• Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Topic: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Hello Outthere!

For infomation, I am a german guy but I write in english
to let this thread help also our international people.
I' m sorry for my bad english!

Ok, at the very first, I am very happy about my Babyface.
The soundquality is more as the best I' ve ever heard.

And with that reason, I use the Babyface also for listening to music
during surfing through the internet.

But I have always a failure. I have some noise, like crackling, like
dropouts when I move my mouse or when something ist getting the
computer busy. For example, at the main site from www.rme-audio.de
there is a little flash banner in the middle. And every time, when the
content changes, it crackles my audio (mp3, wav, ...) to "death".

I used to set the buffer size down and up to the maximum.
But nothing helps to solve my problem.

Here is my system:

- Windows 7 pro 32Bit
- Pentium D 2x2,6GHz (Gigabyte Board)
- 4GB Ram (Kingston)
- Babyface Firmware 184
- Driver date/version 10.10.11/1.010

I am using Sonar X1 and the ASIO driver. Ony when I use too much
VSTs I get crackling but I can solve this problem by setting up
the buffer size.

Please give me informations or some tips to elimitate this problem.
I don' t want to imagine, using my onboard soundcard for listening
to music ;-)

Best regards,

Marco

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,599

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Obviously your graphics card disturbs the USB transmissions (seen errors in the Settings dialog?). So you got two things already to check and fiddle around with...

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Hi Matthias,

thanks for your fast answer. Great job and support. RME was my right choice ;-)

Ok, up to your questions. My graphic card is an ATI HD5450. I remember,
when I view some HighDef videos, youtube or an avi file with WMP, I have the same
crackling. Not as much as during listenig to music but it disturbed.

I opened the settings dialogue and play some music. I opened the RME website
and my eyes are at the errors textfield. Durin playing some music, the errors incremented ( 0/41 )
but at this time, the content changed in the flash applet, the errors rised up fast.
More than 300 and rising up.

So, what can I do. I have installed the newest drivers for all components, allready.

Thanks for your support.

Best regards

Marco

P.S.: Grüße aus Essen ;-)

4 Reply by MC

  • MC
  • MC
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  • From: Germany/Thailand
  • Registered: 2007-04-06
  • Posts: 25,599

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

I think your motherboard is too old, means its USB chipset is outdated and does not match the BF system requirements. Adding a USB PCI card might help. Of course this is all speculation as I have no exact info what you use and have.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

MC's Website

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Mhhh ... an answer I don' t expected.
But this Babyface in my studio rooms at an very older Pentium 4 without PCIe has no problems.
Also my ol notebook with a Centrino CPU have had never some problems.
So, the age of my motherboard is one thing I don' t think this is the reason.
But, I will try an other USB Card. Maybe an USB 3.0 ;-)

Best regards,

Marco

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,781

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Different boards of the same generation won't necessarily all work equally well..


Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Ok, I ordered a PCIe USB3.0 card ... let' s see, what will happen ...

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Hello Outthere!

Today my USB3.0 Card arrived.
The crackling is more as better but it is not gone anyway.
During normal listenig to music the errors are gone.
But they are back when I opened for example the rme-audio.de

Only when I view (HD) movies in fullscreen, the errors are gone.
In window mode, I get more errors.

But why are there no errors with the bad on board soundcard?
In my eyes, the Babyface is a high end soundcard!

Best regards,

Marco

  • Jeff
  • Jeff
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  • From: USA
  • Registered: 2007-05-21
  • Posts: 4,667

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Still obviously related to your graphics card. Did you check ATI for updated drivers?

Regards,
Jeff Petersen
Synthax Inc.

Jeff's Website

10 Reply by Masaaki (edited by Masaaki 2011-10-29 01:45:23)

  • Registered: 2011-05-04
  • Posts: 249

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Hi,
I can't be too specific, but ATI graphic driver innstaller installs lots of craps....catalyst something...can't remember exactly, but I remember I had to go through the installer to custom-select only the components I needed to activate the graphics. No 3D or any gaming related stuff.
Then, if the card has HDMI, I usually disable audio drivers for the HDMI outputs. I use only one sound driver, that's usually the one for the attached audio interface.

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Hi!
Thanks for these tips. I hopefully deactivated HDMI and all other sound dependend drivers. But without success, I hear them.
But a try, thanks.
Best regards,
Marco

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Mhhh ... as a IT Pro, this idea has to be the first thing to do.
I choose the standard vga driver from windows7 ... voila, the crackles and the errors are gone away ... in every case !

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Please run this tool and post a screenshot: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Hi Timur!

I used this tool and deactivated some devices, described in the manual.
Yesterday, I decided to deinstall the whole ATI driver (with drive cleaner) to reinstall it.
After this, the dropouts more less than before but not gone.

Only the standard vga driver eliminates the whole drop outs.
But I have the newest ATI driver. And there is no alternative driver available like OmegDrivers for my HD5450.

I will test an older NVidia card I have here in stock. And let you all know, what happened.

Best regards,

Marco

15 Reply by explorizer (edited by explorizer 2011-11-02 20:25:04)

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

I am speechless!

Today I tried my old Nvidia GT8500. I only installed it and windows found his own driver. Restart and testing ... no dropouts an everything works fine.
I was an ATI cards fan but now I switch to Nvidia again.

