An audio "crackle" not present in any other DAW or audio system on my system

[Milkman]

I had similar problems between Ableton and Bitwig where Bitwig under performed against Ableton. I run Windows 10 home edition and had no "high performance plan" available in power settings, that has been solved by executing the command: powercfg /s SCHEME_MIN
I could adjust all to best performance. I also have a script where "processor_performance_boost_mode" can be added to the power plan and this one should be adjusted from aggressive to off.
And recently i have without Lenovo support upgraded to latest gpu drivers and a lot of issues are gone now.

And under "device manager" switch off "microsoft battery ACPI compliant method"

Maybe it is of no help but at least some ideas which helped to improve performance for Bitwig on my system.

This isnt related to the issue Im seeing, but thank you. "high performance" settings in the OS have nothing to do with this, and other system logging and output demonstrate this.

Ive tried pursuing GPU and/or WDM troubleshooting, including changing drivers, renderers, power settings, etc (to see if the 'crack' sound is coming from something specific BWS is doing with GPU rendering), but everything is always the same. (no crackle in any other system application EXCEPT Bitwig). For me, this is a tricky problem, but Im hoping the BWS team can work with me on it.

[pekbro]

I had this, turned out it was windows wanting to update. All good afterwards for me. Ver 6

[Milkman]

I dont recall claiming someone from bitwig accused me of lying. I was talking about a larger problem, and replying to your comment about uploading videos to 'prove' it to companies.

You claimed that a request for video is "offensive" and that, "No customer service team takes customers for their word anymore". That's what I responded to, and then you doubled down with more. It needed to be made clear that Bitwig hasn't accused you of lying. And if support does eventually request a video, that won't be them assuming you're lying and trying to get you to "jump through hoops". Those assumptions are yours. Your opinions on general corporate support are irrelevant to what helps with an efficient Bitwig bug hunt.

The info you've provided is pretty useless. Without being able to replicate it, hey won't be able to do much about.

Anyway, here's the way I'd go forward:

1. Install Bitwig on another computer. You've worked in IT for 40 years, so that shouldn't be anything that comes close to what could be described as having to jump through hoops.

2. If the problem can be replicated on a second system, create a minimal Bitwig project (Bitwig devices only) that can also produce it.

3. Provide a concise bug report along with the minimal Bitwig project.

If they can't reproduce it and you don't want, or refuse for other reasons, to provide any more assistance, that's the end of it.

Hopefully it's an easy fix, but I doubt it. No one else seems to be having the issue, and it's unlikely that an audio bug in a professional DAW would have no reports, particularly one that has been around since 5.x.

Good luck.

This odd propensity for random accounts to go off on tangents, reading into comments made by others and trying to rendition them in a way that doesnt make sense (claiming I accused bitwig of lying, then realizing I never did that but continuing to talk about it anyway), really makes things difficult.

My opinion and analysis of current customer service sabotage and overall degradation stands, and was clearly in REPLY to what you said above, way back at the beginning of this thread. I dont need anymore from you on that subject, thanks, as I can see we have wildly different interpretations of customer service expectations, reality, etc etc. No need to continue with any of that. Your comments, frankly, useless. Others are more serious, and indeed I take them more seriously, as well. Thanks so much.

You dont have to defend anymore. Its ok. Maybe re-read my comments again to settle yourself, and realize I wasnt attacking bitwig, if that is something you are able to do.

[Milkman]

I had this, turned out it was windows wanting to update. All good afterwards for me. Ver 6

You had a 'crack' in audio playback, that was not recorded into DAW audio (external crackle), and it was a pending windows update? Causing that crackle? And you ran the windows update, then the crackle went away?

What? I cant even... what?

Ive rebuilt a machine during the existence of this issue. From windows10, to windows11. A clean rebuild, including DAW profiles. The crackle isnt windows update, lol.

[pekbro]

It was pre-loading or something, and it was causing crackles and spikes. What of it.

[Milkman]

It was pre-loading or something, and it was causing crackles and spikes. What of it.

Weird. Yeah the windows update process can load pending updates in the background. Ive never heard of one causing audio crackles because where would they come from? The network interface? Even after the NIC isnt in use anymore? (the pending update is loaded, network is silent).

