Ableton live 10 suite audio crackle issue with echo audiofire4 audio interface

[3ptguitarist]

I've had some audio crackling issues in ableton live 10 suite. I have an echo audiofire 4 audio interface and I'm on win 10 pro with an i7 6700k processor, 16 gb ram, and a good amount of ssd hard drive space. I also use voicemeeter banana, but I've had it turned off and just using the audio interface and I still get crackles. I've actually had crackles before while using cakewalk sonar and before I used voicemeeter. So I wonder if it's my audio interface.

When I play certain sounds like certain pads the audio crackles. I have buffer set to 256 and I'm at 44.1 khz sample rate and at 24-bit. When I increase the buffer to 1024, the crackles stop. At 256 and 512 the crackles occur.

This doesn't happen as much in Cubase pro 10, but it happens in Ableton. I see cpu spikes, but I have a good high end cpu.

Does anyone know what the issue is and how to resolve it?

[BrokenTrance]

[Edit]

[WasteLand]

do you use the high performance profile, for setting the clock speed of the cpu to 100%, i can best make it your own, there is a lot of info, how to tweak, it doens't have to go that deep. but most important: clock speed at 100%. that is first thing you must do. for other problems, usb related, turn also the usb sleep mode, or how is it called off. also important.

but try first 100% clock speed.

i also have an i7 6700k, no audiofire, but a motu ultrilate mk3 hybrid, works most of times quite well or great at 24 bits 48Khz, 256 samples, higher i only use for soft-modular patches, when necessary...

it can be your audio interface; latest drivers installed? do you use asio driver of the soundcard?

but this is troubleshooting. when i hear crackles, i know, i didn't set the right profile....

[3ptguitarist]

do you use the high performance profile, for setting the clock speed of the cpu to 100%, i can best make it your own, there is a lot of info, how to tweak, it doens't have to go that deep. but most important: clock speed at 100%. that is first thing you must do. for other problems, usb related, turn also the usb sleep mode, or how is it called off. also important.

but try first 100% clock speed.

i also have an i7 6700k, no audiofire, but a motu ultrilate mk3 hybrid, works most of times quite well or great at 24 bits 48Khz, 256 samples, higher i only use for soft-modular patches, when necessary...

it can be your audio interface; latest drivers installed? do you use asio driver of the soundcard?

but this is troubleshooting. when i hear crackles, i know, i didn't set the right profile....

I'll look into your suggestions later.

As for drivers, the echo audiofire4 doesn't update or support the audio interfaces anymore. My driver might be a few years old. I do use the asio drivers of the soundcard.

[sguyader]

Do you have Asio4All installed on your computer as well, by any chance? I using the ASIO driver of my sound card, I had crackles and as I read somewhere, they were caused by the presence of the Asio4all driver on my computer. It looks like Asio4all doesn't play along very well with other Asio drivers. The crackles disappeared as soon as I got rid of Asio4all.
If you do have it, uninstall it and reboot.

[3ptguitarist]

Do you have Asio4All installed on your computer as well, by any chance? I using the ASIO driver of my sound card, I had crackles and as I read somewhere, they were caused by the presence of the Asio4all driver on my computer. It looks like Asio4all doesn't play along very well with other Asio drivers. The crackles disappeared as soon as I got rid of Asio4all.
If you do have it, uninstall it and reboot.

I'll have to look into that, thanks. I may have installed it at a certain point recently.

[thecontrolcentre]

Perhaps change the thread title to "Echo Audiofire 4 audio crackle issue", as that's most likely the problem. You said it works fine at 1024, so why not use it with that setting? Too much latency?

[3ptguitarist]

Do you have Asio4All installed on your computer as well, by any chance? I using the ASIO driver of my sound card, I had crackles and as I read somewhere, they were caused by the presence of the Asio4all driver on my computer. It looks like Asio4all doesn't play along very well with other Asio drivers. The crackles disappeared as soon as I got rid of Asio4all.
If you do have it, uninstall it and reboot.

I did have asio4all installed and I uninstalled it and the crackles still occur.

[3ptguitarist]

Perhaps change the thread title to "Echo Audiofire 4 audio crackle issue", as that's most likely the problem. You said it works fine at 1024, so why not use it with that setting? Too much latency?

The latency is my issue at 1024. I can sense it though it's probably not horrific, but I'd rather have 256 which to me feels great. Plus I'm trying to use voicemeeter to do live streaming and I want as minimal latency as possible for that as I think with voicemeeter theres some added latency so with 1024 there could be more latency.

[fedexnman]

I have the same EchoAF4 audio interface , it works great to record audio and use stuff like EZdrummer2 and some light sampling stuff like a host included sampler for samples and 3rd party VST effects , I can use it at 64 buffers, but 128 buffers play nicer ...but I will say a couple of things it doesn't play nice with stuff like U-he Diva demo , Ableton , Renoise , and also see it takes a crap on the guitar amp sim that came with StudioOne1 as well as the Trackion Software company synths VSTs, I have to set the buffers higher 256-512-1028 it kinda sucks .Now this is an older FireWire interface and I also don't have another interface to compare it with so I don't know if it's the interface or My computer Windows 10 i7 920 6gb ram Nvidia 9800gt gigabyte Mobo . And Windows has been optimized for DAW using some guide somewhere maybe Presonus site can't remember. I'm looking to do a new PC build and get one of these soon https://www.native-instruments.com/en/p ... e-audio-6/ it's laid out similarly to the EchoAF4 FireWire unit but it's USB2.x ..

