Poor Sound Quality & clicking noises with XP64 edition

[garyd]

I would like to digitize my vinyl collection and I have just bought an Ion iTTUSB10 turntable which comes with the Audacity software. I installed the software on my XP64 Pro machine and tried it out. When recording, the music is distorted and there is sometimes also a regular clicking noise. When the clicking noise is present I can lift the tone arm off the disc and the clicking continues. I can even switch the deck off and the clicking is still there. I have seen many similar posts on the web and I have tried all the solutions that apparently worked for other users - I have tried the stable and BETA versions of Audacity, I have switched USB ports and disabled other applications to see if they are the cause. Nothing helped. Finally I installed everything on a 32 bit XP machine and everything worked perfectly - good sound quality and no clicks. However, the 64 bit machine is much more powerful and that's the one I really would like to use. Can anybody suggest anything else I could try?

[steve]

"Distortion" is likely to be caused by too high a recording level - apparently most ION TT's have an output volume level knob on the bottom of the unit.

"Clicks" are likely to be caused by audio "drop-out" due to the data not getting from the turntable to the hard drive fast enough to keep up with the audio. This is a lot more difficult to fix as there are so many possible causes.

The main causes are:
Background processes.
Fragmented hard drive
Anti-virus or other security software
Windows update in operation
poor USB connectivity.

This last item is the killer because there is little you can do about it, and it is quite common with the ION TT's. For some reason the ION USB interface seems to be right on the edge of working / not working, so any slight change (a different USB socket for example) can make all the difference.

[waxcylinder]

This last item is the killer because there is little you can do about it, and it is quite common with the ION TT's. For some reason the ION USB interface seems to be right on the edge of working / not working, so any slight change (a different USB socket for example) can make all the difference.

Not actually a killer as most ION TTs also have RCA ouputs which can be set to Line level *rather than the phono setting) and then this acn be fed direct to the line-in of the PC (cuts out half the value of the ION though as you are not using its DAC and USB services).

WC

[garyd]

Thanks for the feedback guys. The sound card is integrated and unfortunately does not have any phono jacks. Your other possible causes suggest that you think that the pc can't keep up with the incoming audio signal due to disk, memory or processor bottlenecks of one kind or another. The thing is, the machine I have the problem on is much more powerful than the one that is OK. It is a Dell workstation quad-core Zeon, etc. The anti-virus and most of the other background processes on both machines are the same. I have disabled other processes that are different with no effect. I think you may be right though about the Ions usb adapter being "iffy". On the X64 machine the turntable has to compete with other usb connected devices i.e. the screen has a usb hub in it, keyboard, laser mouse and a printer. Another difference is that the X64 is ethernet connected to a hub whereas the other one is wi-fi connected.

The Ion's usb card seems to be powered from the pc because the pc indicates that a usb device has been connected before you switch the turntable power on. If I start Audacity and press record there are no clicks but if play a disk the clicks will start. I can then lift the tone-arm and switch off the deck and the clicks continue until I stop recording. If I then leave the deck off and start recording again the clicks are still there which suggests to me that they are coming from the usb adapter. What do you think?

[waxcylinder]

I think you may be right about the ION soundcard getting its power from the USB/PC - IIRC when I had my ION it was possible to plug in a tape deck to the ION and record ok without turning on the TT - but that is not the cause of your problem I think.

Can you set your virus software so that it ignores/trusts all .aup and .au files (the project files that Audacity creates)? Audacity creates a lot of little .au files as it records and the virus checking on these may be causing the interrupts.

WC

[garyd]

Touching wood... I may have fixed it! I think it is a usb problem. Instead of using ports on the system unit I plugged the turntable into the usb hub that's built into my monitor and it works! No distortion, no clicks. Let's hope it stays that way. Thanks for your help anyway.