What causes this weird crackle?

[TheStudioGuy]

Here's a bass track from a project I'm working on. The audio has a crackle. Here's what it looks like. Any idea what causes this?

[dr_daw]

I would need to be able to hear it, that may help. It can be any guess as to what it is....bad patch cable, if a pedal was used, damaged soldering in the bass etc....It would be safe to say that whatever was recorded had some form of distortion pre A to D.

[TheStudioGuy]

There's no distortion really, just a crackling in the top end.

The signal path was Roscoe Bass(Active) to Grace 101 Pre to HD IO.....

Thanks.....

[DetroitT]

Sound to hear would be more useful.
"crackle" throughout the recording?

[dr_daw]

HA...ok. Well, I don't mean distortion in the sense of Pantara or Slayer. I mean in the sense that it is an alteration of the the original or expected waveform. That crackle in the high end, is a form of distortion in that it is NOT there originally.

From second glance, the period of the 'distortion' it seems like it is definitely something time based. Again, an audio example is the only way to be able to hear what is going on. There are plenty of us on here that can tell the difference between a clocking crackle and a bad solder. Without that you're shooting in the dark looking for a response. From what I can see though, your best option is to re-record the bass. Outside of that, look for whatever izotope plug that will rid crackles from s***ty recordings.

[Rob Da Silva]

Just a s-w-a-g but it looks like the active circuit needs a fresh battery. Roscoe makes kick-ass basses but they are only as good as the power supply. I've seen this in 3-band circuits when batteries start to drop voltage. It always affects high freqs first. If that fails, swap out the cable to Grace. Next in line would be the cable from Grace to HD IO.
Good luck.