Audio pops and crackles on Premiere Pro timeline - Exports are fine

[fdsgsdgfds]

Hi Folks

I recently got an iMac (Late 2015),  I am experiencing terrible sound on the timeline of Premiere Pro,  Like it's peaking constantly, When I just L to speed up, it gets much much worse.  Audition is fine,  After Effects is fine. My exports are okay, it's just on Playback IN Premiere.  I am using CC 2018

[brian704 · Accepted solution]

Check in Audition to see which audio driver it is using and then check the one in Premiere. It may be they are using different drivers. Select the same one in Premiere as you have in Audition. I have seen this issue before.

[fdsgsdgfds]

Brian, you are a beauty, fixed,  The i/o Buffer size as 16 Samples in Premiere and 512 samples in Audition.  Fixed! Thanks for that. You've just saved an iMac from being destroyed.

[AmrMar]

Hello Brian

Is it the same for Windows? I couldn't find the audition you're talking about!! I have no clue if the hardware have something to do with the bad sound quality but i have tried every possible solution on the forms and nothing worked for me, i am still a beginner so i hope you would bare with me and thanks in advance 🙂

[ABS4Days]

AmrMar,
I am having the same issue with my Windows! I called Customer Support, and the Adobe associate spent nearly 30 minutes trying to resolve it. I saw he saved the project under a new name on my desktop, and just copied & pasted the audio/videos... Somehow, the audio cracking was gone! I tried to ask him what the issue is, and he blamed it on my low RAM and graphics card... Saying that the "cracking" sound is because the audio can't keep up- mind you, I was rendering all the footage along the way, and even when I exported it through Media Encoder, the cracking was still there! You would think I downloaded a corrupted audio file with all the cracking it was doing, but no, it was definitely an issue within Adobe Premiere Pro.

Anyone know if this is just a glitch in the software? I have had Adobe for nearly 2 years and never experienced an issue this repetitive with each new project!

[Arlingodwin]

I have this same problem of audio pops and clicks mostly on EXPORTED files. And I don't have Audition on my machine. Never used it. But the pops and clicks continue unabated nevertheless.

[TravG]

Replying because this support came up while I needed an answer for my 16" 2019 MacBook Pro. Crackles and pops like the speaker's broken only when using Premiere, everything else sounds fine. 

I FIXED IT by going to Preferences > Audio Hardware > increasing the I/O buffer size to 2048 -- did not matter if it matched Audition's I/O Buffer Size.

Hope this helps someone.

[echennnessy]

TravG's answer solved it for me. Thanks so much

[gabrielcb1]

Same problem with my 2021 16" M1 Macbook Pro, but it happens in Quicktime and even Apple Music. Crackles in interview audio when at high volume, but when I brought the machine into the Apple Genius bar they did an audio diagnostic and found nothing wrong with the speaker. Any thoughts?

[Reveal Video Team]

I have been struggling with intermittent crackling audio on a Mac M1 with an AJA Io 4k Plus... I tried all of the other suggested solutions and none worked.  I just solved it by realizing that the Preferences>Playback>Primary Audio Device was still set to Adobe Desktop Audio -- changing to AJA Io4kPLUS seems to have resolved the clicking.  I had made the changes in Audio Hardware but I think Playback defaulted back to desktop audio when I deleted my prefs.  I'm posting in case it may help someone else in the same boat!

[Tim26136439z1vu]

Just wanted to chime in here.  I was experiencing crackling audio on a pretty beefy MacStudio with 32gb RAM and a 2TB SSD.  I tried moving the media cache to an external SSD.  Didn't work.  Cleaned/cleared cache in Premiere, AE, and Audition.  Didn't work.  Tried turning off graphics layers and MOGRTs in sequence.  Nothing.  Exported video and audio in various formats:  MP4, QT, WAV, MP3.  Turned up the buffer as suggested in here--both in Premiere and Audition.  Nada.  Finally, on a fluke, I tried to export in native sequence format as an MPEG--and I saw a difference in the audio.  Less crackling.  Then it hit me--I bet my sequence settings (another editor had set them up) were different than the export.  Sure enough, the sequence was set for 44.1k audio, and I was exporting at 48k.

Bottom line, I think, is this:  always make sure your sequences are corresponding with your output.

[br3v]

Bingo, that did it for me @Tim26136439z1vu