Regular pops & clicks from GigaStudio

[Avar]

GigaStudio96 2.2 is emitting a click or loud pop at about every thirty seconds. It does not come from the computer or audio system or mixer, all of which plays flawlessly as long as GigaStudio is not running. Which means the balanced cables are not picking up anything either. It\'s GigaStudio!
The pops-clicks occur whenever GigaStudio is open, whether playing or recording an instrument or simply idling. Some pops drive the digital level meter into the red--totally unacceptable.

I\'m using a new giga-dedicated PC, very clean, built to specifications and optimized per Tascam recommendations. I\'ve tried everything I can think of.

Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggestions would be deeply appreciated.

Thanks. --Avar

[Doug Marshall]

Have you tried lowering your video acceleration and/or updating video drivers? That fixed it for me. - Doug

[Avar]

Thanks for the reminder, Doug. Yes, I set video acceleration (latest drivers) to 25% but now I think I will turn it off and see what that does. Encouraged to hear it worked for you!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Doug Marshall:
Have you tried lowering your video acceleration and/or updating video drivers? That fixed it for me. - Doug<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Avar]

I have set video acceleration to zero and also set VCACHE=0.

There is still an occasional loud pop from the left channel.

I think the clicks have diminished, but the pop is awful. I\'ve been over the recomended customizations several times and I\'m really puzzeled. I believe the rest of you have GS running without mysterious pops and clicks, right?

I wonder why just the left channel? Remember this is only GS, other software does not have this problem. Is it always PC/Windows-related or is there some setting in GS that I should change?

It\'s been a bumpy shakedown cruise and I do appreciate it when anyone has time to suggest a fix.

Avar

[Kenn159]

good luck trying to resolve the pop click problem.
I am one of the many people here that have not been able to stop pops and clicks and have just had to live with it.
I have spent countless hours trying to resolve the problem with not luck.
Even Donnie with his highend SoundChaser giga 1.2 athlon has problems with ocasional pops and clicks .
When I checked with Soundchasers they wanted $4,800 for that computer.
So at this point I am very disapointed that I paid $700 for giga sampler then $149 for the giga studio upgrade, and I can\'t even get it to work without pops and clicks .I feel that this is Giga studio\'s biggest weakness .
I am waiting for either Tascam to addresses this issue or to find a computer speed and config that is pop and click free.

[Mr.Stroud]

If the occasional pop that you get happens in other audio programmes or even when you have no programmes running at all, then your problem could be electrical.

I get a pop every time the fridge turns itself on or off.

This can be fixed with a mains filter or even better get your studio on another ring main to the rest of your house. But do not include your lighting or heating in this ring main!

Many people are not aware of this noise reducing tactic

Paul

[clueless]

The pop and click problem has been addressed in the forum previously. Might want to search for the threads. If your problem is the same as mine, there is a solution -- it\'s not pretty but it works.

First, the pops start when more than about 50 percent memory is used by GS, as indicated on the front panel. If your problem is unrelated to memory usage, it is different and this workaround does not apply.

1. load the performance into GS that is causing pops. Should be over 50 percent memory usage. Play a few sounds to verify that it is operating.

2. manually remove instruments from the performance until about 5 percent memory usage is indicated. (May have to experiment -- 3 percent may be better). Play some sounds again.

3. load a new grouping of instruments from some other performance. Make it a small one with 10 percent memory usage. BE SURE THAT YOU SAY NO TO THE SAVE QUESTION WINDOW OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR FIRST PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE.

4. play a few sounds from the second performance.

5. reload the original large performance. ONCE AGAIN DON\'T SAVE.

This time there should be no pops or clicks. It works for me. I just finished a piece with 84 percent memory (out of 768Mb) and 105 instruments. I worked with it popping away until I was ready to record, then I performed the procedure above. Amazing.

clueless

[Avar]

This is a good point. Indeed, when I first set up my studio,I made sure of clean electrical power.

However, my digital audio studio is absolutely quiet. With the Giga-dedicated PC running or playing music through MediaPlayer there are no pops.

It is only when GigaStudio96 2.2 is running that I hear a pop about every 60 seconds --it sounds like just the left channel although the meters show the hot spike on both channels.

