Suddenly getting audio static during playback - problematic clip/track relationship?

[aaddiiooss]

Hi all,

I've been editing a film for the past couple of months on Premiere Pro.

Currently working on a sequence and having some really strange audio issue I just can't figure out.

I'm in the middle of editing and suddenly when playing back the sequence the audio was filled with static.

Listen here:

https://vocaroo.com/i/s1QWFDZdnSEX

In this audio snippet there is someone trying to open a plastic container, so ignore those plastic-y clicking sounds. It's just the AM radio static type sounds that is the issue.

So I've been trying to isolate the issue by testing different options, but for the life of me I can't figure it out.

I'm running latest version of PP on Windows 10 on a laptop:

Skylake i7-6700HQ

32GB DDR4

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5

Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 500GB

Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface

1. The scene is about 5 minutes. I was editing around 2 minutes into the scene when suddenly I got mentioned static during playback. I had just added an 8th track of audio. So I tried removing that 8th audio track (although I don't see why 8 audio tracks should be a problem) — the problem persisted.
2. Closed PP, restarted computer and tried again (while keeping an eye on memory usage) — the problem persisted, no issues with memory.
3. I confirmed audio hardware preferences in PP were set correctly.
4. Googled the issue and did find a few hits with somewhat similar descriptions (hard to tell if they were the same problem exactly or not). Anyhow, there were a couple of suggestions for those similar sounding issues. One suggested opening Adobe Audition and making sure that the audio hardware preferences in Audition are set the same as in PP. They were the same. Another suggestion was to decrease buffer size. It was set to 512. I reduced it to 256 — the problem persisted.
5. I tried making a duplicate of the sequence (right-click > duplicate), and played that — the problem persisted.
6. I'm a bit fuzzy on what I tried next, but generally speaking, I set out to try and see if it was a particular clip of audio on the timeline that might somehow be causing this. I think I started muting and solo-ing tracks, disabling clips... I might have even deleted clips from the timeline one by one. Long-story-short, I'm pretty certain the culprit is a particular audio clip that happens to be the sync audio from the video camera. It was nice to finally feel like I was getting somewhere, but at the same time it's strange because I was only using that clip in the first 7 seconds or so in the sequence. Whereas, the issue began when I was editing at a completely different place in the timeline. I also want to say that while it seems this particular clip is causing the problem, different tests I did with this clip did not produce consistent results. For example: When I tried moving the clip to a different track it was suddenly fine, but then I moved it to a third track and the problem came back. So is it the clip? Is it the track?...
7. I thought maybe it has to do with a combination of audio effects applied to tracks and the clip. On pretty much all audio tracks I have the following effects: Multiband Processor, 20 band EQ, and for some audio tracks I have a Hard Limiter. I tried different combinations of effects, but results did not seem to indicate that the problem had anything to do with effects. In fact the problem persists even if the clip is on a track with zero effects.
8. I set the problematic track/clip to solo. Listened and it was clean. Then I exported it as a WAV file. Listened to the exported WAV file and it was clean too. I then imported that new WAV file into my project and replaced the clip that seemed to be the problem with the new WAV file I had just exported — the problem persisted.

There were more things I tried, but it seemed the more I tested the less I understood what the problem could be.

I did (just a minute ago) manage to move the clip to a different audio track and (knock on wood) I think I'm okay for now, but really boggles my mind what could be causing this.

Any ideas?

[Jody Glover]

I'm not sure if this would help,but I found that the static occurred when I was also playing a video clip. I wonder if the decoding of the video clip is taking up resources and causing static in the playback?

[lucasv82000805]

I have the same problem. Did you ever find a solution?

[Milds5C7F]

it's not in premier, its in audition...

[cire1587]

found a fix for myself.  I just switched the preferances memorary tab to memory instead of performance also made more ram available to computer, didnt even need to restart and it was instantly fixed. 

[White Sound Studio]

I'm getting the same or similar issue. This started this year but when I launch Premier Pro 24 or when the Creative Cloud notification box pops up, I will get grazy static through my headphones that i've got connected.  Once I close Premier pro or when the notification box goes away the static stops.  Seems there's something up with Creative Cloud.

[King_Salver]

It's crazy that even after al this time we're still facing this wird problem without a solution. I just had the same weird thing happen to me.  My timeline was screeching with static as if I had just tuned up all the volume knobs on an amp. After an hour of searcing for solutions and exporting a zillion times with every permutation and combination I tried exporting it via media encoder and it worked just fine. But why wouldnt it just export via Premiere?? Just crazy! 

[Boka2112]

Try increasing the buffer size for asio driver in pref Audio Hardware.

[theTallest77]

Just had this happen to me as well. Renders are also affected.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Hi there,

We're sorry to hear about this. Let us know the version of Premiere Pro that you are using. Also, are you working with MTS media type?

Thanks,

Sumeet

[theTallest77]

Yes I am working with MTS. I was on v25.3 but rolled back to 25.2.3, which seems to have fixed the issue.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Glad that you found a workaround! We’re aware of a similar issue where audio from MTS media can have noise in v25.3. We’re working to get this sorted as soon as possible. We will keep you updated once the fix is available. Thanks for your patience.

-Sumeet

[PublicSchoolProud#9]

I just had to roll back to version 25.2 as well to fix the same issue - Terrible static on all MTS clips in all projects. Other file formats played fine. I tried several other fixes including audio hardware settings and clearing the media cache before reverting back.

[Alex27151157e6kf]

I am experiencing this issue.

Using Premiere 25.3.0, I opened an older project file. Static on just the MTS files...Not happening with .wav/.mp3, etc.  No understanding of how to fix is very frustrating.

I have previously run into this same problem with older versions of Premiere when I open a project within Premiere BETA. I have stopped using BETA for this reason.

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey]

Hi Alex27151157e6kf,

Sorry about the poor experience. We've made progress & are working on getting a fix for this issue out in an upcoming release as soon as possible. We'll update this thread as soon as we have more details. For the time being, you may use Pr v25.2 as a workaround.

Thanks for your patience!

Sumeet

[Tim Royle]

Hi

I have just encountered this problem. It is a project which I had already edited (using mts files) and was needing to make some fine cuts. How do I go back to a previous version, as when I tried that it just said it can't as the project was opened in a newer version? Hope you have an update soon, as my client will not pay me without the film being completed. Thanks 

[Tim Royle]

Any update on this? Thanks 

[Josh_Meltzer-rit]

Any word on this, I'm having the same problem with .mts files. Audio is fine, and then just static on the timeline for both audio channels. Please fix ASAP, VERY frustrating.

[Josh_Meltzer-rit]

How can one go back to Pr v25.2 after updating to Pr v25.3?

[Sumeet Kumar Choubey · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your patience. The audio noise issue with MTS media has been fixed in the latest release of Premiere Pro (v25.4). You may use Creative Cloud Desktop app to install the latest release of Pr.

Regards,
Sumeet