The classic question about "pops, cracles and latency&q

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Zwap
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:28 am
Location: Sweden

The classic question about "pops, cracles and latency&q

Post by Zwap »

IÔÇÖve been using Mixcraft 4 for a while now and have the following experience about ÔÇ£Pops, crackels and latencyÔÇØ that some of the user of Mixcraft have problem with.

I use an IBM ThinkPad 2.4Ghz 2Gb RAM with Yamaha UW 500 USB soundcard with the latest driver and all the XP tune-ups and all disabled winupdate, anti-virus, WiFi etc.
The Yamaha UW 500 soundcard is about five years old, but it still one of the best sound card IÔÇÖve ever had and the drivers still updates.

I have recorded a couple of songs using an audio track for drum loops and up to eight tracks of Instrument tracks using only two softsynths with different sounds. I only draw the notes and do not use any MIDI-keyboard when I create the melody and bass line etc. This works without any ÔÇ£Pops and crackelsÔÇØ if I use the ÔÇ£WaveÔÇØ driver. But the other day I want to record a guitar riff to the song and with the Wave driver the latency was about 180ms, as you understand not usable. I switch to the latest ASIO driver for my soundcard and the latency was acceptable, but not the pops and crackels. It was impossible to record without pops and crackles. I then create a new project using only one audiotrack with a drumloop and then try to record my guitar on another audiotrack, no VST or VSTi, just two audiotracks and no effects. Try to record, same pops and crackles no matter how I adjust the buffer size and latency. I gave up after trying all adjustment that was possible. I tried ASIO4all, Steinbergs ASIO, and Yamaha ASIO driver with the same result. I tried the built in soundcard on my Laptop with ASIO4all and Steinberg ASIO, same result. Even when I try to listening to the previous recorded songs thereÔÇÖs some ÔÇ£pausesÔÇØ or ÔÇ£dropoutsÔÇØ or what it calls? But as soon as I switch to ÔÇ£WaveÔÇØ driver I can listen without any problem, but recording is impossible.

I then installed Reaper and used the same drumloop on an audio track and try record my guitar on another track with Yamaha ASIO driver activated. No problem at all, I even could adjust the latence down to 7ms (!) without any pops or crackles not even when I record with two VST effect activated.

I really like Mixcraft and thereÔÇÖs a lot of nice functions in it, but as long as I canÔÇÖt use ASIO driver in it I must use another DAW to record guitar, MIDI keyboard etc. It's too bad.
As I can read in this forum that IÔÇÖm not alone with this problem and I really hope that next version of Mixcraft handles these things better.

Apologize for my English as Im from Sweden
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Acoustica Greg
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Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

Can you please send us a small sample sound that illustrates the problem?

Please submit an Acoustica support request and attach the audio sample.

Greg
Zwap
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:28 am
Location: Sweden

Post by Zwap »

Hi,

Well, I can't figure out how to record it as a sound sample as I can't route the output from the Yamaha soundcard to record in another application when playback in Mixcraft. The same when I have problems whith recording in Mixcraft, how can I record in another application when I the same time recording in Mixcraft?
Suggestions?
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Acoustica Greg
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Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

Why would you need to record it with another application? You could just mix it down to MP3 and send us the MP3.

Greg
Zwap
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Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2008 2:28 am
Location: Sweden

Post by Zwap »

Hi,

Well one of the problem is "Even when I try to listening to the previous recorded songs thereÔÇÖs some ÔÇ£pausesÔÇØ or ÔÇ£dropoutsÔÇØ or what it calls? But as soon as I switch to ÔÇ£WaveÔÇØ driver I can listen without any problem".
As I can understand the mixdown function does not use the soundcard driver, because when I mixdown to mp3 and play the mp3 file in mediaplayer there is not that kind of problem, the problem is when I playback in Mixcraft with the AISO driver activated.

The same when i record my guitar. If i record with ASIO driver activated I hear pops, crackles and dropouts as I record, but it seems not to be recorded because if I playback the recorded track with wave driver it sounds pretty normal, but it's hard to record in sync etc when there's pops, dropouts etc.
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