Audio crackling when recording at anything below 640 samples, but CPU usage is low

[brianhoneycutt]

Hi All,

I am having some issues experiencing crackling or unwanted sounds in the recording and playback at anything lower than 640 samples atm.

The issue is that at that buffer size, the latency is such that it is difficult to really play what I am playing, which is a fairly fast bassline at 140 bpm with 16th notes.

The CPU usage is very low like less than 1%. Have checked task manager and nothing major going on there.

I am using a Mackie Big Knob interface to record. I have tried using both the headphone and speaker output form my PC. I have tried just creating a new project with nothing in it, but same issue.

My PC should have plenty of processing power, as I bought it specifically to make music using intensive VSTs and such for electronic music. However, it looks like only have 16GB of RAM, so maybe that is the issue?

Any help greatly appreciated, I've been working on this song forever now.

[imstre]

https://helio.fm/
in this program I create midi parties and import them into Waveform.

[VariKusBrainZ]

Have you installed and selected the ASIO drivers as your audio output in Waveform

[Peter Widdicombe]

Typically headphone and speaker on a PC aren't that great (don't know about gaming PC's). I would expect the Mackie to be reasonable; but ASIO drivers with it will probably help (and may even help with the on-board audio as well; although you DO lose the ability to "play along with sound generated by applications (browser?)" external to the application running ASIO.

[brianhoneycutt]

Have you installed and selected the ASIO drivers as your audio output in Waveform

Thanks, I am not sure. I have ASIO as an option in the dropdown menu for my Audio device type and ASIO4ALL v2 and FL Studio ASIO as the only options for the devices.

For some reason the Mackie Big Knob doesn't show up here, only when I select 'DirectSound' as my Audio device type.

Any idea how to fix that?

Update: I installed the Mackie ASIO USB Driver v4... so now I can select that form the drop down, but there isn't a way to select my output to anything I can hear (i.e. computer speakers)... so maybe I need to hook up speakers to the Mackie Big Knob itself?

I should also say I am not using Waveform, but rather Tracktion 7.

thanks!

[brianhoneycutt]

Typically headphone and speaker on a PC aren't that great (don't know about gaming PC's). I would expect the Mackie to be reasonable; but ASIO drivers with it will probably help (and may even help with the on-board audio as well; although you DO lose the ability to "play along with sound generated by applications (browser?)" external to the application running ASIO.

Thanks, this is the issue I am running into...

I have ASIO as an option in the dropdown menu for my Audio device type and ASIO4ALL v2 and FL Studio ASIO as the only options for the devices.

For some reason the Mackie Big Knob doesn't show up here, only when I select 'DirectSound' as my Audio device type.

Any idea how to fix that?

Update: I installed the Mackie ASIO USB Driver v4... so now I can select that from the drop down, but there isn't a way to select my output to anything I can hear (i.e. computer speakers)... so maybe I need to hook up speakers to the Mackie Big Knob itself?

I should also say I am not using Waveform, but rather Tracktion 7.

thanks!

[Peter Widdicombe]

ASIO4all has the ability to have multiple input and output devices; possibly the Mackie ASIO doesn't...

Now that it's installed, can you see if the ASIO4all control panel itself lists the Mackie as well as the onboard audio devices you want? You may have to select them in the output dropdown section; as you can enable/disable the various devices present in there.