I\'m now wondering if there is some process or task interrupting GS. Nothing I can find, but maybe hidden in the PC bowels?

Avar

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mr.Stroud:
If the occasional pop that you get happens in other audio programmes or even when you have no programmes running at all, then your problem could be electrical.

I get a pop every time the fridge turns itself on or off.

This can be fixed with a mains filter or even better get your studio on another ring main to the rest of your house. But do not include your lighting or heating in this ring main!

Many people are not aware of this noise reducing tactic

Paul<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Avar]

That is a remarkable workaround. Thanks very much for the information.

I\'m using just a single instrument on a PC of 512 Mb RAM, with minimal RAM usage. But I will try this procedures

What you describe sounds like a memory management issue for Tascam programmers. So this might be an explanation.

Thanks very much!

Avar

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by clueless:
The pop and click problem has been addressed in the forum previously. Might want to search for the threads. If your problem is the same as mine, there is a solution -- it\'s not pretty but it works.

First, the pops start when more than about 50 percent memory is used by GS, as indicated on the front panel. If your problem is unrelated to memory usage, it is different and this workaround does not apply.

1. load the performance into GS that is causing pops. Should be over 50 percent memory usage. Play a few sounds to verify that it is operating.

2. manually remove instruments from the performance until about 5 percent memory usage is indicated. (May have to experiment -- 3 percent may be better). Play some sounds again.

3. load a new grouping of instruments from some other performance. Make it a small one with 10 percent memory usage. BE SURE THAT YOU SAY NO TO THE SAVE QUESTION WINDOW OR YOU WILL LOSE YOUR FIRST PERFORMANCE PERFORMANCE.

4. play a few sounds from the second performance.

5. reload the original large performance. ONCE AGAIN DON\'T SAVE.

This time there should be no pops or clicks. It works for me. I just finished a piece with 84 percent memory (out of 768Mb) and 105 instruments. I worked with it popping away until I was ready to record, then I performed the procedure above. Amazing.

clueless<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Kenn159]

In my situation ,it is only giga studio that has pops and clicks , cakewalk works fine.
It not a electrical prob for me because it would do it on all programs ,not to mention I have my studio on a seperate circuitand eveything is well grounded abd there are no ground loop probs.
Ive tried the fix mentioned on this form[the one thats not pretty] but mine prob is not a memory problem , I even get pops and clicks with low memory and polyphony.
I borrowed my friends 1 giga of ram and put it in my computer but it didn\'t help.
I actually came upwith a fix that reduces the prob,from countless hours of experimenting[do a search on my name and you can find it ],anyway it reduces the frequency of pops but does not completely solve the prob.

[clueless]

Hi Kenn159:

Have you tried performing some hardware substitutions? For example, install another soundcard, video card, or even motherboard. Use the scientific approach of making one change at a time and noting the difference. Someone might lend you some components for a day to try in your system. I went through four motherboards and I\'m still not \"happy.\"

clueless

[Haydn]

What kind of MIDI interface are you using? I\'ve had problems with pops in the past when I tried using a USB MIDI interface.

[Jamieh]

One thing to try if you are getting pops and clicks on a periodic basis:

Turn your Windows virtual memory OFF. Right-click on My Computer and go to properties. In there somewhere you can turn virtual memory off. This solved my problem of pops and clicks, until I upgraded to 1GB of RAM and ran into a whole set of new problems.

[LHong]

The good GSIF soundcard might be the one of possibilities to get rid of Click/Pop...
Likely, most of MIDIMan\'s or Creamware\'s soundcard, you hardly can go wrong (Click/Pop), when your hardware setup is recommended by them.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by clueless:
Hi Kenn159:

Have you tried performing some hardware substitutions? For example, install another soundcard, video card, or even motherboard. Use the scientific approach of making one change at a time and noting the difference. Someone might lend you some components for a day to try in your system. I went through four motherboards and I\'m still not \"happy.\"

clueless<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Alan]

If your only going to use one instrument at a time like I do heed the following advice.Run Giga on a seperate card and you\'ll get no pos or clicks whatsoever.For my main Audio I use the M-Audio Audiophile,for Giga I use a Montego(consumer card)2,I just use the Montego for monitoring then use the capture to .wav for internal streaming in Cakewalk/Sonar which works perfectly.Every once in a while I\'ll try it with the same card when there are new driver updates but the pops/ clicks come back right away so I switch back.With this particular setup I am pop and glitch free.

