Hi everyone. I hope somebody can help me solve the mystery of distortion in audio.
I used Surface pro tablet before and did not have any issues with exact same setup. I upgraded tablet to a more powerful Surface and now I get very strange distortion on playback and / or recording.
Audio itself is not distorted, because if I try to play track from other spot(s) it will play normally. But sometimes it would take me 2-10 position trials to get it rolling without distortion. I made a short video clip on what is happening. Sorry for lousy sound, I recorded on phone from headphones.
The strange thing is that this strange distortion would start on different position. Meaning on one occasion it would start happening on one position, in other instance it would play fine from the same location. If it gives any clues It does NOT happen in the middle of the recording on playback. It either plays/record as it should or starts playback/recording with distortion.
Sound is coming out of Yeti Pro microphone (monitoring out through headphones) using native Asio driver.
I tried to up the buffer on microphone control panel, but it did not resolve distortion.
My setup: Surface Pro 3 8gb Ram intel i7. Sonar Home studio. Yeti Pro microphone.
If anybody can shine a light on this, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you.
Sonar home studio strange sound distortion. Please help.
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- KVRian
- 659 posts since 25 Sep, 2010
I would suspect some software (other than SONAR) is causing it. Check for extraneous processes such as auto-updaters and anti-virus that can be shut down during audio sessions. Run latencymon to see if something's hogging the CPU. Make sure your wi-fi adapter is turned off.
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- KVRAF
- 2398 posts since 10 Jul, 2006 from Tampa
I'd suggest looking at bbagins' suggestions, and ruling out anything else causing problems. Hopefully, you run your Surface "clean", and nothing is running on it that a DAW doesn't need.
Outside of that, can you render some of the audio that has a problem, instead of playing it through headphones and recording it onto your phone? That might give us a better idea of what the distortion is supposed to sound like, which can help us determine where it may be coming from.
Steve
Outside of that, can you render some of the audio that has a problem, instead of playing it through headphones and recording it onto your phone? That might give us a better idea of what the distortion is supposed to sound like, which can help us determine where it may be coming from.
Steve
Here's some of my stuff: https://soundcloud.com/shadowsoflife. If you hear something you like, I'm looking for collaborators.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 90 posts since 21 Apr, 2014
Thank you for trying.
Steve "recording to phone" that was only the video that I made to show the problem, I do not record audio to phone for my music.
I do not believe it is related to other programs running as this computer is a rocket for what I am doing. I used another, slower Surface pro and never had this problem.
I narrowed down to USB Yeti pro microphone
That is used as a soundcard when working in Sonar with audio.
This problem that I am having does not occur when I switch to onboard Realtek sound chip. I know, it is not actual(physical) Yeti microphone as I have 2 identical ones.
I think it has something to do with audio driver and/or frequency and bit resolution...
Steve "recording to phone" that was only the video that I made to show the problem, I do not record audio to phone for my music.
I do not believe it is related to other programs running as this computer is a rocket for what I am doing. I used another, slower Surface pro and never had this problem.
I narrowed down to USB Yeti pro microphone
That is used as a soundcard when working in Sonar with audio.
This problem that I am having does not occur when I switch to onboard Realtek sound chip. I know, it is not actual(physical) Yeti microphone as I have 2 identical ones.
I think it has something to do with audio driver and/or frequency and bit resolution...
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 90 posts since 21 Apr, 2014
bbaggins thanks!
yes after I figured that out by myself, I went to check KVR and I got your reply
In Sonar, I have to up the buffer to 55 msec(!!!), to play smoothly, which I think is completely ridiculous to record live vocals.
The machine I am using is Windows 10 with i7 processor and 8gb ram, which would be much more than enough to record a few vocal tracks in Daw. I had several much slower computers before and never experienced such issues with latency. I have wifi off and no other hungry programs are eating resources.
I tried Asio4all driver, but sonar+yeti did not like that. There is a driver/control panel for Yeti which has buffer size too (see photo) but I am not sure what supersedes what when I am using DAW, the Yeti driver/panel or settings in Sonar.
In any case, Thank you! The problem is cornered to latency. Now the quest starts to bring it down from 55msec to about 4msec
I found this guide for optimizing PC for audio:
https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/ ... Windows-10
Will try some steps to see if tracks play smoothly.
yes after I figured that out by myself, I went to check KVR and I got your reply
In Sonar, I have to up the buffer to 55 msec(!!!), to play smoothly, which I think is completely ridiculous to record live vocals.
The machine I am using is Windows 10 with i7 processor and 8gb ram, which would be much more than enough to record a few vocal tracks in Daw. I had several much slower computers before and never experienced such issues with latency. I have wifi off and no other hungry programs are eating resources.
I tried Asio4all driver, but sonar+yeti did not like that. There is a driver/control panel for Yeti which has buffer size too (see photo) but I am not sure what supersedes what when I am using DAW, the Yeti driver/panel or settings in Sonar.
In any case, Thank you! The problem is cornered to latency. Now the quest starts to bring it down from 55msec to about 4msec
I found this guide for optimizing PC for audio:
https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-gb/ ... Windows-10
Will try some steps to see if tracks play smoothly.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 90 posts since 21 Apr, 2014
After trying the optimization for audio steps, still had issues with the sound.... And then, after almost losing hope, I figured it out.
In Sonar, when I chose Asio as driver, it automatically unchecked devices attached, that is why no sound was coming out. Checked my hardware, latency at 5msec works fine.
The issue was trying to push WASAPI driver to work with native ASIO driver of Yeti.
To summarize:
ASIO Mic + Wasapi (exclusive or shared) driver mode in Sonar = BAD
ASIO Mic + Asio driver mode in Sonar = GOOD
Thanks for trying to help! Hope it helps somebody too
In Sonar, when I chose Asio as driver, it automatically unchecked devices attached, that is why no sound was coming out. Checked my hardware, latency at 5msec works fine.
The issue was trying to push WASAPI driver to work with native ASIO driver of Yeti.
To summarize:
ASIO Mic + Wasapi (exclusive or shared) driver mode in Sonar = BAD
ASIO Mic + Asio driver mode in Sonar = GOOD
Thanks for trying to help! Hope it helps somebody too