Hello,
I've been wondering now for a while.
When I play VSTi, or even record audio, I get pops and clicks now and then.
It happens even on sample rates 512, or 1024 (more than 14ms).
It is really annoying, especially when recording audio..

My specs are:
Dell Latitude D531 Laptop
AMD Athlon 64 X2 2 GHz
ATI Radeon Xpress X1270 400 MHz, 352 MB
3GB RAM
Windows 7 64bit
and a M-Audio Fast Track Pro external USB audio card

I use Cubase mostly, but I've also noticed that when I used Ableton Live there were more clicks and pops in the audio.
What is more, I actually noticed that even with my internal audio card, which is probably some Realtek, I get some interference whilst listening to mp3 and just scrolling through the Internet. Weird, isn't it?

Does anyone have any idea what's going on?
Is the hardware too weak for that kind of production?

If you need some more info, just ask.

Best regards,
Luke

 

I would not insult your intelligence, but imagine to first post this beginner question here:
what happens if you increase the asio-latency in that m-audio driver-panel ? the pops'n' clicks still there ? (to test, just set the miliseconds much higher) and what happens if you deactivate your maybe realtek onboard-soundcard in the bios or windows system-management ? (i think your pure computer hardware seems to be tough enough for the most audio-production related soft of today, you can try also to defragment your harddisc\record-partition )

 

Let me ask you, how many processes are running all the time?
You can see them all in the task manager.

I have disabled as much as I could, because they take away resources from your main work.
So there only left 15 processes on my XP.
Here is a guide which helps you to identify processes
and suggestions which could be turned off and how !
http://www.blackviper.com/service-configurations/


Turn off any net activities or other software.

Also..., turn off your anti-virus protection when you make music.
You are making music, so you don't need it.
You need protection when surfing or checking new software.

I only use Kaspersky, because it is the only Anti-Virus-Software that leaves no
processes in the background after turning it off.
All others do, and some like ESET leave processes that can't be turned off even in task manager.
I tried them all...


Imagine you make music and all is fine, and suddenly some of the background processes starts a scheduled
task for anything, and then you get a CPU peak right at this moment.
That takes power off from your music process and can be a reason why it's crackling infrequently.

Frequently crackles are driver or sample rate related, but infrequent ones by processes in the background.

Also, have an extra cooler for your Laptop too. They overheat, and Laptops have bad cooling anyways.
Hot processors slow don too and loose performance.

You see it can be more, or even a mix of more problems.
Try to eliminate one by one and I am sure you'll get better...

Good Luck, and have fun making music...

 

quite an old CPU

I would

---- disable onboard sound (enter BIOS at boot - and find option to disable).
---- whilst you're in BIOS, try turning off any Cool + Quiet stuff.
---- In Win - turn off Win Aero - set visual settings to most basic (See next).
---- Switch to "Background services" rather than programs (Ctrl Panl --> System ---> Advanced Sys settings ----> Performance ---> Advanced-----> Select "Background" (Change visual settings here too - switch everything off)
---- Update drivers - for audio, and main subsystems - eg nForce drivers for nvidia m/b
---- In system - find your entry for ATI audio HDMI device - and disable it (ATI gfx cards have audio drivers too - so disable the (audio) hardware via device manager)
---- Make sure hard discs are set to use DMA. (Device manager--->IDE/ATA controllers-->use DMA)
---- Make sure USB2 is working - Device manager--->check it says "Standard Enhanced USB controller" [try update drivers too]
---- switch off all anti-virus, antimalware, and any other guff running that you don't really want/need. AMD Fusion can be useful to quickly toggle background services automatically -- http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloads/fusion-for-desktops/Pages/overview.aspx
---- Power Options.....switch off all the energy saving stuff.
Once you do all that, there's not a lot more I can think of.
So then.....

---- Use ASIO drivers for your audio device - update them. Can try "ASIO for All" too.
---- Raise the latency
---- Lower your Windows audio settings to 16 bit 44100
---- lower DAW settings to 16 bit/44100
---- lower screen resolution?

Good luck. :D

 

All of the good troubleshooting steps I can think of are above. I'm not sure where exactly your soundcard is plugged into the computer, but another good thing to try is to use the Device Manager to be sure you do not have any IRQ conflicts with audio related devices, and resolve them by changing slots (ex: by moving PCI devices to a different open slot, or sometimes by moving usb slots around).

