Page 1 of 2

SOLVED - Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 11:34 am
by kylebarrett1
I am hearing a pop sound at random intervals when I am monitoring my guitar track. I can see the pop in the level monitor. I can see the pop on the recorded track. My CPU doesn't go above 15% and ram even less. I've tried changing buffer settings, disabling devices in windows, updating drivers, asio4all, trying different USB ports, trs vs spdif from Kemper. If I monitor via the interface the pops seem to go away. I just switched from cubase 5 to studio one 4 and never had the pops in cubase. I would like to monitor via the DAW. How do I fix this?

AMD FX 4100 - 3.8ghz quad-core CPU
24 gigs of DDR 3 RAM
Asus sabertooth 990FX main board
Windows 7
Focusrite Scarlett 6i6
Studio One 4
Kemper profiler
500 gig SATA SSD

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 12:21 pm
by PreAl
Fully uninstall ASIO4ALL.
Fully uninstall Scarlett drivers
Reboot
Install latest Scarlett drivers (whether you had them or not.
Configure your audio recording apps to use Scarlett ASIO drivers.
Do not install ASIO4ALL - do not use!
Further issues download and use latencymon to diagnose.

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 2:38 pm
by kylebarrett1
Thanks I'll try it

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 3:31 pm
by PreAl
Oh one last thing, make sure Windows update is fully up to date if you are using windows 7 and use the latest display adapter drivers you have (because we've heard of unrelated issues with earlier drivers esp with Nvidia drivers).

You should have a nice working base to diagnose any further issues by this stage. Then use latencymon.

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:21 pm
by kylebarrett1
Nothing changed, I'll check out latencymon

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 4:27 am
by PreAl
Is ASIO4ALL fully uninstalled? (Not just disabled).
Check device manager and disable any HDMI audio devices you don't need.
So yeah latencymon drivers tab, order by dpc.

Cheees.

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 10:09 am
by kylebarrett1
So I installed it on an older hard drive that was set up with cubase and it works great. I'm thinking it's some sort of windows update or installation problem. I'll try and reinstall Windows and everything but I'm just happy it works on one of my hard disks

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 10:20 am
by jpsbuk
PreAl wroteFully uninstall ASIO4ALL.

Do not install ASIO4ALL - do not use!


I'm curious as to why you are so 'anti' ASIO4ALL. When I was on Windows it was the only way I could get any decent audio performance (although that was with a built in audio interface).

Sorry to hijack the thread :)

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:02 pm
by PreAl
jpsbuk wrote
PreAl wroteFully uninstall ASIO4ALL.

Do not install ASIO4ALL - do not use!


I'm curious as to why you are so 'anti' ASIO4ALL. When I was on Windows it was the only way I could get any decent audio performance (although that was with a built in audio interface).

Sorry to hijack the thread :)


ASIO4ALL is maybe something to try if you don't have a proper audio interface with ASIO drivers, ie if you just have a sound chipset (although WASAPI with Windows 10 seems far superior in this scenario if you are compatible). The clue is in the name...ASIO4ALL. It's just a WDM wrapper regardless and no way is it going to be better than ASIO drivers supplied with the interface, which avoid the hardware abstraction layer, that is unless they are really poorly written ASIO drivers.

ASIO4ALL is well known for causing conflicts with other ASIO drivers. Another driver that can cause similar issues is the generic ASIO driver supplied with cubase which should also be removed if installed (Google for details, that's something the OP should also try).

The OP has a Focusrite interface and that comes with its own ASIO drivers, the Focusrite drivers is what he should be using.. and they should be good well written low level ASIO drivers. Removal of other drivers that are unneeded (such as ASIO4ALL) simply reduces the possibility of conflicts and resource hogging.

If you think you think you are getting better performance than your audio interfaces native ASIO drivers, then you are probably having some other underlying issue or just have poorly written ASIO drivers (or your other driver's are simply conflicting with ASIO4ALL). Without going into a whole new thread it's difficult to tell.

No way anyway Focusrite would recommend using ASIO4ALL regardless in the OPs case. Milage may vary in other cases.