Thanks for trying though. This is one of those weird things, so I guess 'outside the box' thinking is what Im here for. The big difference here is that BWS is using GPU rendering internally, and other DAWs arent or arent nearly as much as BWS. The other difference is 32bit internal DSP resolution vs 64bit(cubase), but the crackle isnt a bandwidth problem or any sort of overrun, so I dunno.

It *may* have something to do with GPU rendering, but Ill be damned if I can see how. Honestly I would hate it if someone brought me an issue like this when I was in support lmao

[pekbro]

Though I'm using the demo and holding out a bit to use my renewal code, ver 6 performance seems about the same on my modest core i5 / Iris Xe graphics pc, as ver 5. It's early yet though.

[questionaire]

It was pre-loading or something, and it was causing crackles and spikes. What of it.

Weird. Yeah the windows update process can load pending updates in the background. Ive never heard of one causing audio crackles because where would they come from? The network interface? Even after the NIC isnt in use anymore? (the pending update is loaded, network is silent).

Thanks for trying though. This is one of those weird things, so I guess 'outside the box' thinking is what Im here for. The big difference here is that BWS is using GPU rendering internally, and other DAWs arent or arent nearly as much as BWS. The other difference is 32bit internal DSP resolution vs 64bit(cubase), but the crackle isnt a bandwidth problem or any sort of overrun, so I dunno.

It *may* have something to do with GPU rendering, but Ill be damned if I can see how. Honestly I would hate it if someone brought me an issue like this when I was in support lmao

You know you can change the graphics backend? Between Vulkan/OpenGL/DirectX? For me Vulkan is rock stable performance.

https://www.bitwig.com/support/technica ... indows-66/

[Broken]

My opinion and analysis of current customer service sabotage and overall degradation stands, and was clearly in REPLY to what you said above, way back at the beginning of this thread. I dont need anymore from you on that subject, thanks, as I can see we have wildly different interpretations of customer service expectations, reality, etc etc. No need to continue with any of that. Your comments, frankly, useless. Others are more serious, and indeed I take them more seriously, as well. Thanks so much.

You dont have to defend anymore. Its ok. Maybe re-read my comments again to settle yourself, and realize I wasnt attacking bitwig, if that is something you are able to do.

I just feel really sorry for the person at Bitwig who will eventually have to deal with you.

[Milkman]

It was pre-loading or something, and it was causing crackles and spikes. What of it.

Weird. Yeah the windows update process can load pending updates in the background. Ive never heard of one causing audio crackles because where would they come from? The network interface? Even after the NIC isnt in use anymore? (the pending update is loaded, network is silent).

Thanks for trying though. This is one of those weird things, so I guess 'outside the box' thinking is what Im here for. The big difference here is that BWS is using GPU rendering internally, and other DAWs arent or arent nearly as much as BWS. The other difference is 32bit internal DSP resolution vs 64bit(cubase), but the crackle isnt a bandwidth problem or any sort of overrun, so I dunno.

It *may* have something to do with GPU rendering, but Ill be damned if I can see how. Honestly I would hate it if someone brought me an issue like this when I was in support lmao

You know you can change the graphics backend? Between Vulkan/OpenGL/DirectX? For me Vulkan is rock stable performance.

https://www.bitwig.com/support/technica ... indows-66/

Yeah, I saw the original GPU rendering update (5.2 I think it was?? I cant really remember) and saw the various renderers. My performance is fine, its the crack that Im following here.

[BobDog]

Guys, there is a reason why no one answered the original posts for three weeks and I'm guessing it is because the Milky one is on nearly everyone's ignore list!

[Milkman]

My opinion and analysis of current customer service sabotage and overall degradation stands, and was clearly in REPLY to what you said above, way back at the beginning of this thread. I dont need anymore from you on that subject, thanks, as I can see we have wildly different interpretations of customer service expectations, reality, etc etc. No need to continue with any of that. Your comments, frankly, useless. Others are more serious, and indeed I take them more seriously, as well. Thanks so much.

You dont have to defend anymore. Its ok. Maybe re-read my comments again to settle yourself, and realize I wasnt attacking bitwig, if that is something you are able to do.