Personally, I think your cpu is causing a lot of the problem, although the optimizations/tweaks/etc. mentioned are never a bad thing to check out. 3 GB of ram isn't ideal anymore but it doesn't seem like you're using very many virtual instruments, so that probably isn't the problem. I had similar issues, and after doing every single time consuming troubleshooting step I could find online for latency optimization, computer optimization, as well as DAW-specific optimizations, on a whim I OC'ed my CPU (i5 2500) from 2.6 ghz to 4.0 ghz. Annnd voila-- not a single pop or click could be heard. With laptops I know cpu upgrades can be tricky, and OCs almost as much so. Honestly, I'm not sure whether either would be feasible for you- sometimes it's more cost effective to just pick up a new laptop at that point.

Obviously, you'll want to follow the troubleshooting advice above before investigating a possible CPU bottleneck, but just thought I'd leave my recent personal experience here, for what it's worth.

Edit: Just caught this bit
"What is more, I actually noticed that even with my internal audio card, which is probably some Realtek, I get some interference whilst listening to mp3 and just scrolling through the Internet. Weird, isn't it?"

That is very typical of either a driver issue or IRQ conflict. When you have your soundcard active you'll probably want to disable onboard audio, as mentioned. Again, with laptops, IRQ conflicts can be tricky to resolve too, but if you notice that your onboard audio and soundcard share the same number you'll know right away that even if it isn't causing the whole issue, the conflict is making it worse.

 

Hey guys I get the same problem and my computer is brand new - it's an AMD FX(tm)-8120 Eight-Core Processor 3.10GHz, 16GB Ram, with a 2GB DDR3 Geforce GT 520 Video Card, Windows 7 64-bit??? It happens while I am listening to music or playing editing sofware through the Direct Card, it's on-board audio on a Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3 motherboard.

Also, there is high def-on the video card, but I'm not using it. Do I need to disable that?

Thanks in advance for ALL help!

Carm

 

A clean and properly installed OS will never give you any trouble. Lots of nice tips in this thread, so I don't need to reiterate them.

I'm sure your system is bloated with too much of everything, and something in the background impedes your audio card from working properly. I'm kinda used to that as I personally know of only one person who's OS is nicely tweaked and working as smoothly as mine, and he's one of my friends. My clients are all megalomaniac morons who like to bloat their systems until they barely work, unnecessarily. 3-4 DAWS, Adobe suites, Microsoft suites, hundreds of plugins... piles of stupid, bloated code of no worth. No matter what I say can change them, but they surely notice how my computer works when they come over. ;) But they cannot help themselves... Everything they want to have, even though unnecessary, makes their computers barely crawl. Interestingly, those who make the most work done have the least programs installed. ;) My PC boots in about 15 sec, and I can start making music in about 20 sec, and I work at latency of 128 samples all the time. I can go lower, but I find it unnecessary.

Anyway, remember that every program you install makes your OS slower. It should be maintained regularly, too. CCleaner [google it] is easy to work with and using it regularly can make your OS cleaner and snapier to work with. Defragmenting hard disks once a month at least helps, too. The most important thing is - get to know your OS and your computer. It's only you who can make it work better. No computer or OS is made for musicians, you have to acquire some knowledge and tweak them yourself. Or find someone who can do it for you.

The most important tweak I know of is to turn off all power-saving, especially CPU powersaving like speedstep or cool and quiet. That also means you have to keep your laptop plugged into mains when you work with audio, of course. You can turn on the powersaving when you disconnect it from mains and not working with audio.

Cheers!

 

@ G String -> "quite an old CPU"
your hints are good and welcome but come on, he dont have a 500mhz\300mb RAM pentium from the 90's. as i wrote your (really good) but never ending tunings i thought it ends with: open "autoexec.bat" and "config.sys" in a text editor and edit the line...

i dont think that this "OLD CPU" is the mainreason for that clicks...
ok, a higher CPU = ALWAYS BETTER, but we are all able here to load a new sequencer-app and play !one! vsti incl. record this on the fly on "one track" -> with such a old hardware: basic configurated Pentium 800 Mhz and 1ghz RAM (if we got a asio-card and a proper fast HD) without any trouble!

 

LOL Indeed, Tracer. I have a little cute Atom based PC for my on-location recording needs, and we all know how "powerful" this thing is... however it copes with the recording at lowest latencies pretty well. Extremely well. It's all in how you set it up. ;)

Avoid Win7 like a plague, avoid all programs that run in the background and install some kind of services, keep the system clean and simple. Don't use one program for converting audio files, and one program for playing them etc. Use one program for many purposes. Like Foobar2000 for example. That beast can play, convert, burn an audio CD etc. I have only Reaper and Foobar2000 installed, as far as audio goes. And software for my audio interface.

