Soundcard Causing Clicks and Pops?

flyswatter

I'm having a problem with my M-Audio Fast Track Ultra.

Whether I'm using FL Studio or listening to audio (eg itunes) every now and then clicks and pops will appear. I'm not sure if these are underruns as I have increased my buffer size and they still appear.

When I use the asio4all driver and listen through my laptops headphone socket I don't have this problem. I would rather monitor from the external soundcard however.

Any advice?

DamagedTrax

you should be using the latest m-audio drivers for the fast-track. asio4all is generally a replacement for buggy asio drivers. check out tve latest fast track at a buffer of 1024 and see how everything is.

my general rule of thumb is 64/128 for recording audio and midi and 1024 for mixing

PMI

Hes going via usb, so pci and chipsets wont really matter here

have you disabled the on board sound in the bios so it doesnt load that driver on startup just to rule out conflicts

latest drivers from m-audio and also ive found with the m-audio stuff that dont run it too hot as digi glitches and clicks happen quite quick.

get back and let us know

Ed

flyswatter

I tried disabling the onboard sound before but I tried it again and no improvement.

Also turned off the internet connection to see if that helped but it didn't.

I have the latest M-Audio drivers. Even when I increase the buffer to ridiculous levels (4096) there is still some clicks. Some of these don't show up in FL's audio settings as an underrun either.

It seems to be a general problem with the sound card as these glitches don't happen just in my sequencer. Just to make it clear these are not a series of clicks and pops, just one will come and then another will happen say a minute later.

I've thought about using the asio4all driver for general use (the sound doesn't seem that bad, pretty normal in fact) and just using the Fast Track for vocal recording and stuff. I was planning on buying monitors soon though and I don't think it's practical to connect those to the laptop without using the outputs of an external soundcard.

I bought the unit nearly a year ago and it seems to be at fault because my onboard soundcard runs audio pop free. Would a different external soundcard solve the problem?

PMI

Next thing to do is move the M-audio to another PC to rule out driver conflicts, USB probs and if it happens again you can blame the soundcard.

just for paranoia reasons swap out the usb lead and also if its possible run the m-audio from a power source too

flyswatter

PMI wrote: »

Next thing to do is move the M-audio to another PC to rule out driver conflicts, USB probs and if it happens again you can blame the soundcard.

just for paranoia reasons swap out the usb lead and also if its possible run the m-audio from a power source too

Appreciate your help man. Tried switching usb cables and for a few minutes I thought it was working! But the clicks returned soon after.

I don't have an adaptor for the power source (it's a two pin one). Will try moving the unit to another PC when I have the time later.

Adam anto

Not sure if it will help but had a similar problem with a Dell desktop windows 7 machine. Disabling the on board Wifi got rid of the prob.

Worth a try..

PMI

As said above disable wifi etc.. too your fault finding so have to rule it all out

power it up with a PSU to relieve the load on the USB and most important is to get it onto another PC ASAP which will rule out the card/box probs.....

flyswatter

Thanks for all the help lads. I disabled the wireless internet in the network adapter settings. That seems to have done the trick. I'm not hearing any clicks and pops when listening to audio.

Before I had merely disconnected from the wireless network. It seems to solve the problem you need to fully disable it.

Thanks again.

PMI

Think thats because its constantly searching while its on.... weird that the actual network adapter has helped to as its not doing anything ?!?

Anyway good luck

slavedave

Don't forget that you can create multiple profiles with windows that allow you to start up using a stripped down series of programmes whilst automatically disabling wifi, etc. use the help search to find out how. Even better - if you are tech savvy- is to create a dual boot system (eg one xp partition for music and one for everyday use). the music partition can be completely tweaked to minimise potential hardware conflicts - you can turn off parallel ports, card readers, webcams, start-up programmes, remove elements of windows you never need, etc etc.
I dual boot on all my DAW laptops and it keeps things manageable when troubleshooting etc. The registry remains as minimal as it can be and you don't get a load of background programmes calling for the bandwidth that audio necessitates (and hence causes many of the problems us audio lovers encounter).
Also, ASIO4ALL can be a viable driver for any soundcard. remember that the latest driver for m-audio doesn't ALWAYS mean the most glitch free - it pays to experiment (ALWAYS ALWAYS create a restore point using the included software app with windows before you trial an update since you can easily return to where yo were pre-install). I used various drivers for an Alesis interface and older ones worked better with my combo of laptop and interface.
Soundonsound has free articles on tweaking xp / vista for audio - and debunks some of the myths in the meantime. you can search for them on the SOS website.
you should get joy with it in the end - play with conservative buffer and bit rate settings until you are glitch free and then work from there.
May the Force be with you! Getting clean audio can be very frustrating but it is compensated for when you make THAT recording that is as pure as pure can be!