[porterpe]

I am experiencing a similar but somewhat different problem.

When I try to record several tracks of audio output from GigaStudio 96 to one single stereo mix-down track very small audio drop-outs are sometimes recorded on the mix-down track. The strange thing is that I hear NO drop-outs in the monitored GigaStudio output while the mix-down track is being recorded. The drop-outs are only found on the mix-down track itself.

These drop-outs only seem to occur when large GigaStudio samples are being used. If several tracks of small (<300K) sample audio output is mixed-down there are no drop-outs. It is only when large samples (like GigaPiano) are included in the mix-down that the drop outs occur. Also, if I record each GigaStudio output channel separately to an audio track, and then mix down the various audio tracks, no drop-outs are produced.

I can mix-down a very large number of audio tracks with no drop-outs, clicks, pops or whatever so I don\'t understand where this problem with recording GigaStudio audio output is coming from.

My computer is home built and consists of a Asus CUSL2-C Black Pearl Motherboard, a PIII-1000 processor, 512 MB of PC 133 RAM, two Maxtor 60 GB ATA 100 hard drives operating at ATA 100 (one for Giga samples alone), a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 audio card with the latest multi-client drivers and W98SE for the operating system. It is really a very high performance machine. I have also optimized my machine by making all the normal system changes recommended by the Tascam system optimization paper found on their website. The machine is dedicated to music production.

Anyone have any ideas as to what is going wrong? Any recommendations?

Thanks!

[Avar]

I would like to see your fix, I\'ll look for it.

My GS problem is not electrical and it is not memory based. CPU and memory resources are barely used.

By using sysedit to rem out a line in autoexec and other minot steps, the pop now occurs about every 60 to 90 seconds and is not so loud. Usually a pop, then a click or two then silence for a while.

My machine is built to Tascam specifications and runs nothing except GS. I believe Tascam ought to have some documentation on troubleshooting this problem.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kenn159:
In my situation ,it is only giga studio that has pops and clicks , cakewalk works fine.
It not a electrical prob for me because it would do it on all programs ,not to mention I have my studio on a seperate circuitand eveything is well grounded abd there are no ground loop probs.
Ive tried the fix mentioned on this form[the one thats not pretty] but mine prob is not a memory problem , I even get pops and clicks with low memory and polyphony.
I borrowed my friends 1 giga of ram and put it in my computer but it didn\'t help.
I actually came upwith a fix that reduces the prob,from countless hours of experimenting[do a search on my name and you can find it ],anyway it reduces the frequency of pops but does not completely solve the prob.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Avar]

Gee, Clueless, you could spend thousands and waste days with that approach... and you still have the problem.

Tascam customers deserve better than that!

If you start with certified components, then the problem must be either configuration or a bug in GS.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by clueless:
Hi Kenn159:

Have you tried performing some hardware substitutions? For example, install another soundcard, video card, or even motherboard. Use the scientific approach of making one change at a time and noting the difference. Someone might lend you some components for a day to try in your system. I went through four motherboards and I\'m still not \"happy.\"

clueless<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Avar]

I\'m used the Tascam specification! It\'s well known that USB MIDI interfaces are a problem, so I\'ve been using a parallel-port MIDI device.

Is your system now entirely pop-click free?


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Haydn:
What kind of MIDI interface are you using? I\'ve had problems with pops in the past when I tried using a USB MIDI interface.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Avar]

I use a dedicated GS system, one Echo Mia sound card (certified by Echo and Tascam) for GS alone. No other software running on the GS system.


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Alan:
If your only going to use one instrument at a time like I do heed the following advice.Run Giga on a seperate card and you\'ll get no pos or clicks whatsoever.For my main Audio I use the M-Audio Audiophile,for Giga I use a Montego(consumer card)2,I just use the Montego for monitoring then use the capture to .wav for internal streaming in Cakewalk/Sonar which works perfectly.Every once in a while I\'ll try it with the same card when there are new driver updates but the pops/ clicks come back right away so I switch back.With this particular setup I am pop and glitch free.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Avar]

You do not state whether this fine machine is dedicated to GS or if you are simultaneously running other software on it -- which can be done, apparently, but adds many complications.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by porterpe:
I am experiencing a similar but somewhat different problem.