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:44 pm
by Jemusic
Re-installing Windows is very drastic and I would advise against it at this point. It will rarely fix an audio issue. DPC latency checker and LatencyMon are very important. Please run these programs as they will indicate resources being used elsewhere. It can often be just one thing as well that will do it. They will tell how you how well your system is running for audio production.

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:24 pm
by PreAl
Yeah I'd go for latencymon and get rid of cubase generic ASIO drivers.

Periodically (around once a year) I run DISM and SFC (Win7 uses the system update ready tool instead). Another thing I periodically do is uninstall and reinstall .NET library components, there's also an integrity tool to do it if you Google. All this keeps windows integrity in check.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/hel ... -readiness

Only time I ever reinstall windows if it's a complete mess (or too many useless applications have been installed).

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:46 pm
by kylebarrett1
Good point, and it's such a pain doing all the windows updates again. I'll try the latency checkers and post the results

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2019 9:30 pm
by kylebarrett1
https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/ar ... windows-7/

Adjusted these settings, unlocked all my CPU cores via bios, took off cool n quite. Turned on overclocking, set sample block size to 64

If I have just the Kemper rig manager and studio one open it seems to be fine now.

Not sure how to run the program but;

Latency Mon by itself maxed at 100 microseconds

Latency Mon with 4 guitar tracks going and peaked at 3000 microseconds.



Is my PC just outdated?

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2019 12:37 am
by darrenporter1
kylebarrett1 wroteIs my PC just outdated?


Sure is. It's Passmark score of 4068 is way below bare-minimum for a modern DAW. As a point of reference, the i5-8400 (a strong middle-weight contender) has a score of 11642...

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AM ... /255vs3097

I bought my current system after having similar troubles as you with an AMD that had an even higher benchmark than yours. My current system hums along great. Been mixing a 20-ish audio track each song album with it this month and it has not even broken a sweat using some pretty CPU-heavy plugins.

A word of warning too.... if you turned-off your cooling settings AND overclocked it you may dramatically shorten your CPU's life. If you absolutely must do that to get acceptable performance, just be aware of that.

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2019 3:51 am
by PreAl
I would set the sample rate to 128.

Also Sweetwater is wrong, do not set to background services, this is a common myth. Studio One is an app and should get priority and audio interface drivers are not windows services.

Other thing to do is turn off hyperthreading in bios
Regardless please list your full specs in your signature

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 8:12 pm
by kylebarrett1
I didn't find anything about hyper threading in the bios. Changed the sample rate and my computer blue screened. Is there a better processor that is compatible with my board that would be worth trying?

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:03 pm
by darrenporter1
kylebarrett1 wroteI didn't find anything about hyper threading in the bios. Changed the sample rate and my computer blue screened. Is there a better processor that is compatible with my board that would be worth trying?


It looks like you may have a few options for a decent upgrade... https://www.cpubenchmark.net/socketType.html#id11

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:11 pm
by kylebarrett1
AMD FX 8350 would be the fastest thats compatible. Would a benchmark of 8947 be fast enough to solve the problem?

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:39 pm
by darrenporter1
I would say that's a waste of money to only get up to 9000 but if that's all the upgrade you can afford then it will be an improvement for sure.

You might want to read through this article. It's written by the folks at FL Studio but the general advice on choosing a processor and other performance tips apply to any DAW...

https://support.image-line.com/action/k ... se?ans=214

Re: Pops when monitoring via DAW

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:40 pm
by kylebarrett1
I'm going to give it a shot.
The benchmark is double what I have and all I do is record guitar and bass with a drum track. Otherwise it's a new mobo, processor, ram, and if I'm going to do that I'd upgrade to Windows 10. So I might as well try it for $70.
If I can get by until I can spend $2K on a 2in1 laptop then that's all I need.

I was using ...let's say... ehem..."free" versions of cubase 5 & Fruity loops and wanted to buy a legitimate DAW.

Didn't realize that my PC was so outdated. 2011 feels like yesterday.