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0404 USB Cracking/Popping unbearably!

post #1 of 20
2/21/08 at 6:39pm
Thread Starter 
Hello everyone, i recently picked up a 0404 usb. Installed the latest drivers/firmware, disabled my onboard sound in the bios. I'm using it purely as an external soundcard driving a pair of sennheiser HD595's. Everything i play, whether its sourced from a cd, mp3, or FLAC using WMP or VLC pops and cracks every 5 seconds or so. My onboard sound does not do this. My computer has a quad core Q6600 processor with 4gb of ram running windows xp. Does anyone have any ideas on what can be causing this because the driver control panel has virtually no options. Thanks!
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post #2 of 20
2/21/08 at 7:08pm
Try Foobar and use ASIO. (assuming that you havent tried ASIO yet)
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post #3 of 20
2/21/08 at 7:10pm
try another usb port, try foobar with directsoundv2/asio, or even try the 0404usb on another computer...
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post #4 of 20
2/21/08 at 7:10pm
I know that Steve (sejarzo) had an issue with firmware or drivers or something not agreeing with each other. I'm sure he'll be able to help you out.
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post #5 of 20
2/21/08 at 7:16pm
Not sure if this will help but worth a shot:
I had the same symptoms with my Macbook/Extigy combination when going through the USB. So I just tried going through the optical out and it fixed my problems. At least you don't have to worry about driver issues with optical. I now only use USB to update the settings on the Extigy and use the optical out exclusively for sound.
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post #6 of 20
2/21/08 at 7:30pm
Try turning off your wireless network adapter if you are using wireless interent
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post #7 of 20
2/21/08 at 7:46pm
You should be fine with respect to the driver/firmware issue--that only happened when I connected my 0404 USB with updated firmware to a notebook without the latest drivers. (Also, intoflatlines, now that I think about it, it might not really have been that problem, but that I may have goofed up reverting Foobar to ASIO properly after resetting it to DirectSound to run Ray's Predator.....)

What OS are you running?

Here's what I would do:

1. Turn off wireless networking if you have that on your PC--see what happens. That seems to be the most common issue.

2. Go here and download DPC Latency Checker:

Free Download Tools

There are some docs available on that page that describe the program, but it's very simple--you download a file that you can just unzip to an .exe on your desktop, then click on it to run (no installation necessary.) It might show that you have some other driver that is preventing your system from handling real-time audio as well as it should.

3. Try connecting it to a USB port right off the motherboard.

4. Try running it via Foobar 0.8.3 and ASIO, which requires an ASIO plug-in that is hard to find on the web now--PM me with an address and I will email it to you if necessary.
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post #8 of 20
2/21/08 at 9:17pm
I have had the same problem and in my case it has been software related.

I used the cooledit demo to create/record some sweeps and get all kinds of popping. I use REQwizard to do the same thing- no problem.

With playback- I used foobar and would get popping when I used the crossover plug-in but not without it. It would work fine with the convolver plug-in. Eventually I reduced the effect of the crossover plug in by 1 dB and the popping stopped.

It is a strange circumstance that I still can't quite figure out. I created a dedicated "audio boot" on my computer where all the services not related to audio don't load and the popping was still there. It certainly wasn't related to wireless connections or anything else that I could kill that was running on the computer.

My system is working great right now (as long as I don't change anything) but I only arrived at this by trial and error.

bill
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post #9 of 20
2/21/08 at 9:41pm
Bill......I haven't had the chance to do the DRC thing all over again, but your experience with Cooledit and REW are exactly the same as mine with the 0404 USB for room sweeps. That's why I always wondered about the quality of the DRC correction that resulted (bad!)

What I don't recall is whether Cooledit uses ASIO or not, or if there are any tweaks to latency that can be done in Cooledit or non-ASIO compatible apps (such as buffer lengths that can be set for DirectSound in Foobar, for instance....I have all the non-ASIO output options set for 1000 ms and they all seem to work without popping.)

I just did some checking with Foobar 0.8.3 and the DirectSound 2.0 playback option--if the buffer was set to 100 ms, then I did get some pops and clicks, but not as often as every 5 seconds. I reset the buffer length to 1000 ms and I got no pops or clicks.

Under ASIO in Foobar, I use thread priority = highest, buffer size = 15 and have no clicks or pops.
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post #10 of 20
2/22/08 at 12:16am
I had the pops and clicks also but once I changed the priority to highest, it has never been heard from again. USB works in a pulse mode and not a stream and I think that the CPU runs away and does other stuff (especially with Vista and all the crap that's competing for CPU resources) on the off pulse of the cycle and doesn't come back soon enough and the buffer is empty causing the clicks.

I could be totally wrong but that's the way my brain tried to put 2 and 2 together.
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post #11 of 20
2/22/08 at 1:05am
I've had similar symptoms caused by "conflicts" with the vid drivers.

It's easy to test: turn hardware acceleration "off" on the vid card and see if the pops/crackling goes away.

I also find turning thread priority DOWN in Foobar reduces a number of issues (ASIO). 3-4 is usually the "sweet" spot for me.
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post #12 of 20
2/22/08 at 1:20am
I don't remember exactly what I did to finally get it to work but I was able to shoot the room without the popping and create a filter. I haven't used ASIO so that isn't an issue.

I do recall the utilities included in the DRC package didn't have any popping issues.
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post #13 of 20
2/22/08 at 1:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by brainsalad View Post
but once I changed the priority to highest, it has never been heard from again.
I want to try this but how do you set priority for a usb device?
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post #14 of 20
2/22/08 at 9:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by nightfishing View Post
I've had similar symptoms caused by "conflicts" with the vid drivers.

It's easy to test: turn hardware acceleration "off" on the vid card and see if the pops/crackling goes away.

I also find turning thread priority DOWN in Foobar reduces a number of issues (ASIO). 3-4 is usually the "sweet" spot for me.
Which version of Foobar, and which ASIO plug-in, if I can ask?

Thread priority in 0.8.3 with the ASIO dll now installed on my machines only provides "normal", "above normal", "highest", or "time critical" as options.
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post #15 of 20
2/22/08 at 9:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dougboy View Post
I want to try this but how do you set priority for a usb device?
We're referring to the priority in the ASIO configuration in Foobar.
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