cracks and Pops, external HD, buffers and firewire Options

[mortalengines]

This is getting off the main topic a little but now that you mention it. I have been running loops off of a 7200 RPM external HD (Oxford chipset) enclosure & really don't notice ANY change in my CPU load (still pretty high) & also have been known to get "pops & clicks" in my audio (doesn't happen when running from my system drive, but I did increase my sample & plug in buffer rate & it did seem to improve things somewhat). Am I doing something wrong? The drive enclosure is from Tiger Direct & my Mac automatically recognized it as an "Oxford" drive. I have it running into my FW800 port on my 1.5GHZ G4 Powerbook via a 400 to 800 adapter cable. I am also using a Mackie Onyx FW card & mixer on my FW 400 port. Any suggestions?

[lepetitmartien]

(separated the post, better as a subject of his own)

CPU load… IDE drives controlled by the CPU eat more CPU than firewire connected HD, way more. And the load here is mainly dependant of the fact it's connected, not really what it's doing.

What's you buffer size? if it's too low you "kill" the CPU by asking too much, and too big it'll give latency. Usually values between 256 and 1024 are common.

Have you tried to switch and put the Onyx on the FW800 with the adapter and the HD on the 400 ? a 400 peripheral on a 800 should not cause problems but let us be nosy.

[AlexeyMohr]

Pops and clicks are usually attributable to clocking errors. Do you have any digital audio devices connected via ADAT lightpipe? If so, make sure that their clock sources are the same. If they're both clocking internally, that will immediately generate pops and clicks.

[Dr. simonjbinks]

Been down this road a million times. I have an Apogee Big Ben and it is set CORRECTLY as master clock. The problem is the PowerCore and well-known. Check out the poco=no-heaven site.

Simon

[mortalengines]

I don't have anything connected involving ADAT light pipe. I do have 2 firewire devices running though..one is the Onyx & the other is the hard drive. That's about it. I will adjust my buffer size further & just for grins, will swap ports & see what happens & report back the results.

This post has been edited by mortalengines: Wed 5 Apr 2006, 03:48

[mortalengines]

Okay... tried all of the suggestions....increased buffer size, switching cords, freezing ALL tracks (using Ableton Live), repaired disc permissions on the mac & the external HD & I still get the occasional pop/glitch. I am all out of ideas at this point. Ableton's CPU meter (for 12 lousy tracks) reads 30-50 percent, so it may be a CPU issue, I am guessing. I may think about breaking out my MBOX for mixdown (I understand Pro Tools is a little more CPU efficient) but will be giving up quite a bit of flexabilty in the process. The only thing I haven't done is play tracks from RAM - maybe this will help. Am open to any other suggestions. I bought PT a while ago & kind of put it to the side as I was wading thru Ableton's learning curve. I was hoping to avoid another learning curve until after I had put out a finished product (made with Ableton) to push while playing out.

[drae]

I seem to have solved my firewire problem - clicks, dropouts and 'error synching audio and midi' messages. I swapped my Fireface in the front FW port with the FW drive, which was in the rear port. ie FFace now at rear of G5.

David


G5 dp 1.8, pci slots, UAD-1. OSX 10.4.3, Logic Pro 7.2

[lepetitmartien]

Drae, you just experienced the evil firewire front port effect of the G5s!
It's the only port I've been able to change the firmware of my NEC DVD burner with. On others computers, it fries interfaces… (M-audio mostly)

mortalengines, I'm at loss…

Only left thing I see would be a FW card in the PCMCIA slot… or trying another external HD… but if it's still not the trick!

[gdoubleyou]

A firewire hub will help relieve the bottleneck, and timing errors.

[mortalengines]

I will do a quick search on "firewire hub" via google but if you would elaborate a little on what i should be looking for when i am purchasing said hub I would sure appreciate it.