My point: He's got a fairly good laptop. There shouldn't be any problems with it. I worked with older and far less powerful computers, and they can do wonders. Throwing money into a new computer every year or so is not a solution. I buy a new computer about every 5 years or so... and in the mean time, I have ONE OS on it that I use and abuse completely. It's all about making music, isn't it? I hate to tinker with OSes and programs. Install, and work with it until you find out that some plugins just consume too much CPU, and your projects start to consume like 90% of CPU. That's "it's time to upgrade" sign. ;)

I forgot to mention that with laptops, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can make problems, so it's advisable to turn them off when you're working with audio. At least Wi-Fi. There's always a button somewhere to make it easier to turn it off.

 

it's Latency

 

OP,

You really need to be more specific, if you want useful suggestions to fix the issue. What VST and VSTi are you using? Have you already tried a clean install of the OS?

There is lots of good advice already posted in this thread, but you need to post a more detailed rundown of what your hardware and software config is.... what AV are you using? What other software is installed on the machine? Have you updated your bios?

 

@ SineWave:
yes! to all things you've say, it's like they coming from my brain\mouth (only difference: my english is still beta)

@ all others, hanging up here:
where is luke1 ? it's funny that he made a new thread for US (maybe he is watching us in a silent-place and loughing after asking this?! until now, no one here missed his answer, but the discussion gets a hardware-ownlive)

or else...: maybe he jumps voluntary (with a crazy loud loughing) into a circular saw (after he read the tuning hints from all of us here) however... one thing is 100% sure: pops'N'clicks suckz definitely! *yes*

 

Hello again!
Thanks for all the advice!
I have never even hoped to get such a quick response :D
Well, I'm not a PC newbie, so I must say, that I've already tried almost everything..
even at the latency of 4096 I've got some clicks now and then (of course less often than at 512, but the latency of 4096 is unbearable).
I use Advanced System Care Pro for cleaning my laptop very often, and I always switch the WiFi off when I'm recording.
I also try not to have background services on when I'm playing.
I'm trying now to reinstall my graphic card drivers and uninstall the onboard sound card.

About the instruments.. I use only a few of them and they are rather not that much CPU-consuming.. (Like Sylenth1, FM8, Addictive drums)

 

seems that you not alone with this trouble, i think you allready have type "pops clicks M-Audio Fast Track Pro usb" at google. (as i do this, i first thought: OMG, because of listing 1.020.000 entrys in 30 sec.! the first entry (hint) is loaded with more tunings than ALL togheter from here! see here:

Code:

http://forums.m-audio.com/showthread.php?26378

if you have a friend with any other asio-interface than "m-audio" i suggest, just test it. (or test the same things with "asio4all") if no clicks appears, better buy a new usb-audio interface...)

i use !on my laptop! (32bit intel celeron 1,73 Ghz \ 2GB Ram) a asio lowcoast-usb interface called "emu 204 USB" see it here:

Code:

http://www.musicstore.de/de_DE/EUR/EMU-0204-USB-USB-2.0-Audio-Interface/art-PCM0010485-000

and believe me, really ALL works creamy on that laptop, its really near as on my 64bit desktop pc. i know this interface is "creative" but i was "amazed" of the quality (as you see the price) it is a absolute solid interface with stable & low latency asio drivers...

 

Well, I don't think the audio card is the case..
I have tried many different audio cards from brands like Roland or Behringer, and it was all the same.

 

If every card you try has the same results, clearly it's your machine, no? And if you've already tried all the usual tweaks.......

Looking at your CPU again - and going on what google says a Dell D531 has as cpu

Here it says D531 has a Turion x2 @2.0 Ghz
And here it gives a pretty poor benchmark rating.

5/6 years old is getting on - but certainly it was a (very) budget, mobile processor, with a small cache, etc.

I think it's pretty ambitious to get much out of it tbh. This is a computer for Email and WWW. Cubase? Hmmm - well, clearly there are issues. ;)

I'd try a fresh install - with XP first. See how it goes. If having tried all the usual tweaks the issue persists then I would (have to) conclude it is the CPU/hardware and accept that's the way it is, for whatever reason. Not being able to record at all without glitches seems particularly poor performance though.


You've tried latency monitor?

www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

 

hope you get it sorted out, it sucks when you are trying to create and obstacles block you-

my problem is i am addicted to vsts and some of them boost my cpu usage through the roof, so i have to pick and choose more carefully heh

 

Well, I managed to remove the clicks and pops, by creating a separate user only for recording and disabling the onboard sound card! :D
Thanks everybody!