Hello,

I am running Mac OS 10.4 on an iMac G5 1.8Ghz with 1024 MB of RAM.

I have two TAPCO S5 (active) Monitoring Speakers plugged into my Edirol UA-25 interface via quarter inch Planet Wave cables. The interface connects to my iMac via USB.

Whenever I start playing an audio file, I receive distortion through the speakers (not feedback, distortion) for the first few seconds, and then this goes away. If I were to play that same audio file through the internal speakers, I would have no distortion.

The folks at Sweetwater told me this is a Drive Access problem. How can I fix this, and what exactly is happening?

Thanks,
Connor

How fast is the drive you are recording to? Is it firewire, usb, or internal? It sounds like it could be this but I'm not sure it usually doesn't go away after a few seconds. If you aren't already recording to a firewire drive that is 7200 RPM I would recommend doing that. It could also be how fragmented your audio drive is. It's never good to record on your internal hard drive because the ones on Powerbooks and iBooks are 4200 or 5400 RPM and sometimes can give you these troubles. All that is happening is your computer can't get the audio files fast enough to deal with the processing and routing of the audio so sometimes you get glitches in the audio. I'm guessing that's why it works ok through your internal speakers and not the Tapco. If this is even what is happening with your system. I usually find that if the drive is too slow there is one burst of distortion that doesn't stop unless you stop playback and sometimes it will work if you hit play again but usually not. But if you've soloed through your tracks looking for the distortion and it plays back fine then it probably is a hard drive access problem. Anyway good luck solving this issue.

Valente

I'm not recoording anything, just playing back songs on my computer.