I just replaced my FocusRite Saffire Pro 14 with an M-Audio air 192|4 and I’m getting crackling no matter what settings I used. Trust me, I’ve tried them all. In a dream world, I’d like to have everything set to 48,000.
I have Audacity set to 48,000, WASAPI, Line 1/2 M-Audio, mono, Speakers M-Audio.
I have my Win10 control panel sound set to 16-bit 48,000 and the recording is set to 2-channel 16-bit 48,000.
I have my M-Audio air control panel set to 48,000 with a buffer size at 2048. I’ve tried them all but that is what it happens to be set to now.
In Help=>Diagnostics=>Audio Device, I get way too many devices. As far as I knew, I had only one, M-Audio. Any ideas?
I have my buffer size in Audacity set to match the M-Audio control panel setting.
Yes, it must be something else because the crackling comes and goes. At times, the crackling is gone but it always comes back within a minute or so. However, nothing else is new. I simply swapped out one box for another. anything going on behind the scenes has always been there with Audacity and the old Saffire pro.
I’ll read through the links you sent me. I tried Transport=>rescan and all has been well for a few minutes (fingers crossed).
_NOTE: The reason I switched was because FocusRite eventually punted on creeping latency. I would record for hours with no latency but, after a few hours of leaving my pc unattended, the latency would come back. I had to crawl under my desk, unplug the usb, plug it back in, restart the mixer control panel, change the rate to anything, then change it back to 256 and latency was gone.
Now, with the crackling, I tried to call M-Audio but, as soon as I mentioned Audacity, they basically hung up on me. They want me to troubleshoot with Ableton but I don’t know how to use it and they don’t know how to use Audacity. So, M-Audio will be of no help._
Firewire was designed to consistently give low latency and fast throughput independently of CPU load.
USB is dependent on CPU availability. When the CPU is under high load, USB performance can suffer. This is sometimes a problem for people that are recording game play, but can affect anyone that is running CPU demanding tasks at the same time as recording.
I think the USB thing is the leading suspect right now. I’ve read that glitch book and made all recommended adjustments and, unfortunately, the crackling came back after about 3 minutes of playing audio in Audacity.
Now, I am certain that playback in other apps like Chrome and WMP are not affected … there’s never crackling there.
However, there is one other app, Albelton that crackles during playback!!! I’ve isolated this and Abelton crackles when Audacity is or isn’t running and vice versa.
I did try that before but, when I did, I couldn’t play. The cursor would just wobble and go nowhere.
However, just now, I tried it again and, after all the recent changes and reboots, I can now play with this setting. I’ll loop back to see when crackling comes back but, if you don’t hear from me again…
Great news … CRACKLING is gone. Unfortunately, I can longer record. Now I’m getting another age-old error “error opening recording device -9999”. The log file seems to be complaining that LAME and FFMPEG cannot be found but they are right where they’ve always been for the past 10 years.
14:14:29: Audacity 2.3.1
14:14:29: Trying to load FFmpeg libraries…
14:14:29: mLibAVFormatPath (‘C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity\avformat-55.dll’) is not empty. Loading from it.
14:14:29: Looking up PATH environment variable…
14:14:29: PATH = ‘C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath;C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem;C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0;C:\WINDOWS\System32\OpenSSH;C:\Users\Daddy\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;’
14:14:29: Checking that ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity’ is in PATH…
14:14:29: FFmpeg directory is in PATH.
14:14:29: Checking for monolithic avformat from ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity\avformat-55.dll’.
14:14:29: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘avutil_version’ in a dynamic library (error 127: The specified procedure could not be found.)
14:14:29: Error: Couldn’t find symbol ‘avcodec_version’ in a dynamic library (error 127: The specified procedure could not be found.)
14:14:29: avformat not monolithic
14:14:29: Loading avutil from ‘avutil-52.dll’.
14:14:29: Loading avcodec from ‘avcodec-55.dll’.
14:14:29: Loading avformat from ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity\avformat-55.dll’.
14:14:29: Actual avutil path C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity\avutil-52.dll
14:14:29: Actual avcodec path C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity\avcodec-55.dll
14:14:29: Actual avformat path C:\Program Files (x86)\FFmpeg for Audacity\avformat-55.dll
14:14:29: Importing symbols…
14:14:29: All symbols loaded successfully. Initializing the library.
14:14:29: Retrieving FFmpeg library version numbers:
14:14:29: AVCodec version 0x373466 - 55.52.102 (built against 0x373466 - 55.52.102)
14:14:29: AVFormat version 0x372164 - 55.33.100 (built against 0x372164 - 55.33.100)
14:14:29: AVUtil version 0x344264 - 52.66.100 (built against 0x344264 - 52.66.100)
14:14:29: FFmpeg libraries loaded successfully.
So, MME was great until I recorded and then there was over 300ms latency. That is too much when relying on the playback line for cues. So, I switched back to WASAPI and …
For now, I must record in WASAPI whenever there’s a break in CRACKLING. If I perform through the CRACKLING, the playback seems normal but, if the CRACKLING is bad, the backing music slows down noticeably.
Playback and editing can then occur using MME. Strange but we need to find a way to fix this eventually.
That is too much when relying on the playback line for cues.
You said magic words there. What else do you have running on your machine? This isn’t just you and Audacity is it? I was going to suggest stop recording on your computer, but you can’t, can you? You’re part of a theatrical production.
If the other side doesn’t need to hear you, you can record your voice on a stand-alone sound recorder. I have a Zoom H1n and an older H4. People on the forum have successfully used H2, H2n and H5 recorders. The older H2 is legendary for producing terrific sound way better than you would think. Used H2s are selling for new prices on eBay.
Combine the sound files in Audacity later. If you get timing or cue differences, those are usually constant and can be fixed simply with the Time Shift Tool and Effect > Change Speed.
The crackling doesn’t affect recording, so, I cannot collect a sample. The crackling only occurs during DAW playback from Audacity or Ableton. Playback doesn’t crackle in any other app (WMP, Groove, etc…).
Backing music? Are you overdubbing? Singing or playing to a backing track?
The setup for overdubbing has you making a plain, ordinary recording, and then a plain ordinary playback of the backing track before you try to combine them. Did that work OK? You can look down the Audiobook forum postings for all the computers that won’t make a simple voice recording.
During overdubbing, the machine has to play the backing or rhythm track to you absolutely perfectly and then record your voice or instrument absolutely perfectly all at the exact same time. It’s one of the most stressy things the machine can do because there are no wait times. There is no “Hang on a minute while I mess with my hard drive.”
Do you have a spinning metal hard drive or a Solid State Drive? Can you hear it ticking in there?
If it’s spinning metal, then it’s a terrific idea to do a health check and defragment so Audacity doesn’t have to go looking for clean, organized, open drive space during the song.
That and turn off the network and shut down anything else during the performance. This is a stunningly bad time for Windows or anything else to go looking for an update without telling you.
Let us know of any of these steps changes the noises. If you do something that makes the noises worse, it’s super important to know that.