ASIO crackling in Cubase SE

[ford442]

see if this seems falmiliar to anyone -
if i have Cubase set to use my Firewire Audiophile's ASIO driver this happens - not with DX - upon loading my project i get a thud then some crackles until i hit play - then when i hit play i get nothing but crackles for about 3 seconds then my right channel comes through followed by the left a second or two later - after that i get more crackles whenever the playback approaches the end my of my selected loop especially with certain VSTs..

again - with the DirectX driver i get no crackles at all.. these are loud annoying sounds too..

my Firewire audiophile is connected to a Belkin firewire PCI card.. i also have a TC Powercore Element card which is running the Access Virus and a couple reverbs..

i've tried changing my ASIO buffer size and i'm pretty sure i reinstalled cubase a couple times..

none of this used to happen.. i can't quite place what might have changed in my system.. but it's really starting to bug me..

thanks in advance for any suggestions..!

[ford442]

i just ordered a $10 firewire card that is on the list of certified models at m-audio.com.. maybe that'll help....

[ford442]

hmm spoke too soon about DX - it actually starts crackling and promptly dies completely after a bit.....

[Muff Wiggler]

couple things -

-make sure your system performance (in windows) is set for 'background tasks' and not 'foreground applications'. As counter-intuitive as this sounds, ASIO is a background process

-make sure you have the latest drivers for your soundcard

-in the 'ASIO Multimedia Configuration' applet, make sure your soundcard has 'Sync Reference' checked for it - if it's the only soundcard, it will be so, but if you have multiple cards, the one you are using might not be checked, and this WILL cause the described problem

-as you know, set higher ASIO buffers for your chosen samplerate, then to the 'test configuration' thing

good luck

[ford442]

hmm.. something i did made the crackling go away - now it's just silent for a time when i first load the project.. but the weird thing is what i did was just something like adding a second input bus..

well this is a big improvement! thanks for getting me back to working on settings..