popping and clicking in Gigastudio v3 with Cubase SX v2 and Sibelius V3.1.3

[maestro2be]

Hi Everyone,

I am having some popping and clicking that no matter what i do or whatever recommendations i follow i cannot resolve. here is the situation and what i am trying to accomplish. I have searched the entire forum including other forums so i apologize if somehow the answer is here and i missed it.

First scenario which is the simplest, GigaStudio V3 with Sibelius V3.

In this scenario i cannot get the popping and clicking to stop. I have worked for 3 days straight on this. My computer is completely setup for Audio recording and i have done all the changes that blackviper.com, RME, TASCAM and Recording Pc magazine optimizing Windows XP for audio had to say. I have used this system for a long time with Sibelius and Garritan Personal Orchestra and not once do i ever get any popping and clicking. I am aware that GPO works with Kontakt player. 3 Days ago I bought Gigastudio so I could use the Vienna Library sounds and nothing i do will eliminate these pops and clicks. All i am using is a sibelius piano example file and loading in one voice (megapiano). Not even gigapiano or the bosendorfer. Just your old basic piano and it still does it. If i mash down the keys in the midi mixer i get the same result, pops and clicks.

Here is my System Configuration:
Windows XP SP2
Tyan S2460 dual MP with dual 1800+ (they are running at 1.53GHZ Each)
2.5GB of Crucial memory
Adaptec 1200A Raid contrroller with a Raid 0+1 setup. 4 120GB WD HD's
RME Hammerfall DSP Multiface Soundcard - 44.1khz current smaple rate
SB Audigy 2 ZS Soundcard
3Com 3C905C-TX Network Card

I have a completely seperate Hardware Profile for audio recording in which I have the 3Com network card, firewire ports and everything else i don't need is disabled including all the obvious windows services and all the recommendations mentioned earlier. I have tried every single latency setting on my soundcard and that makes no difference. I have done all the GS3 setting recommendations like turning off file monitor and even set my voicecs to 24! I have went into Sibelius and turned off all reverb, follow score on playback etc. I swear im going crazy because i feel like i have looked at everything. I have went into my controllers and made sure everything is set to DMA mode and it is. Like I said I have beed using Garritan GPO for a while and never get this stuff. No matter what i do to the system i cannot even get GPO to pop or click.

My second scenario is running GigaStudio with Cubase SX v2.

I have been recording with Cubase for almost 2 years now with no pops or clicks ever. Now I am trying to use GS3 with it and it just won't stop. I have tried going into GS3 and opening Cubase within GS3 and this definitely gives the best results so far compared to opening cubase first and GS3 second. But lets say i open a simple midi file like a piano piece and load up megapiano. Major pops and clicks and sometimes the audio jolts and lags etc. Again I have tried every latency setting possible and they do make a difference here unlike the sibelius and GS3 combo did. Yet i still can't get them to go away entirely, still alot remain. Also, I am sorry but i don't understand this REWIRE stuff. Do i have to run in rewire mode with Cubase SX and GigaStudio or is there a better way knowing how good my soundcard is? I have tried to make it work but i can't get any sound unless i do use rewire. Perhaps this is a setup issue.

Is there any reason or gain I would get by say doing my work in Cubase and GS3 Only? i like writing my scores in Sibelius, so is it easier to write them there, save them as midi and work with them in Cubase or just use midi commands in Sibelius and keep doing what i am doing? I actually did one time run into a situation where GPO didn't have the sound i needed so i had to use my SB Audigy for that particular sound so it made it extremely difficult to record since i couldnt record to file through GPO because it would not record my SB Audigy midi sounds. Dear jesus I hope i am making sense here because I have went on a tangent lmao!!

Please anyone that can help me get rid of these pops and clicks and maybe even help me understand a better way to do what i am doing like taking scores fom sibelius to cubase and working them inside it.

Thank you!!

[jgsirac]

Maybe (just maybe) you should run a test on your hardrives with a program such as HD Tach http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

I just discovered today a problem with my sample disk. Clicks and pop appeared two week ago inexplicably on a machine that ran fine for months. It turned out XP had switched the drive to PIO mode 4 instead of UDMA5. HD Tach was reporting a transfer rate of 4MB/s ...

