Spikes - what are they?

[Stig Eliassen]

Sudden spikes could be heard in the studio speakers, and in the cue mix today. They appeared around the same places several times, but not exactly in the same spot, or sounding exactly the same each time. Very light session. One piano track, 10 vocal tracks and an aux for the reverb.

I tried a restart of all the gear, trashing prefs, volumes and database folders, and importing the tracks into a new session (copy on import). Didn't help. I then opened a way more busy session, and the spikes were gone. Opened the previous session again, and the spikes were back again.

So, I gave up, and went for dinner with said session still open. Came back, and now the spikes are completely gone. I've played back the most prominent spike areas a dozen times, but playback sounds fine.

Spikes - what are they, and where do they come from?

Thanks.

[Craig F]

funky power
mis-matched clocks
bad HD controllers
bad HDs
RF form cell phones or walkie-talkies

[Stig Eliassen]

Originally Posted by Craig F

funky power
mis-matched clocks
bad HD controllers
bad HDs
RF form cell phones or walkie-talkies

Thanks, Craig.

I got the same kind of spikes a couple weeks ago, and that was because I forgot to switch sync to optical when I streamed music from the Mac Pro into PT on the G5. What I experienced today sounded very similar.

You mention HD controllers - is it the disk controller you mean?

[Craig F]

yes disk controllers, I had a bad SCSI card that put spikes in the recodings

[Stig Eliassen]

Originally Posted by Craig F

yes disk controllers, I had a bad SCSI card that put spikes in the recodings

Did you get actual visual spikes in the recordings?

I don't know, the spikes came back today, but it's only with this session. One would think that hardware failure would affect all sessions, no?

[Craig F]

yes, they were visible in the waveform
we are talking the OS9, 9600 days

[Stig Eliassen]

Originally Posted by Craig F

yes, they were visible in the waveform
we are talking the OS9, 9600 days

I see, thanks. The waveforms aren't showing anything unusual.

[Stig Eliassen]

Took a picture of the spike I got after I printed a snippet internally in PT. I'm uploading a short video to Youtube now.

Thanks.

[Stig Eliassen]

Here's the video, if anyone's interested.

Frustrating, to say the least...

[Craig F]

it looks like the waveform flips polarity in the middel, it looks like 2 clips badly edited and consolidated

this is from your interface?