Strange snap crackle pop problem

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tlee2951

Post by tlee2951 » Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:27 pm

Hoping some of you home-recording gurus can help me out. I'm new to the forum and relatively new to home recording.

I've had a strange snap crackle pop problem for a while. I've tried a number of things suggested on the forum from earlier posts which have helped some.

My setup is nothing to get too excited about. I'm planning on updating my sound card, software (to Sonar), and PC (in that order) within the next year or so but I'm hoping I can at least get a usable setup before going all the way down that path.

My PC is an HP Pavillion 9000 series running Win 98SE, 192MB RAM, dual hard drives (160G Western Digital 7200 RPM for audio, factory 10G drive for everything else), Create SoundBlaster PCI, Cakewalk HomeStudio 9. I've done alot of MIDI stuff for a while but I'm just starting to do more with audio.

I've done all the Win98 stuff I've seen suggested and have gotten to the point where usually when I record the first audio track it sounds fine, with no snap crackle pop. I usually do everything MIDI first and only do limited audio recording---which is good since HomeStudio9 doesn't give you a whole lot of audio tracks.

Here is the problem:

After the initial audio recording, it seems like nearly anything I do to the audio after that point will result in added snap-crackle-pop in the modified audio.

For example I usually like to normalize my audio tracks but when I take a perfectly clean original audio track and normalize it, the result almost always has new pops.

Same thing happens when I take my audio tracks and do a "mixdown to file" within HomeStudio.

Even stranger to me still is that often just by copying a perfectly good .WAV file to somewhere else, the copied .WAV now has new snap, crackle in it. I can pull up both .WAV files in Cakewalk and look at them and they look identical except that the noisy one has noticeable spikes in the waveform that match where the pops occur. I noticed also that some of the demo audio tracks that install with HomeStudio that look good on the CD are full of pops after being copied to the hard drive during install.

The .WAVs I've experimented with are all stereo wav's and I've also noticed that these pops seem to always show up in only the Stereo-Right portion of the waveform.

Anyone else dealt with this problem or have an idea? I first thought all my problems were soundcard related but now I don't know if it's Cakewake HS9 or Win9x or drivers or just my crappy PC (I woudn't recommend HP Pavillion to ANYONE).

If anyone can help me figure this problem out I will be eternally grateful.

Also are there other forums better suited to this type of question?I've looked around a bit and this one seems to be one of the best.

Many thanks.


Dino

Post by Dino » Mon Nov 03, 2003 2:34 pm

Hey tlee, just wondering if you resolved you Cracle & Pop problem ? I have the same thing happening to me and cannot resolve. Did you ever figure it out. I also have an old PC. Pentium 3 800 348 RAM, Windows 98 SE and a Sounblaster 16 PCI Sound Card. Any help I would be grateful for.

Guest

Post by Guest » Mon Nov 03, 2003 3:27 pm

Hi Dino,

I did solve the problem (with help from the folks at the homerecording.com BBS forums). Turned out it mainly had to do with my sound card and video card sharing the same interrupt and/or being positioned adjacent to each other.

I deleted the sound card from the Device Manager, moved my sound card a few PCI slots away from the video card, let the OS (Win9x) re-plug-and-play the sound card which this time got it's own interrupt. Since this things have been pretty much pop-free.

Hope this works for you as well

Dino

Post by Dino » Tue Nov 04, 2003 12:00 am

The only other PCI slot I have is where my dial up modem is installed. Could a modem interfere ? There are no conflicts that I can see with any of my Hardware. I have disabled my on board Sound Card before installing my Creative 16 PCI Card. I'm racking my brain with all this. There has to be a solution somewhere. Anyone ? HELP !!! :)

andychap
Posts: 685
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:26 pm
Location: UK

Post by andychap » Tue Nov 04, 2003 12:04 am

You don't by any chance have on board graphics by any chance. If you have you are really going to struggle with any audio production.

Dino1956

Post by Dino1956 » Tue Nov 04, 2003 3:07 am

I have my video card as part of the motherboard, so I guess the answer is yes. But I have my color settings down to just High Color and I have the Track View off on Sonar to conserve. I also Have No programs running in backround.

Here is my setup:

Dell Optiplex GX-1 800 (Low Profile Machine)
Windows 98 SE
348 MB RAM
Sound Blaster 16 PCI

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