I had to remove Primary IDE driver from the system list and reinstall it to switch it back ...

Good luck
JGS

[maestro2be]

Thanks a ton for the reply. i installed and ran that utility and my avg was 58mbs. I was getting as high as 77mbs read time access. All of my drives are definitely in DMA Mode as I ran accross that on another post and checked for that and in truth yesterday one was in PIO mode. I changed it to DMA and its been that way since yesterday but still it had no effect to my ears.

Maestro2be

[jgsirac]

Your workflow has nothing wrong I guess, many people use these tools without (big) problem.

Did you change anything in your configuration lately ?

Update all your drivers (RME has a 2.83 update by the way) especially your graphic cards to the latest.

Check in the system list that audio card, raid controller are on their own dedicated IRQ.

Clicks and pops often appear when many hard/soft-ware try to compete for speed in the system (IRQ, disk access, pci bus master, asio, ...).

Finally if nothing really helps, backup your licenses, format your system disk & reinstall Xp ...

JGS

[mbmb]

http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m=407957


i am also a cubase user but this thread in the cakewalk forum might help you cause it's not cubase nor sonar that cause it....but this is a good discussion IMHO

Good luck and i hope you sort it out soon

[maestro2be]

Thanks for the replys. I checked out those links and man am i learning a ton of stuff about this. Here is what i came up with.

First off no one laugh (ok atleast not to loudly :P) but you are never going to believe what wa causing my problems...... OMG i feel so stupid to even say it lmao. Within GS3 you have a Midi Mixer and a DSP mixer. Well when you select the output masters they were all set to max! I was sitting here watching my RME HAmmerfall DSP Multiface Mixer and my outputs were clipping. i thought ok i know this but for days i couldn't find the spot to adjust. Yesterday I just started goofing off and said hmm what is this? viola... cracks and pops gone. I can't believe it.

At any rate. I decided today i was going to start all over since it has been 2 years since i have reloaded windows and we all know it helps to do this. I have done 400times the amount of performance modifications this time and managed to get all of my IRQ's straight and nice and friendly. I was originally running everything (OS and Programs and Samples etc) off a Raid 0+1 config. This time i went and bought a 7200RPM 120gb HD for my system drive to hold the OS and the programs and will load all the samples on my nice freshly rebuilt RAID 0+1.

I do still have a few questions though because it's still installing as we speak and i will keep posting here until i am finished and it is working flawlessly.

Do you think it is best to load all the programs to the 120GB C drive and do nothing but samples on my 220GB raid or should i load something on my raid also? I am using Sibelius v3, Cubase SX and GS3.

We have talked so much about PCI Latency on this site but nothing ever says anything but the options i have. I can set mine in my mother bios but it doesn't say 32, 64, 128 etc... it says 0020H, 0040H, 0060H, 0080H and 00C00... WTF does that mean!!? Can anyone please tell me which ones are the faster or larger ones? Meaning is 0020H the equivilant to like 32 or is it the top dog and sets it to like 256? I want to set this is my bios and see how it works. I also noticed that no matter what the RME Hammerfall DSP Multiface AUTOMATICALLY sets it own latency to 255 upon bootup. RME Confirmed this for me.

Also there is so much talk about memory here yet i cannot seem to find definitive adjustments to make to my system. Can someone please tell me based on my system (which is all in my top post) what settings i should use for memory and how to do it or provide the link i need to read? I now realise that Garritan ran 50 million times better because it was loading all my insturments into memory. I never get pops and clicks with it.

Lastly for now i was wondering since i have another pc that is pretty fast but is my FTP and work server I was thinking of putting sibelius here and buying say a midiman little USB thingee and play my compositions from here and then have just GS3 and maybe sequencer running? Good idea or not?

Thanks everyone

[mbmb]

what sx cubase version are you using ?

[maestro2be]

I have been using Cubase SX 2. I did just get my upgrade to SX 3 though. So I can use which ever one will work best with this setup.

[mbmb]

install sx3 and the one update....not the latest one

So install and run sx3.0.1 and see if it still clicks and pops

while you install new software, do a clean windows install as well and all the latest soundcard drivers

[maestro2be]

Well everyone it is completely setup and here are the results of my newly rebuilt machine. All the time I spent optimizing has paid off.