When I try to record several tracks of audio output from GigaStudio 96 to one single stereo mix-down track very small audio drop-outs are sometimes recorded on the mix-down track. The strange thing is that I hear NO drop-outs in the monitored GigaStudio output while the mix-down track is being recorded. The drop-outs are only found on the mix-down track itself.

These drop-outs only seem to occur when large GigaStudio samples are being used. If several tracks of small (<300K) sample audio output is mixed-down there are no drop-outs. It is only when large samples (like GigaPiano) are included in the mix-down that the drop outs occur. Also, if I record each GigaStudio output channel separately to an audio track, and then mix down the various audio tracks, no drop-outs are produced.

I can mix-down a very large number of audio tracks with no drop-outs, clicks, pops or whatever so I don\'t understand where this problem with recording GigaStudio audio output is coming from.

My computer is home built and consists of a Asus CUSL2-C Black Pearl Motherboard, a PIII-1000 processor, 512 MB of PC 133 RAM, two Maxtor 60 GB ATA 100 hard drives operating at ATA 100 (one for Giga samples alone), a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 audio card with the latest multi-client drivers and W98SE for the operating system. It is really a very high performance machine. I have also optimized my machine by making all the normal system changes recommended by the Tascam system optimization paper found on their website. The machine is dedicated to music production.

Anyone have any ideas as to what is going wrong? Any recommendations?

Thanks!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Avar]

Jamieh,

This is one thing I have not done because it was not recommended for Window98Se in the optimization guide I used.

Are you using Win95?

Win98 warms you if you try to turn off virtual memory that you might not be able to restart your computer!

If you use Win98SE and tried it anyway and that solved your problem, then I\'ll go for it.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=\"1\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jamieh:
One thing to try if you are getting pops and clicks on a periodic basis:

Turn your Windows virtual memory OFF. Right-click on My Computer and go to properties. In there somewhere you can turn virtual memory off. This solved my problem of pops and clicks, until I upgraded to 1GB of RAM and ran into a whole set of new problems.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Kenn159]

clueless
Member
Posts: 128
Registered: Jun 2000
posted 11-07-2001 07:51 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Kenn159:
Have you tried performing some hardware substitutions? For example, install another soundcard, video card, or even motherboard. Use the scientific approach of making one change at a time and noting the difference. Someone might lend you some components for a day to try in your system. I went through four motherboards and I\'m still not \"happy.\"

clueless


My reply
Ive tried changing out every piece of hardware one at a time , the only thing I haven\'t change is the Abit Be6 motherboard and the pen 3 450 CPU.
It will probable come down to getting a new sysstem as soon as I can find a couple people here with a motherboard cpu combo that is pop and click free.
IP: 24.159.186.73


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What kind of MIDI interface are you using? I\'ve had problems with pops in the past when I tried using a USB MIDI interface.
L Hong

My reply
Ive tried about different pci and isa cards .
Some acually popped worse than others but none were pop and clck free.
Right now Im using a SB live for midi and a Darla 24 for audio .


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The good GSIF soundcard might be the one of possibilities to get rid of Click/Pop...
Likely, most of MIDIMan\'s or Creamware\'s soundcard, you hardly can go wrong (Click/Pop), when your hardware setup is recommended by them.

My reply Im using a Darla 24 with WDM and GSIF drivers.


--------------------------------------
One thing to try if you are getting pops and clicks on a periodic basis:
Turn your Windows virtual memory OFF. Right-click on My Computer and go to properties. In there somewhere you can turn virtual memory off. This solved my problem of pops and clicks, until I upgraded to 1GB of RAM and ran into a whole set of new problems.


My reply Those were mentioned on some of the computer optimizing pages .
I tried it and it made know difference.


