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punkr888
Known Participant
December 12, 2016
Question

Pops and crackles during audio playback

  • December 12, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 7333 views

I'm experiencing pops and crackles during playback. The pops and crackles are not recorded in the waveform.

I'm using Windows 10 HP laptop, Apollo Twin USB interface

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    KreativeSamuray
    Participant
    December 20, 2017

    I know that this post is old but maybe it can help the next guy seeing as how it has been indexed by Google. Everything was working before even on playback the after returning the next day I got snap, crackle and pop in a very heavy way, also for me there was a slowdown in the playback. Then I remembered that while doing VO I did not want an echo so I reduced the latency to 30 ms. After I reverted to 250 ms latency the problem was solved!
    I think that if your system was working fine to begin with then later this occured or even from the begining check your latency numbers. Maybe my system cant handle that latency or there is a bug in Audition, it's probably a little of both. It would be nice if the software engineers had written it so the only the settings that this system could handle were the ones that could be chosen. I guess that would need a little AI for future upgrades.

    SteveG_AudioMasters_
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    December 20, 2017

    Couple of things: The OP already increased the buffer size (therefore latency) to what I'd regard as almost an excessive figure for a laptop with the spec it's running on, so whatever it was or is, I don't think that was it. Unfortunately we haven't heard back, so we don't know whether this has actually been resolved or not. An additional issue of course is that the present release is awaiting a patch, which will improve its performance significantly - hopefully that will be arriving soon, and it could affect all sorts of areas of operation.

    An automated buffer optimising system is an interesting idea. Snaps and crackles only occur when the buffer hits 'full', and I would have thought that monitoring this and increasing the size of it incrementally wouldn't be impossible at all - so potentially at least it could be done, and without AI! Most people would probably want a manual over-ride for it though, as one of the slight snags is that the amount of buffer necessary will vary with the amount of audio fed to it. A relatively small buffer will handle a stereo stream fine, but the whole arrangement becomes more complex with a large multi-track session, and you wouldn't necessarily want the size jumping up and down all the time...

    KreativeSamuray
    Participant
    December 21, 2017

    Thanks for the reply, I'm sure you are correct as I presume this is your field of expertise, I was just sharing what happened to me. Though after I had posted I had another issue which I think came about from the driver of the m-audio 2x2m. It seems that my system, a pc, automatically uses the windows driver and for better playback I think the ASIO driver is recommended. Of course, I just read this on the internet so no telling if it’s true or not :-) When I did switch the driver from MME to ASIO it crashed my system. But when I turned on the m-audio app everything worked fine including that the latency problem went away. I can now set the latency to 40ms without crackle. any way thanks for the reply. It's nice to see that someone cares enough to put an answer out there.

    ryclark
    Participating Frequently
    December 12, 2016

    This probably means that you need to increase the buffer size. You may be able to do it in Audition but if you are using the Apollo's supplied ASIO drivers you may have to used the software supplied by the manufacturers to adjust the buffer size or increase latency.

    punkr888
    punkr888Author
    Known Participant
    December 12, 2016

    It's set to 1024 but I'll increase it to 2048. I'll try that and report back to you.