Topic: Impulse noise

Clicks and pops every few seconds. The buffer size is maxed. Haas been happenig since I got the Fireface last year. Driver is 1.2.12.0, the latest as of last month.

Is there a guide/reference for troubleshooting this kind of issue? It must be common enough.

Re: Impulse noise

It's not common at all therefor a reference guide for troubleshooting don't exist.

What is the interface ? There are many Firefaces.
Where is the issue ? Headphone or analog outputs or both ? Everywhere ?
Can you see those pops in Totalmix or in Digicheck ?
Is it possible to record it via Loopback ?

M1-Sequoia, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue

Re: Impulse noise

What computer and what is the spec? If it’s a pc have you optimised for audio? Do you have a power plan that doesn’t throttle?

Babyface Pro Fs, Behringer ADA8200, win 10/11 PCs, Cubase/Wavelab, Adam A7X monitors.

Re: Impulse noise

The Interface is Fireface UC. The computer is Win 10, 6 CPUs, Intel i7 2.5 GHz with 32 Gb RAM. Drivers and system have the latest updates.

Re: Impulse noise

So are you optimised for audio as I mentioned and power plan? If you are then have you run latency checker? (Google it. Mentioned many times on here) The pc should be fine. What video card?

Babyface Pro Fs, Behringer ADA8200, win 10/11 PCs, Cubase/Wavelab, Adam A7X monitors.

Re: Impulse noise

I hope some of you will take the time to review the added info I am providing and speculate on possible causes. I’m a musician, not a tech guy (though I am a retired Electrical engineer I have not worked in the field for 20 years, an eon in internet time.) i understand enough about troubleshooting to work it but I don’t know anything about the nitty gritty of audio interfaces.

The problem is ONLY in Cubase. No other applications have any issues. I have another post on this forum concerning the Fireface driver getting corrupted  every 2-3 hours scrambling playback completely. forcing me to close and start up Cubase again. This problem disappears when I switch the driver to Asio4All which lacks a lot of features of the RME driver, but at least I can keep working. I am assuming the noise I am hearing has something to do with  the way my system is configured. I will look into Totalmix and Digicheck, which I am not familiar with. Don’t know how to record in loop back, any suggestions for instructions how to do this? What would that tell me? I’ll check on the Power plan. Any pointers on optimizing for real time audio? I recently ran LatencyMon  and it tells me everything looks good for real Audio despite all the clicks/pops. The problem is on the monitors, 3 sets driven by the Fireface analog outputs. I never use headphones, would it tell me something valuable if the headphone outputs were working properly?

All the projects I am working on are 90% midi, using virtual instruments, mostly from Spitfire, East West and Orange Tree. Does that suggest anything? Is my DAW, Cubase 10 pro, possibly an issue? No indication of that on the Steinberg forum.

Any ideas appreciated.

Re: Impulse noise

The video card is NVIDIA GT 1030 with two monitors. It seems to work fine. Can that cause such a problem?

Re: Impulse noise

What is the procedure to optimize my system for audio, it never came up for me. Is the fact that LatencyMon thinks it’s ok meaningful?

Re: Impulse noise

Not sure why I am described as an ADAT user. I am not.

Re: Impulse noise

The type of user you are, changes the more posts you make. It’s just a term not what you are.
The video card should be ok. I have one of those myself. I was looking for an optimisation document that I’d seen by Zoom but can’t find it. Do a google search for win 10 optimisation for audio. I use Cubase 10.5 and now 11 without problems on windows versions 2004 and 21H1. How many instruments are you loading?

Babyface Pro Fs, Behringer ADA8200, win 10/11 PCs, Cubase/Wavelab, Adam A7X monitors.

Re: Impulse noise

Also, here are some general tweaks for pc:

- Disable C-states in the Bios
- Highest perfomance settings(Windows)
- Optimize for Background tasks(Windows)
- Disable unnecessary windows services

In Cubase, you can try these:
- Disable Multi-processing
- Try ASIO Guard On/Off

Also, what version is the FF UC 's Firmware?
About your nVidia card, check their "Studio" driver version(not all cards are supported)

And finally, connect the UC to a Usb Port coming directly from the Motherboard(back of PC)

RME Gear: Digiface USB, HDSP 9632

Re: Impulse noise

I am using typically 10 virtual instruments per project. Always Superior Drummer 3 (2-3 instances), Orange Tree for guitars and bass (Kontakt based, 2-5 instances) Spitfire BBC symphony (3-5 instances). My system seems to handle it ok, very occasional temporary failures of Cubase to handle playback and display in real time. I’ll check if the problem is there in a project with just a couple of audio tracks.

Re: Impulse noise

What does it do in Cubase? Does the performance indicator run high generally or does it just jump? I run similar to you in that I use SD3 and spitfire as well as other plugins (not Kontact) I’m also running buffers at 64 samples on these projects. Now I have a i9 but my old i7 still worked. What i7 is it as the clock rate is quite low being below 3gig.

Babyface Pro Fs, Behringer ADA8200, win 10/11 PCs, Cubase/Wavelab, Adam A7X monitors.