Crackling sounds during playback

[chanjay]

Hello, I am currently having an issue with clicks and pops. Hoping someone can help me.

My DAW is Samplitude Pro X3 running on a Razer Blade 15 laptop - 6 Cores i7 10th Gen, 32GB RAM (Windows 10 Home) connected to RME Baby Face Pro. I am in the middle of mixing an audio project (32bit Float/48KHz) about 30 tracks with some plugins (FF Saturn, Decapitator, The Glue, Sonible Smart Comp, Toraverb, Panman). I got this crackling sounds once in a while during playback but my mixdown file was still clean. Yesterday, I added 3 instances of the Sonible Smart EQ3 to the tracks, and the crackling sounds became more obvious & frequent. The CPU started to spike once in a while but I managed to tame it down by increasing the ASIO buffer size. Now the worst part is the clicks and pops became so audible in the mixdown file, the audio sounds like hiccuping. I checked the CPU was not overloading, Samplitude showed about 20-30% CPU usage. I also increased the ASIO buffer size to the max. I even updated the Baby Face Pro firmware & Driver, performed some PC optimization, confirmed no IRQ clash, updated the USB drivers.....but still no luck. I even disabled a number of plugins including the Sonibles, but the problem was still there. I plugged in to different audio interface (Line6 KB37) and it was still the same.

I have been scratching my head the whole day today. Anyone has any idea? Greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advanced.

hc.

[an-electric-heart]

Try turning plugins off one at a time, to determine if it's a plugin doing it. Sometimes 1 plugin can make the whole session choke.
I use FL, so I don't know about Samplitube, but FL has some shell options per plugin.
But yes, I pretty much always just mix with latency set all long as it will go, that doesn't matter, unless you're tracking real instruments.

[Unaspected]

Now the worst part is the clicks and pops became so audible in the mixdown file, the audio sounds like hiccuping.

Is this from an offline bounce? Because, if it is, then one of your plugins must be seriously playing up. You should be able to cleanly bounce audio offline, regardless as to how heavily your system is taxed during live/online playback.

[chanjay]

Thanks for the replies. Yes it was an offline bounce. So I removed all the plugins one by one till no more plugin left. I still heard the clicks pops during playback in Samplitude, but at least, this time the bounced file sounded clean. Seems to be a plugin issue. Oh boy....this drives me nuts!!

hc.

[chanjay]

Just found out, turned out to be FabFilter Saturn was the one that causing the problem. So I got 4 instances of Saturn all in HQ mode. When I removed all Saturn plugins, the mixdown file was clean. When I disabled all the HQ mode, I still hear the issue in my mixdown file. I tried removing 3 instances of Saturn and kept only 1 in HQ mode, the mixdown was clean. Well at least I know the issue now. Thanks again for the comments.

hc.

[chanjay]

I just wanted to give some update here. It turned out that Saturn was not the culprit. After disabling Saturn, indeed I still had the same issue. The real culprit was the Nvidia driver.... Disabling the Nvidia driver makes my audio playback & export smooth and clean Hope it helps other that have the same problem.

hc.