Quite a while ago now I forked out on a Focusrite 2i2 which came highly recommended and I already knew of Focusrites reputation for being a company that doesn't mess about when it comes to quality! Since then though I had a serious HDD death and some other non-PC problems which meant I couldn't really make tunes for well over 2 months (pure psychological torture!). Anyway now I've finally got back in the game and I've been building tunes for few weeks but theres a seriously annoying problem I'm having with the interface: Basically if I'm working on a tune, and the tune is PLAYING, if I do ANYTHING other than listen to the music (such as scroll the screen, click a button, drag a window, or literally anything at all) I get serious crackles, pops & audio stutter which completely kills the mood and makes you want to break your hand by punching the wall.

I've tried all sorts of things to try and diagnose & isolate the problem but nothing helps. So far I've tried:-

-killing ALL non-essential processes
-changing USB ports
-switching through all the different sample rates (between 44.1k & 96k IIRC)
-freezing the MIDI tracks into audio in Ableton
-Messing with the buffer length in Ableton & the Focusrite ASIO driver

None of these have made any noticeable difference.

Does anybody have any idea what is causing this? I'm running Win7 64bit, with Ableton 9. Any help would MUCH appreciated! Thanks!

 

It may be a driver problem, Have you tried the beta drivers? That or a Latency Issue. What I would do is contact Focusrite, They have really good support (I have used them in the past) and they will run through various things with you such as giving you software to monitor Latency etc.

P.S the bad spelling button was made for me, just need one for bad grammar now lol

 

I had the same problem with Line6 products but I tried this and have never had a problem since then.

It's the USB priority hack:

"This works on W7 and vista, not tested on XP.

1) Start by opening the System Information utility (msinfo32.exe), and navigating to System Summary\Hardware Resources\IRQs to view the IRQs in use on your system, and the devices using them.
Try to find the IRQ of your firewire port (mine is 19) and those of the graphic card (mine is 4294967294, strange but not my fault..)

2) Next, open the Registry Editor, (regedit.exe) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl.

3) Create a new DWORD value in this key, and call it IRQ#Priority, where # is the IRQ of the device you wish to prioritize (e.g., IRQ13Priority for IRQ 13, which is your numeric processor).
I my case it was IRQ4294967294Priority (graphic) and IRQ19Priority (firewire)

4) Double-click the new value, and enter a number for its priority. Enter 1 for top priority, 2 for second, and so on.
in my case the following lines where added in the registry:

Code:

IRQ4294967294Priority DWORD 0x00000020 (32) (graphic set as low)
IRQ19Priority DWORD 0x00000001 (1) (firewire set as high)
IRQ13Priority DWORD 0x00000001 (1) (numeric processor set has high)

also set

Code:

Win32PrioritySeparation DWORD 0x00000026 (38)

to give more cpu time to foreground applications.

5) Close the Registry Editor and reboot your computer when you're done.

Now Usine can work with 80% cpu without any crackles...

For me it's like a miracle, and my computer will keep going on for 2 more years...

This works in a particular case with a firewire sound card. I'm sure you can obtain similar results with an USB card:
Setting IRQ8Priority (CMos) to high?
Find the USB port IRQ?"

Except I didn't change the Separations Dword and also not the numeric processor thing.

 

Thanks for the replies!

I'll get in touch with Focusrite again. Yea I've heard they're top notch for customer service too. I was in contact with them for weeks when I first bought the thing and it refused to come to life on my computer (although plugging it into my HDTV worked!!). They tried a few things but none of them worked. I was about to return the thing, all depressed like, but instead I upgraded to Win7 from XP and I suddenly became a really happy man!

LOL speaking of bad spelling, I just noticed my signature...

-MrDweeb:
I'll give this USB hack a try if Focusrite can't help me, but it seems pretty above my level of "confidence" when it comes to messing with the registry! I know that one mistake in the registry can be the last mistake you make before the floor vanishes beneath you & the earth starts rotating the other way! I'm a lot less PC tech savvy than I was years ago. Just reading about your results though has me all excited though!

 

Last edited: Aug 2, 2015

I had the same problem with crackle on my new pc (Focusrite Sc. Solo). Turning on high performance in control panel, power options solved the problem. Tried asking the Focusrite support and they couldn't find any help for me.

 

Disable USB Power Management
This helps prevent power issues with devices that are powered by USB.
1. Open Control Panel, then click on Device Manager.
2. Open the Universal Serial Bus Controllers menu.
3. Right click on the USB Root Hub in the menu and choose Properties
4. Go to the Power Management tab and un-check the the box to ‘allow the computer to turn off…’
5. Repeat this for each of the USB Root Hub’s that show up in device manager


Adjust Power Options
1. Click on the Windows Start button and choose Control Panel
2. In Control Panel choose Power Options
3. In Power Options, choose High Performance
4. To the right, click Change Plan Settings

5. Choose “Change Advanced Power Settings”

6. At the top of the Advanced Settings window, change to “High Performance” in the menu.

Open USB settings> USB Selective Suspend, and change this to “Disabled”.
Open Processor Power Management > Minimum Processor State> 100%
7. Click OK, then Save Changes.

