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What is wrong with my MIDI?

JimmyM

JimmyM

Apr 11, 2005
127,255
125,172
Plymouth NC
Disclosures
Endorsing: Yamaha, Ampeg, Line 6, EMG
#1
How come I can play WAV files just fine on my computer through Winamp, but when I try to use them in my recording software and sampler, they break up and crackle?

Here's the deal...I'm trying to set up my laptop as a little mini recording studio similar to what I have on my desktop, so I bought a couple cheap USB devices for my laptop in order to record. I got an M-Audio USB Transit card and an EMU USB MIDI 1x1 device. I'm running Sonar 7 and Kontakt 2. When I play back anything I've recorded, it crackles. I adjusted the latency as high as it can go, and it still crackles. What I don't get, though (not being a wiz at the technical end), is if all I'm doing is basically playing back WAV files, why would latency enter into it at all? Shouldn't Sonar just trigger the WAV sample file in Kontakt and not have latency enter into it at all?

I'm really bummed because on my home computer I've got an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 which has never given me problems at all. No latency, no crackling, no nothing except what I want it to do. But with this laptop setup, it's been nothing but problems. I would really like to make this work since I bought these USB devices. If anyone has any ideas what I can do, I'm all ears.
 
#4
What laptop do you have? Where are you plugging in your headphones/monitors (into the Transit?)? Have you tried recording your bass direct into the Transit, and playing it back? Does that also crackle?

Check your windows audio properties, make sure the Transit is your default playback device. I'm not real familiar with Sonar (I use Cubase), but there is probably an Audio Device setup or ASIO setup in the program where you can choose your devices. Make sure the Transit ASIO driver is being used, and not your onboard sound driver.

Another thing you can try is to export your Sonar project to a .wav file and play it back in winamp through your onboard sound and see if it's ok. It should, which would point to the ASIO settings in Sonar as the problem. If it crackles, then something else is going on..
 
#6
Welp, good news, sort of...I did all the tweaks from Musicxp.com, and that didn't help much but it did help a little. And switching Sonar over to ASIO helped some more. I got rid of the latency but I still get crackling in playback. However, when you export the MIDI from Kontakt into an audio file, the audio on the file is clean. So at least it'll be usable.

But Sonar doesn't seem to like my Transit as a playback device, which is kind of a bummer. I think there's some issue with it elsewhere, though, because I've recorded and played back audio through it with no problem, other than the usual not being able to monitor through it (which M-Audio should warn you about before you buy it).

So correct me if I'm wrong, but the crackling I'm still getting would be an issue of not enough RAM, right? Seems odd, though, because it's got a gig of RAM and that was way more than enough on my desktop. Do you think boosting the RAM to 2 gig would help? It's a Toshiba Satellite with a Centrino Duo 1.66ghz processor.

Thank you all for the advice...I haven't got it perfect yet, but at least it's now workable, although I have to do couple end runs.
 
#7
It could be a couple of things. If you're running out of memory and Windows starts swapping RAM do disk, that'll certainly hurt your playback.

Also, am I assuming that when you're doing MIDI playback that all the sound synthesis is being handled in software. Its possible that your CPU isn't keeping up, though a Centrino Duo should be more than enough.

You might want to try two thing.
1) Bring up the Windows Task Manager, and see if either the CPU gets pegged during playback, or if your running out of memory.

2) You might have some power saving features turned on that are throttling back your CPU frequency to increase battery life. Check if you've got anything like that enabled.

Anyway, best of luck.

JimmyM said:
So correct me if I'm wrong, but the crackling I'm still getting would be an issue of not enough RAM, right? Seems odd, though, because it's got a gig of RAM and that was way more than enough on my desktop. Do you think boosting the RAM to 2 gig would help? It's a Toshiba Satellite with a Centrino Duo 1.66ghz processor.
Click to expand...
 
#8
I hate to say this, but if it is not too late, return your USB audio device and exchange it for an Echo Indigo Cardbus or save up for a firewire device.

I may get flamed for saying this, but USB audio is nothing, and I mean nothing, but problematic. I owned the Maudio ozone--for 2 days. I could get like maybe 2 audio tracks out of cubase before I started getting pops, clicks, and dropouts. I went for an Echo Indigo IO and problem solved....

Also...disk-based samplers like Kontakt and Halion can suffer to the point of being unusable if you are running a slower 5400 rpm drive on your laptop...
 
#9
I would agree that USB audio may not be the best. Not all USB is equal. At the same time, we seem to be in this void of support for Express Cards. Some of the new laptops only come with express card slots and there's little choice for sound cards now.

Some other thoughts.

Sometimes - lowering latency can help with the crackling. You really have to play with it.

If you do have a gig or more of RAM. Consider turning off the virtual memory page file altogether. (shock) If windows has a page file, it will try to use it, anticipating that some other apps will need real RAM at some other time. Turning off the page file forces Windows to use all the physical RAM.

Make sure your laptop is not in any "low power" mode. That it's set for High Performance - no battery saver mode.

Your video might be sharing the system ram. Try running at lower resolution or color.
 
#10
vcovco said:
I hate to say this, but if it is not too late, return your USB audio device and exchange it for an Echo Indigo Cardbus or save up for a firewire device.

I may get flamed for saying this, but USB audio is nothing, and I mean nothing, but problematic. I owned the Maudio ozone--for 2 days. I could get like maybe 2 audio tracks out of cubase before I started getting pops, clicks, and dropouts. I went for an Echo Indigo IO and problem solved....

Also...disk-based samplers like Kontakt and Halion can suffer to the point of being unusable if you are running a slower 5400 rpm drive on your laptop...
Click to expand...
It's too late but it's OK. I dig the Transit. It's cheap, sounds good, and is fairly easy to use. But using MIDI with the usb is not fun. I'll get it worked out eventually. I think it'll just take some time and I'll have to discover a couple workarounds.

Where can you look up how fast your hard drive is?
 
#11
You can look in device manager and then look up the model of your HD online, or use something like sisoft sandra to test it.

I'm really thinking your setup should work... There must be something with the configuration. If you're real desperate I could remote in and take a look but that's up to you ;) PM me if you want (I do IT support for my day job).
 
#14
hunta, thanks for the offer, but I don't think it'll be necessary. I think I'm really close to getting it together. I got rid of the latency and that was way more important than anything, so I think I can at least live with it as long as it records MIDI to audio well.

Besides, if you find my donkey porn, you could turn me into the FBI for a big reward ;)
 

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