Now I will buy an Nvidia HD card like an GT430 or something similar because my GT8500 is to slow for HD and it is an active cooling card, too loud.

I will report my experiences with that.
Best regards and thanks a lot.

Marco

16 Reply by explorizer (edited by explorizer 2011-11-25 22:56:42)

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Ok, today I installed an GT520 from Asus. I installed the driver from nVidia and I tested som things.
Everything looks great. But, I started an HD video and the errors rised up to 9000 and mor in 10 seconds.
And the same in playing 230p videos.

And now I can' t believe that the guilty thing is the graphics card.

What is to do?

  • Registered: 2011-10-25
  • Posts: 11

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Any Idea?

  • From: Connecticut, USA
  • Registered: 2011-08-01
  • Posts: 376

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Hi,
The video card or video card driver can still be the source of the issue. Some NVidia cards have power/resource issues like the ATI. This is caused at the driver level.
An easy test to see if it is the driver is to disable the driver in Device manager and run with the Standard VGA driver.
I would just use the old GT8500. There is no benefit to using the 520 if all you are doing is audio and general computer use like email and watching movies.

I would uninstall the Latest NVidia driver you installed and let Windows 7 use it's built in driver for the GT8500.

Thanks Chris

Chris Ludwig
North East USA Sales | Synthax/RME
www.facebook.com/RMEAmericas
Twitter @RMEAmericas

ChrisLudwig's Website

19 Reply by AlexW (edited by AlexW 2011-12-05 17:08:57)

  • AlexW
  • New member
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  • Registered: 2011-12-01
  • Posts: 3

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

I've had problems for years with different types of noises coming bleeding through the speakers.
The latest problem was that with the latest Babyface driver an irritating noise bleeds through the right speaker.
But I rolled back to an older driver (0.9.84.0) and it's sounds better.

Anyway, regarding your graphic card/babyface problems.
I had issues too, for an example when I scroll webpages, a static sound comes through the speakers. It was like through your speakers you could hear the computer working.
I was running a Geforce 9600 GT graphics card, and it needs extra power through a PCI-E cable.
What I did was to buy a cheap ATI Radeon HD 5450 graphics card (which doesn't need power support through a PCI-E cable), and the static noises disappeared.

I think that when it comes down to it all. People like you and me have some issues with our electricity/power cables in our home.
For an example, if I connect my Babyface to a subwoofer, and then from a subwoofer to my studio monitors - then a lot of horrible noises appear in my monitors; this is probably because when the subwoofer's preamp boosts the signal, the problems starts to occur.

Of course your issues could be because of something else - but getting a cheap graphics card solved most of my issues.

  • Registered: 2011-02-08
  • Posts: 261

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

I have a GT440 Nvidia card, and I get none of anything, in fact a song I am trying to finish is playing right now, and I have an old ASUS Motherboard and Pentinum 4 computer (with hyperthread technology whatever it is - false 64-bit.)

I am using Microsoft Compatible Nvidia Drivers version 6.14.12.7533 (which I think came from Microsoft Update Windows thingy).

It may depend on what your computer is doing. For instance although I am using XP, I am thinking of leaving off System Restore, because I swear my computer slows down at times, and I think it is all the crap that Windows does perhaps sometimes. Of course, it may not be necessary, but then, it seems to slow down sometimes, but I have very few crackles and pops or anything now with the new RME drivers.

Is your hard-drive defragmented? I defrag mine all the time especially the partition where the music is done. I am not even using a separate disk drive although I have two hard drives in the system.
I would bet it has something more to do with Windows, and although I am not sure, I never known Microsoft to have a functioning OS system for anything I rather do, like real-time anything. Windows don't work that way. Now Macintosh has always been better in that respect but people a long time ago decided to buy IBM compatible computers, and well, as an early Apple IIC user, I think since that, IBM has even stated they should not have had Bill Gates do anything.

Oh, well, I guess my computer works well enough so I leave it at that. But there are articles on optimizing your system, and perhaps those will help you out.
That has to be done, and the rest is yet to come. I have no problem running youtube HD videos although I am not doing that for DVD or anything like that and may never get there.

  • Registered: 2011-02-08
  • Posts: 261

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

In fact the crackles and pops are almost (but perhaps not quite) eliminated since the new RME drivers came out.
It really does not mean anything either recording wise though and well, as far as I am concerned it all works in my computer.
I think I only have ICH 7 hardware also, where as ICH 9 or maybe 10 perhaps nowadays would be better also.

  • Registered: 2011-02-08
  • Posts: 261

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

Oh, I also play some older (not all that old though) computer games like Civ IV and some others and have the graphics card set either on Performance (probably High Performance) in Windows. I am only though using Sonar 7 also.

23 Reply by Xill (edited by Xill 2011-12-06 18:46:28)

  • Xill
  • ADAT user
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  • Registered: 2011-11-11
  • Posts: 18

Re: Crackling during normal browsing and listening to music BabyFace

So many things can go wrong on pc with all the different hardware combinations and all the spyware that gets installed automatically.
On a Mac here; I haven't heard a single noise since I bought it. There is absolutely no background noise either.