 

i had one of these...

it did the same thing....

i just used the ASIO4ALL generic drivers and it sorted it out lovely...

 

Hi, i recently got a focusrite scarlett 6i6 and was having problems where the audio would just cut out and be broken until i powercycled and reconnected it to USB. I ended up doing a bunch of things to fix it, few of which were covered in the above posts.

Everything is working great for me now, so i wanted to share what i did.

1 - Go into your system's BIOS and turn off the CPU C-States. Leave C1E and SpeedStep, and make sure you have hyper-threading and speedstep enabled. This should still allow your machine to use lower CPU when idling, but it won't try to reduce voltage in overall usage.

2 - Set your windows to High Performance in the power settings in the Control Panel, covered in previous posts.

3 - Right click your "My Computer", go to Properties, then click "Advanced system settings", then "Advanced", then "Settings" under the Performance section. Finally, click "Advanced", and then tell it to adjust for best performance of "Background Services".

4 - Follow these instructions to ensure your USB connection from the Focusrite is connected to a USB root hub port - http://us.focusrite.com/answerbase/connectivity-of-usb-11-devices-on-non-root-hubs

5 - Download LatencyMon from here - http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon and this will tell you which system driver is using the most CPU/Memory registers. Finding out exactly which app or driver if it's a generic one becomes more difficult, since you have to use Xperf and go deep into windows.

 

That's wack as hell though. Half the reason to pick an interface is for a usable driver that offers lower latency than ASIO4ALL...

My understanding is that the RME Babyface's popularity is substantially due to its fantastic driver support

 

RME owns in that department (drivers)

 

He wasnt talking about the RME Babyface but the Focusrire 2i2...

If my solution improves his performance why is that so "WACK"?

Please enlighten me...

 

Christ you're touchy.

I wasn't calling the solution wack, but the fact that it's necessary is. I personally would want to exhaust every option before resigning myself to using ASIO4ALL with an interface that has a designated driver.

 

Hello,
I think I too haved experienced this same problem. However, I might have a working fix for you. I read before that you are a ableton user.So Okay, when you first open up live each time, you have to look at the cpu meter in the top right. If the cpu meter appears to be blank, no 0% to 80% being displayed, then all you need to do is click on the blank cpu meter area.
I don't know exactly why this happens, but it does and it can be frustrating as hell. So, If you're trying to audition samples and you don't hear any sound remember to always look at your cpu meter to make sure your sound card is running.

Best of Luck

 

I guess the ASIO4ALL could be an option if Focusrite won't hurry and release a newer driver than the existing version 1.8 of the Scarlett MixControll, which is dated 3/2014. Official Windows 10 support would be nice.

Doubt any new drivers would fix the problems that i and others outlined above, since they're a blend of hardware and software.

 

I have the same issue from random time to time and I use a Babyface, baby!. Throw this into the mix and can we forgo driver based problems?

 

Ok you have to do next things put option of your pc laptop on high performance try to disable bass boost or enhancement from you integrated or pc card, use asio from your soundcard offcourse latest drivers! and one more funny thing for latency problem try to disable internet in some wierd way internet can produce pops cracks latency problem!

 

Usual suspects :
-BIOS settings for CPU throttling : disable all "economy" modes. On 7+, it seems the OS do it right, alone, in Full Speed/High Perf mode.
-hardware DPC troubles : install DPC latency Checker, see if there are spikes. If yes, disable hardware one by one in Hardware Manager. Start with Wifi/Bluetooth, LAN card... No more spikes ? You found the source.

With that, good asio drivers and buffer, no more audio glitches on any configuration. Bad or none ASIO drivers can be replaced by ASIO4All.
PS : an ASIO4ALL test is the best way to know if the problem is ASIO related. You can even try non-asio drivers, with big buffer and small project. If it still crack...it is NOT related to audiocard itself, but computer settings.

 

Last edited: Sep 6, 2015

Sorry for the LONG delay, I've been WELL tied up lately. Anyway I wanted to get back to say that things seem to be working a LOT smoother now in terms of crackles, stutter, performance etc! What I did was try a combination of you guys suggestions (all the USB power settings, computer power management, device manager USB Hub tweaks etc). Still using the official Focusrite drivers because I want to keep it pedigree and I haven't had to go on an expedition deep into the heart of the registry.

I haven't tested the new settings extensively yet but the difference seems clear so far! It used to feel/sound HORRIBLE trying to make a tune when everytime you do ANYTHING it sounded like you had a guy shoving a geiger-counter in your face!

Huge thanks to you all!