Audio Gapping And Clicks please HELP

djquixotic wrote on 9/11/2003, 3:56 AM
ok ive been trying to solve this issue for the past three weeks. I recently updated my computer with new hardware, i got a new motherboard (MachSpeed 694TAS), new processor (Pentium III 1.2G), more memory (512 SDRAM), new hard drive (Western Digital 120G, 7200rpms). i put in a whole Sonic Foundry package that included ACID 3.0, Vegas Audio, and Sound Forge 5.0. ok...so when i did a test record on Vegas and tried to play back my test, it played back with gapping and glitching. I did a test record on Acid, same thing. did a test on sound forge, it played back fine, but when i added any effects to it, it gapped and clicked. now, upon further troubleshooting, i noticed that in vegas, when i would first play back a recorded sound, it would gap, but then i played it on a second run through it would play fine. people told me it was because i was using my on board sound card from my motherboard. fine, i went out and bought a kickass sound card (M-Audio Audiophile USB external sound card) that cost me almost 200$. installed it. did a test, still gapping and clicking. now vegas is crashing a lot as well. i have enough memory but someone had mentioned it could be my memory...might it not be working right? does anyone have any idea as to whats wrong. ive tried adjusting my buffer everything, ive spent the last 3 weeks on this issue. it does it on acid and vegas and on sound forge when i do an effect. please someone help.

Comments

fishtank wrote on 9/11/2003, 11:12 AM
It may help if you state what OS you are using. Also, there may be a few things you can *tweak* that may improve audio performance - some of which are OS specific.

I am not sure, but I think the motherboard you are using has an older and problematic VIA chipset. I have heard that the newer VIA chipsets are supposedly OK now, but many of us had tons of problems not all that long ago. Additionally, VIA has a bad history with USB support. Check out www.usbman.com for info and troubleshooting. Using a USB audio card with an older VIA chipset is probably a very bad idea.

The USBMAN site lists PCI USB cards that may help solve your problems. You might need to disable the onboard USB and use the add-on card instead. Just be sure to pick up one from the *Approved* list on the USBMAN site. I personally wouldn't bother with USB 2.0 (this will use up more IRQ's) as you can pick up a good USB 1.1 card for around $20.

Good luck....
djquixotic wrote on 9/11/2003, 3:15 PM
im using Windows 2000 and its been giving me this problem even with the onboard sound card. i also bought a sound blaster 16 pci and it still gave me the same problem. ive actually gotten a better quality sound (even thought at first playback it gaps and clicks) with the usb card im using
Ike_Boffo wrote on 9/11/2003, 3:54 PM
I'm not a hardware wiz, but I was getting gaps and clicks with two different soundcards until I learned about IRQ's from Edirol. It seemed that my modem and video display adapter were sharing an IRQ with my sound card. Eeek! When I moved the sound card to a different PCI slot (I'm using XP) it was assigned a different IRQ. I was able to disable the other devices on that IRQ so it could be dedicated to the soundcard. Haven't had the clicking/gapping problem since. Not once. I'm not sure about how USB devices function with each other on the same IRQ, but I would try to see if your capture device is fighting anything else for processing power.
fishtank wrote on 9/11/2003, 5:15 PM
I checked out your MB and saw that it uses the 686B southbridge which is notorious for causing these kind of problems. I am also not surprised that the USB card is working better than the onboard sound and the SB16. I have no idea if a different USB host will help, but for $20 it may be worth a try. You should also research the issues with the 686B southbridge to see if there is anything that may help (patches, new drivers etc.). You may also try the SP4 update for Win2K if you are not already running it. There is a VIA USB filter driver that may help as well (USBMAN has links to it).

If you are not running a seperate hard drive for the audio files you should add one. It is best to have it on its own interface without a slave if possible. Disabling all system sounds is a good thing to do as well.
djquixotic wrote on 9/11/2003, 8:47 PM
hey fish man, problem solved, or atleast so far it is. i was informed to download a 4 in 1 driver for the motherboard which is a VIA chipset. it seems to have solved the problem. but now i have a totally different issue. with my audiophile sound device, which works great, i cant hear my turntables until i record from them onto a sound program like vegas then play back the recording. so if say i just wanna hear a song on a record before i record it...i cant hear it through the sound card, i have to plug my headphones into my dj mixer. any thoughts?
fishtank wrote on 9/12/2003, 8:38 AM
There are probably others here that could answer your question better than I, but there may be a monitoring utility that came with the M-Audio card that will allow you to monitor the input (there is on my Frontier Dakota card). Also, if the card will do ASIO you could upgrade to Vegas 4.0 and use the input monitor feature in Vegas. The older versions of Vegas had no way to do this.