[3ptguitarist]

I have the same EchoAF4 audio interface , it works great to record audio and use stuff like EZdrummer2 and some light sampling stuff like a host included sampler for samples and 3rd party VST effects , I can use it at 64 buffers, but 128 buffers play nicer ...but I will say a couple of things it doesn't play nice with stuff like U-he Diva demo , Ableton , Renoise , and also see it takes a crap on the guitar amp sim that came with StudioOne1 as well as the Trackion Software company synths VSTs, I have to set the buffers higher 256-512-1028 it kinda sucks .Now this is an older FireWire interface and I also don't have another interface to compare it with so I don't know if it's the interface or My computer Windows 10 i7 920 6gb ram Nvidia 9800gt gigabyte Mobo . And Windows has been optimized for DAW using some guide somewhere maybe Presonus site can't remember. I'm looking to do a new PC build and get one of these soon https://www.native-instruments.com/en/p ... e-audio-6/ it's laid out similarly to the EchoAF4 FireWire unit but it's USB2.x ..

It might be the audiofire4 because I just got a steinberg ur242 and it doesn't have the same issue with crackling while playing the same song I created. If anything, theres very minor crackling and I have the buffer set to 192.

Echo audio stopped supporting their hardware interfaces a while ago and do not have drivers that support windows. This could why there are issues.

[fedexnman]

It worked pretty good back in the Windows XP days .... That's how OLD the interface is now and most of us got by with 256 512 and 1024 back in those days .. now we have multi core CPUs , CPU/Ram hungry VST synths and samplers , Windows 10 and FireWire support is gone by the waist side pretty much and I can't imagine the drivers being all that great since the XP/7 days to be honest . I'm glad you are having luck with Steinberg ur242 , so I think I'll definitely pull the trigger on a that NI interface on the 12th of June hate to spend the money but maybe it's meant to be .

[3ptguitarist]

It worked pretty good back in the Windows XP days .... That's how OLD the interface is now and most of us got by with 256 512 and 1024 back in those days .. now we have multi core CPUs , CPU/Ram hungry VST synths and samplers , Windows 10 and FireWire support is gone by the waist side pretty much and I can't imagine the drivers being all that great since the XP/7 days to be honest . I'm glad you are having luck with Steinberg ur242 , so I think I'll definitely pull the trigger on a that NI interface on the 12th of June hate to spend the money but maybe it's meant to be .

I guess I kept it for too long lol. Komplete audio looks interesting, but I bought the Steinberg ur 242 because of its loopback feature where you can live stream or video record what you hear from the daw or vst directly. A lot of the interfaces in this price don't have this feature and I'm unsure if theres a way to live stream audio with those interfaces besides using something like Voicemeeter.

[3ptguitarist]

do you use the high performance profile, for setting the clock speed of the cpu to 100%, i can best make it your own, there is a lot of info, how to tweak, it doens't have to go that deep. but most important: clock speed at 100%. that is first thing you must do. for other problems, usb related, turn also the usb sleep mode, or how is it called off. also important.

but try first 100% clock speed.

i also have an i7 6700k, no audiofire, but a motu ultrilate mk3 hybrid, works most of times quite well or great at 24 bits 48Khz, 256 samples, higher i only use for soft-modular patches, when necessary...

it can be your audio interface; latest drivers installed? do you use asio driver of the soundcard?

but this is troubleshooting. when i hear crackles, i know, i didn't set the right profile....

High performance setting worked! Thanks. It changed the minimum clock speed to 100%.

Do you know if there are any cons to setting the clock speed to 100%?

[WasteLand]

do you use the high performance profile, for setting the clock speed of the cpu to 100%, i can best make it your own, there is a lot of info, how to tweak, it doens't have to go that deep. but most important: clock speed at 100%. that is first thing you must do. for other problems, usb related, turn also the usb sleep mode, or how is it called off. also important.

but try first 100% clock speed.

i also have an i7 6700k, no audiofire, but a motu ultrilate mk3 hybrid, works most of times quite well or great at 24 bits 48Khz, 256 samples, higher i only use for soft-modular patches, when necessary...

it can be your audio interface; latest drivers installed? do you use asio driver of the soundcard?

but this is troubleshooting. when i hear crackles, i know, i didn't set the right profile....

High performance setting worked! Thanks. It changed the minimum clock speed to 100%.

Do you know if there are any cons to setting the clock speed to 100%?

none, it draws somewhat more power (not much), but the processor isn't really used, when you do nothing, only the clock speed is at its highest. a little bit warmer when idle. never had problems. when not necessary i change it to balanced. just a thing i do.

no drawbacks. unless you have overclocked your i7 7600k at an extreme speed.... with high voltage... but then again, it will throttle... but then we are in the domain of overclocking which is completely different. so:

no worries! glad it helped!