Digitizing buzzes and noise - PT 7.1/Firewire 410

[hybridd]

hi. hope you can help out with this fatal problem. when recording i get intermittent crackling and digitizing buzzes. it's recorded to the audio file, not just input or headphone noise. it's been intermittent but now makes my system unusable. i've tried various combos of cables, bypassing preamps, going straight in, etc. any ideas what i can do to solve the problem other than upgrade everything?

I'm running

OSX 10.4.10
DP 1.25 Ghz PPC
1.75 Gb RAM
Firewire 410 - model 2 version 1 driver 18.2
PT 7.1

your help is much appreciated,

dean

[bradch00]

Has this system worked prior to now? Do you have an external disk (if yes, is it firewire and how is it attached).Secondly, do you have any plug-ins that could have expired? Have you attempted this with no plug-ins and are getting the same results?

[hybridd]

the system worked ok for years but has gradually degraded. i believe all the plug ins are the ones supplied in the entry level bundle - all digidesign.

i just tried to replicate the problem with all plug-ins off and i can't - everything seems fine. then i tried with plug-ins on and it's still fine. i looked at a track with the clicks recorded, zoomed in and can see they're about a sample long and perfectly symmetrical peaks so it must be digitizing errors.

i tend to get a lot of -9128 errors ("you are running out or CPU power. remove plug-ins or increasee CPU usage...") even with a few tracks (4) and no plug-ins. i'm set at 512 sample buffer, 2 processors allocated and 85% CPU usage. if i increase it, it'll be even more of a problem when i try to run reason in rewire, which is already virtually impossible - i have to record every individual instrument to PT one at a time with almost all other tracks disabled, because i get the 9128 error if i try to keep it running.

i quit other appplications and reboot before i open PT. are there other things i can do to improve performance? i know i'm asking a lot of questions but these problems have been hanging me up for a while and i'd like to resolve them as i finally upgrade my studio.

thanks for any help - it's much appreciated,

dean