Hi all! I hope someone can help me. My Focusrite 18i20 (2nd gen) has a random popping in every 10-15 mins, sounds like some kind of over-buffering or something. Can't imagine what is the cause, just had a clean system-install. Using Intel i7700k and and up to date Focusrite driver. I don't see any option overriding the buffer size in win 10. Thanks for your help!

 

I am struggling with the same issue for about 6 months, I have even returned my unit under the warranty, get another one and guess what - the same problem remains. These inferfaces are fucked big time, software is unstable, hardware is unstable you basically can't record with it anything because of notorious pops, clicks, glitches and other shit. You can't fix unfortunately, these interfaces are broken from the begining. I belive that there must be some kind of manufacture fuck-up in the last year and some of these 18i20 sec gen suffer from that, and that also explains why some poeple have 0 problems with it and some can't do shit with it because of its faulty performance. I am returining my 18i20 this month and I hope i will be able to pick up in exchange other brand. Btw I tested my 18i20 sec gen on 3 PC with windows 10 and 8.1 - the same problem occured on all of them. And now funny part - today I was testing it with MacBook Pro mid 2015 and suprisngly I had no problems. So.. fuck me or fuck this interface

 

Wondering were you using ASIO drivers when you tested it? Or just the normal USB drivers? Because i had the same exact problems you are having but somehow i managed to fix it with the latest drivers. I noticed it was the ASIO drivers whenever i used them in fl studio. It started to crap out.

 

Somekind of ASIO driver is provided with the scarlett drivers avalible on their website. I use what they give and it doesnt' work.

 

i had a long talk with focus rite about this .. i dont get random popping when the focusrite 1820 is the only box but when it has to be synced to with another box's clock even if the 1820 is the master clock it all screws up and starts popping i wanted to use mine to extend my inputs and outputs with cubase and it was impossible.. to sum it up the 1820mkII SUX i should have gone with RME or steinberg ...

 

I don't get all of the hype around the scarlett, this product line is one of the biggest audio bullshit of the last few years.

 

The only way to fix the popping is to reinstall the drivers. After that, you can test it and see what causes it. For me it was running Asio drivers in fl studio while running other programs that use audio simultaneously, it seems like the drivers conflict with something and it gets corrupted somehow. Also i have a habit of only turning the power switch on once windows 10 is booted completely. Currently running 2.3.3 on Win 10 with 6i6 2nd gen.

 

I've only had my 18i20 for about a week but I've managed to eliminate any pops and clicks and now have lovely clean recording. Here are some things which I did on my system that I think contributed to the result:

• Updated the USB drivers on my PC to the latest versions available
• Unchecked the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option from the Generic USB Hub and USB Root Hub components in Device Manager
• Updated my PC's BIOS firmware to the latest version
• Configured my DAW (Sonar) to not share the audio with other programs while it's running.
• Disabled the multiprocessing engine feature of my DAW (switching between the CPUs definitely creates clicks in Sonar)

I don't know if any of that might help you, but best of luck.

 

Windows 7?

 

What Keir said. Problems like that are somewhat unknown to me, unless the audio interface is broken. Maybe try to optimize your Windows for audio a bit like here: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/pc-optimization-guide-for-windows-10/ Except that I wouldn't run the DAW as administrator and prioritising CPU scheduler for background tasks doesn't always work better. One has to experiment with both settings. Other tweaks are pretty much spot on... also, it isn't so easy to find the best set of drivers as sometimes newer ones can be more problematic than older ones.

PC maintenance and optimisation is much more complicated than making chili beans, I can assure you. I make excellent chili beans and very fast computers, too, so I should know. <-- that's my sorry-arse attempt at a joke...

[seriously speaking, though, you would have less problems with Windows 7x64... but this advice 99% falls on deaf ears. ]

These optimisations should help and even bring ASIO latency down a bit. Now enjoy your nice Focusrite 18i20 audio interface!

Cheers!

 

Last edited: Mar 22, 2018

To all,

I used to have this poping when I first installed my new 18i20 II (Windows 7 64x). Please read this (on the linked page, go to REPLY # 28)

https://audiosex.pro/threads/help-me-decide-which-interface-to-get.33664/page-2#post-314885

Download the file and install. It solved my problem. Thanks to @taskforce

 

I tried that audio power settings a few months back, didnt work for me on windows 10 i had to solve the popping a different way. Currently using High Performace power settings.

 

I have experienced some issues with Focusrite in the past aswell. What I have done is turning off energy saving on all the USB ports, and I have turned off all my other audio drivers in the device manager aswell, including Realtek and NVIDIA for example. Now it's fine. Well, actually it still happens once in a time. Not sure why and how. I have a feeling it happens when I am changing the sample rate or something. Altough, what I do then is just removing the Focusrite driver and installing it again. It will then dissapear and therefore I can go on further. And of course also make sure that your driver and everything else is up-to-date. Anyway, I think I will also look for something else than Focusrite.

 

What I have done is turned off energy saving on all the USB ports, and I uninstalled all other driver and then reinstalled Focusrite driver now it works perfectly.

 

Exactly. It is clear that the driver somehow gets corrupted because of something you are doing. This is when you can identify the problem, pay close attention to what causes it.

 

Huh...
I've called on you several times to help a pleb with computer problems. I can vouch for your pool of knowledge, but I have no way of verifying that you can make great chili.

Shall I send you my address, or...?

 

Yes, that's true. You also can actually solve so many issues by only restarting or reinstalling in general. I think it's actually one of the best and of the most easiest solutions. But yeah sometimes it could be more complicated than that, unfortunately.

 

This is a must. First step to do. So go to Device Manager and find the USB hubs, uncheck the "turn off this device when not in use" on every USB hub. Then apply the power scheme safran5020 posted. Disable C1 power saving states in BIOS if you can and disabling Speedstep while there can't hurt. It is also always a good idea to disable all other audio interfaces in the Device Manager, or rather disable everything you do not use [any serial, parallel ports, wi-fi, bluetooth, network...]. If that doesn't resolve the issue, try changing CPU scheduler to "background tasks" and see if it helps.