--------------------------------------
If your only going to use one instrument at a time like I do heed the following advice.Run Giga on a seperate card and you\'ll get no pos or clicks whatsoever.For my main Audio I use the M-Audio Audiophile,for Giga I use a Montego(consumer card)2,I just use the Montego for monitoring then use the capture to .wav for internal streaming in Cakewalk/Sonar which works perfectly.Every once in a while I\'ll try it with the same card when there are new driver updates but the pops/ clicks come back right away so I switch back.With this particular setup I am pop and glitch free.

My reply
Well I did have both Cakewalk and Gigastudio asighed to the same Darla card but going to different outs in multiclient mode .
Im running XP right not so Ill have to wait to assign different cards to the different programs , but it seems to me that It wont work because I get pops from giga even when cakewalk is not running .
I wouldnt think haveing cakewalk assigned to the same card would be a prob if cakewalk is not running.

---------
I am experiencing a similar but somewhat different problem.
When I try to record several tracks of audio output from GigaStudio 96 to one single stereo mix-down track very small audio drop-outs are sometimes recorded on the mix-down track. The strange thing is that I hear NO drop-outs in the monitored GigaStudio output while the mix-down track is being recorded. The drop-outs are only found on the mix-down track itself.

These drop-outs only seem to occur when large GigaStudio samples are being used. If several tracks of small (<300K) sample audio output is mixed-down there are no drop-outs. It is only when large samples (like GigaPiano) are included in the mix-down that the drop outs occur. Also, if I record each GigaStudio output channel separately to an audio track, and then mix down the various audio tracks, no drop-outs are produced.

I can mix-down a very large number of audio tracks with no drop-outs, clicks, pops or whatever so I don\'t understand where this problem with recording GigaStudio audio output is coming from.

My computer is home built and consists of a Asus CUSL2-C Black Pearl Motherboard, a PIII-1000 processor, 512 MB of PC 133 RAM, two Maxtor 60 GB ATA 100 hard drives operating at ATA 100 (one for Giga samples alone), a M-Audio Audiophile 2496 audio card with the latest multi-client drivers and W98SE for the operating system. It is really a very high performance machine. I have also optimized my machine by making all the normal system changes recommended by the Tascam system optimization paper found on their website. The machine is dedicated to music production.

Anyone have any ideas as to what is going wrong? Any recommendations?

Thanks!

My reply
I only get pops and clicks when using large samples like giga piano also.
Low megabyte samples are not a prob for me.

----------
I would like to see your fix, I\'ll look for it.
My GS problem is not electrical and it is not memory based. CPU and memory resources are barely used.

By using sysedit to rem out a line in autoexec and other minot steps, the pop now occurs about every 60 to 90 seconds and is not so loud. Usually a pop, then a click or two then silence for a while.

My machine is built to Tascam specifications and runs nothing except GS. I believe Tascam ought to have some documentation on troubleshooting this problem.


My reply
Well I dont have giga studio in front of me because it wont run on XP, but from memory , what I did was.

Open giga studio
Load and play a sample
Then go to the page were you change polyphony[on the something like settings hardware page]
take the mouse and reduce polyphony by the smallest increment possible .
Then apply that change .
Then go back and play that patch that you already had loaded .
Now you should have substantially reduced pops and clicks as long as your polyphony setting is not beyond the capability of your computer.
If the setting is to high no fix will help so you have to set it within reason.
For instance I have a pen 3 450 and I was getting pops and clicks even at 30 voices.
But I know my computer should be able
to handle 75 voices , so thats what I set it at.
One more thing that I want to mention is ,when you go to the polyphony page and line up the mouse with the number of voices as if you were about to change them ,you dont even have to change them .
Just the act of lining up the curser and apply is what helps to fix the pop problem.
Let me know how this works for you ?
Ken

[Alan]

For the record I run Giga and Sonar on the same machine on Win 98se with the 2 card system.It doesn\'t matter if you assign giga seperate outputs on the same card,GSIF drivers just seems to take over.Cubase users have a particularly hard time because of low latencey asio conflicting with GSIF.My brother had the same exact problem only Giga took contol of his inputs on his Fronteir Wavecenter card.Maybe Tascam has/or will come up with solution.All I know is that since I assigned Giga to a seperate card my problems were over.My brother runs it on another machine sucsessfully now to.By the way we\'ve tried the Giga fix as well which helped but didn\'t solve the problem entirely.