pops and cracks

[fransmo]

Hi!
I have problems with pops and cracks occuring evry now and then in a three minute song. Sometimes a long strech works perfectly but then suddenly... Otherwise the sound quality is superb, so it´s really frustrating not to be able to make a straigh recording of one song in PT. The pops sticks to the recorded signal.
This happens even in a plain vocal and guitar recording live. On the in-channels I have gate, eq and compression, on the tracks eq and send to D-verb which is placed on an auxilary track. No instrument plugins active. Just plain guitar and vocal live.

I´ve done all I can think of and taken all the advices on the digidesign website and manuals. This is incredibly timeconsuming. The system works well otherwise with other software like Cubase, Nuendo or Logic.

Intel P4 1,8 ghz/asus P4b/1 gig ram/250 hdd/m-audio audiophile 2496. Signal comes in digitally from Mindprint envoice sample rate 48. - no network connection active- no antivirus software active or firewalls or automatic update. WinXP sp2.

I had a porblem recently with cpu overload that you helped me solve hope you can help me with this one too! / fransmo

[Gunnell]

It sounds like a clocking problem. I'm not really familiar with the 2496 or mindprint but if you are coming into your interface digitally you're going to need the two pieces of hardware word clocked together. Even if they are both set at 48k, neither of them are going to be 100% 48k. That little bit of difference is what could be causing your problem. If it's not possible to word clock them together then I'm not sure, hopefully someone else can jump in. Hope this helps a little.

[spkguitar]

You're connecting the mindprint to the 2496 via S/PDIF?

You need to set the Clock Source in Pro Tools to S/PDIF. (Setup->Hardware)

[fransmo]

I find nowhere inside Pro Tools to do this. Only in the M-audio control panel and of course it´s already checked there. / yours fransmo

[DrChumley]

Post deleted by DrChumley

[Marcus S.]

set the Buffer size to 128 or 256 when tracking so there's no latency for the vocalists or musician, but then when you're done tracking, reset the buffer to 2048 samples to give the computer time to catch up with the work your doing - DrChumley

yeahh perfect post!

[spkguitar]

I find nowhere inside Pro Tools to do this. Only in the M-audio control panel and of course it´s already checked there. / yours fransmo

My apologies, fransmo, I'm confusing LE and MPowered (again).

[div32]

I had some pops & cracks too with Waves SSL and I actually had to lower my DAE buffer. Strange. Also laptop guys make sure your wireless connection is disabled.

[southboundloco]

it also helps and also a good practice when ur tracking not to do any processing. leave all the processing during mixing...i've experienced clicks and pops in the past when i was recording a live gig.most of the time its caused by devices not clocked to each other prperly...set pro tools to be ur clock source and everything else will just be slaved to it.

[fransmo]

Still having problems with occasional pops. Find I often have to take an audio file out and into Adobe Audition to be able to identify and manually erase the pops if possible at all. Takes a lot of time that I would like for more creative uses.

Might be something in that subject of the clock source. I use a mindprint preamp with a digital out as clock source to my M-audio Audiophile 2494. I can´t see where I can adjust this so that evrything will be slave to M-audio card and ProTools. CAn anyone help me to say if and how that is possible? /fransmo