back at least 3 years. You should find multiple threads including, as I recall, statements from Jason at IK Multimedia.

[Ke productions]

I'm having the exact same problem as well. After about two or three hours, PT goes crazy with this LOUD SPEAKER DESTROYING WHITE NOISE DURING PLAYBACK. It happens on different tracks even when theres no plugin installed. Anybody else have a non plugin related solution???

[easyb]

It's a very old but still alive issue. Check out for instance this thread :


Re: Blasts of white noise in LE systems. Forever?

http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...o=&fpart=&vc=1


EasyB

[JMS40]

As I mentioned above, this issue is not isolated to Pro Tools and Digi hardware. There was a discussion on the Cubase forum about this back in December. And as EasyB points out in the other thread, it can be mind numbingly random and very hard to isolate.

My only first hand experience was definitely plugin related but I realize that is not the complete answer. Sync issues are also often cited as suspects.

All I can say for sure is that I'm very grateful my issue is years in the past now. Once you've experienced it, you avoid it like a root canal. If it had been an unsolvable problem with DAW use, I'd have gone back to tape a long time ago.

Good luck. I hope you find an answer.

[DigiTechSupt]

If this is an original Mbox, then make sure you've installed the v22 firmware for it, as there was a problem with white noise bursts with previous firmware versions.

Other than that, it's like the rest of the thread said - it's very likely plug-in related, or can be caused by other software conflicts.