I decided to go ahead and just install my old Cubase SX 2 since I never had any problems in it plus all my projects are in this. I also installed Sibelius v3.1.3, Garritan Personal Orchestra GPO, Gigastudio 3, Wavelabs v5.01, PCI Latency tool v2.3 and the drivers for my stupid SB Audigy card so I could Keep my Hammerfall Multiface away from being the windows default. Other then that I put on here PerfectDisk 7.0 defrag tool (you all need to be using this, xp defrag blows compared to this) and Adobe Reader v7.

It took a lot of time to go through every program and optimize them but it was worth it. I setup a few hardware profiles:

Profile 1 (this is the windows default)
GigaStudio Recording
GPO Recording
Cubase Recording

This was the best thing to do. I have different hardware enabled/disabled through out those profiles and it makes my life easy. Plus I can have different latencies for my profiles.

So what were the results of all of this? Here goes.....

1. I can open GigaStudio 3 and load the bosendorfer 290 and mash on the keys all day long with no pops or clicks at 320 voicecs. I havent tried more yet but I can tell you I also did it with full reverb and STILL mashed the keys and had no pops or clicks.

2. I can open Cubase and run it, record to it from my sources (not GS3), Playback, export etc. You name it. Everything I used to do I still can with no more pops and clicks.

3. Now this one is my favorite as this was my main purpose. I can open Sibelius, load one of my orchestrations and then go open GigaStudio 3 and load 10 bosendorfers. Yes you heard me, 10 different ones at that. 16 layer, sustained, 8 layer, plus reverb etc. Then I went back into Sibelius and set all my instruments to use those pianos(I went down the line of 26 instruments, some with 2 voices and just counted from 1 to 10 then started over to be sure all the bosendorfers got played). Results? FLAWLESS. It played all 10 bosendorfers without one hickup or pop or click. i couldn't believe it, I was so happy. This is truly my new setup.

The only setups I haven't tweaked yet are memory (still waiting for someone to show me how to do this), PCI Latency (again still waiting for someone to show me which cards are best placed at what latencies) and finally REWIRE. I will do REWIRE later.

Here is a list again of my specs with everything working flawlessly.

1. Tyan S2460 Tiger MP Motherboard with Dual MP 1800+ Procs
2. 2.5GB of Crucial memory, bought from Crucial not ebay :P
3. Creative Labs Annihilator 2 Ultra 64MB Video Card
4. 3Com 3C905C-TX-M Network Card
5. Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Soundcard (for windows default stuff)
6. RME Hammerfall DSP Multiface (best investment I ever made on my PC)
7. WD 120GB 7200 RPM System Drive (OS and Program installs)
8. Adaptac 1200A Raid Controller (Raid 0+1 with 4 WD 120GB 7200rpm HD's)
9. 510Watt PC Power and Cooling ATX Powersupply (This is probably the single most important thing you can do is buy the best powersupply)
10. Lite-on DVD Drive
11. Pioneer DVR-A05 DVD Burner
12. Lite-on 52x32x52 CD Burner

I have a full surround package of Monitor Audio Reference series which helps a ton with mixes and just user motivation :D. If anyone has any questions for me let me know!

[damballah]

Guys,



MY PC is AMD 2000+, my sound card is Motu 828 mk2 and I use mainly Cubase SX 2.2.23 AND I also experiment clicks, pops and even soft electronic distorsion whilst recording audio with my newly bought MOTU.

By playing with the size of the audio buffers I can reduce those pain-in-the-~~~ noises but can't get completly rid of it.



In Motu's website they say that:
- one should make sure that his HDD are fast enough
- that the digital devices connected to the Motu are properly sync.
- That the FW chipset or the FW adapter is TI or Lucent

Well My HDD is kind of fast and I have removed all digital devices and the chipset of my FW adapter is TI.



I still get the clicks&pops .
I have reinstalled XP and XP SP2 twice already but it's the same!


I posted here because of the idea that same problems with differents hardware/platforms may have similar origins.

So far Motu is not responding to my mail, I bought it 6 weeks ago...