I just feel really sorry for the person at Bitwig who will eventually have to deal with you.

Yeah, right, and I feel sorry for all the customers who will fall victim to your preferred version of "customer service" lmao take care, friend. Im very cordial with bitwig staff, btw. I have no such trouble with talking to them, as you. ; )

[ManCat]

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First thing I would think about, is try the repair button, if you haven't done it already, then a complete removal and reinstall. Don't forget to backup, but since you already have 80+ years of experience and know Cobol or Fortran, you probably already knew . I had to fix the internal bitwig DB a couple of times, because when I wanted to add a VST instrument or something simular, it was terribly slow. Had to rebuild the DB. Usually after an upgrade as far as I can remember.

Windows might also somehow be the culprit, have you checked the high performance setting? Maybe, due to an upgrade, they changed it back to balanced? These would be the first things that comes to mind.

Ok, so we can skip the Fortan and Cobol part. But now that you mentioned it, I do have a snap in my audio sometimes, but only when I press the mono button in my audiomixer software from the audiocard. Also when I try to press the timing thing in the HW instrument section from the Bitwig VST.

Could be worth mentioning that if you want to find the culprit, maybe this will help:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/)

There are some handy tools inside which might give clues.

[Milkman]

That's a weird one. You'll probably need to provide support a link to a video of it happening.

Does it happen at the same points within a project or is it random? Does it happen at all buffer settings?

Its random. Sounds like what you would expect a mild, main channel ground loop to sound like (very light, occasional crackle/snap, like a small fire burning). Any buffer settings. Any output channels. Headphones, monitors.

What you are describing sounds to me like some bad bits/clock/sample rate mis-match in a digital audio stream. Any adat optical or spdif in play? Or maybe could be an incompatibility between Bitwig and the Focusrite driver.
I would suggest trying the interface with an alternate ASIO driver, or seeing if you can recreate the issue using any other interface.
Also, you could consider routing the analog outputs back into inputs on the interface and see if you can capture an example of the audio that you are hearing.

You know, I do have spdif between 2 stacked interfaces. (focusrite 18i20 and 6i8), but I have carefully verified that recently. (matching interface rates, etc). I dont hear this sound in non-ASIO audio streams(windows audio is all clean), but it is confounding that cubase (steinberg ASIO) doesnt have it.

This is really frustrating. If this sound was present in *all* system audio, it would make more sense in my brain and I would have a direction to go in.

True -- I might be able to route main outs back in, capture that audio with the crack, for testing. Good idea! I got caught up in the thread earlier and didnt even think about this.

[ManCat]

AUTO-ADMIN: Non-MP3, WAV, OGG, SoundCloud, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter and Facebook links in this post have been protected automatically. Once the member reaches 5 posts the links will function as normal.

First thing I would think about, is try the repair button, if you haven't done it already, then a complete removal and reinstall. Don't forget to backup, but since you already have 80+ years of experience and know Cobol or Fortran, you probably already knew . I had to fix the internal bitwig DB a couple of times, because when I wanted to add a VST instrument or something simular, it was terribly slow. Had to rebuild the DB. Usually after an upgrade as far as I can remember.

Windows might also somehow be the culprit, have you checked the high performance setting? Maybe, due to an upgrade, they changed it back to balanced? These would be the first things that comes to mind.

Ok, so we can skip the Fortan and Cobol part. But now that you mentioned it, I do have a snap in my audio sometimes, but only when I press the mono button in my audiomixer software from the audiocard. Also when I try to press the timing thing in the HW instrument section from the Bitwig VST.

Could be worth mentioning that if you want to find the culprit, maybe this will help:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/)

There are some handy tools inside which might give clues.

Ok, no sysinternals for you either. How about we try to disassemble then. IDA Pro or x64dbg comes to mind. You do have to know how to set breakpoints though and what they are called I believe, but this should be really helpful in nailing things down. I still remember the good old days, Cubase and a USB dongle. Ahh, how time flies. Blink and 90 years have passed.

Now that the other guy mentioned it, I also have 2 MADI devices stacked. Could be a probable cause. Odd when one tries to be helpful, but things are overlooked because of ego. Go figure. Luckily everything turns for the better in the end.