Yet another Pops'n'clicks thread

[mr1]

Fired up my laptop (HP NC8430) with my just-arrived 896HD today only to find it suffers from frequent popping and clicking when using it with Vegas 8.
I previously had an Edirol FA-101 which worked fine with my laptop while recording 8 tracks simultaneously and playing back 24, blah blah blah...
Obviously I'm quite disappointed that a supposed high-end unit I purchased as an upgrade is giving me serious problems where an entry level unit worked fine.

Nitty gritty details...

• Yes, I am using Vista (32 bit, visual effects turned off, etc)
• The NC8430 has a TI firewire chipset
• I'm using a Belkin 4-pin/6-pin cable
• I have a Behringer ADA8000 hooked up through ADAT, with the ADAT out of the Motu connected for sync but disabled for actual output
• Recording just a few empty tracks from different inputs at 44.1k/24bit gives me constant clicks that appear in the recordings
• With my FA-101 I could record 8 tracks at 96k with only some slowdown which didn't manifest into any problems with the recordings
• When I mute, solo and unmute tracks during playback, Vegas hangs for a few seconds while high-pitched squeals come through the outputs
• I also get other pops and stuff while opening programs that use the device
• The clicks occur every few seconds and register on the output meters
• When I plug it into my main computer (also Vista) using a 6-pin cable, everything is fine. I can record 16 channels with no problems.

So it appears to be a problem with the laptop, but what? Its coped absolutely fine before. In fact I used a half-dying, cheap-brand P4 laptop before my NC8430 and that coped with 8 channels @ 96k whereas now I'm struggling with 2 @ 44.1k.

I've considered racking up my main PC but that's really not an option at the moment. How do you think would an old AMD 2500+ machine hold up against a Core Duo laptop?
I need this laptop up and running for recording again by next week (and before I get some smirky "buy a MBP response", I have no money and no wish to buy into Apple products).


Help me, please!

Thanks
Matt

[mr1]

I've just ordered a new 7200rpm drive for a clean install of XP.
In the meanwhile, any ideas on fixing what I already have?
And where can I get a copy of XP Pro? I have a valid COA already attached to the laptop, I just need some installation media. Torrents are failing me.

This Motu lark is costing me loads. I'm starting to wish I'd stayed with my Edirol.

[billruys]

What is the CPU utilization looking like when all these pops & clicks are happening? Have you double checked that your Laptop hard drive is operating in DMA mode and not PIO? What size ASIO buffer are you running with?

[mr1]

CPU utilization around 50% - 60%.
Drive is in DMA mode.
I have it set on the default of 512 samples per buffer but I've tried changing it to no effect.

[DJ Synchro]

I have a MOTU 24 I/O myself, and with XP all goes well, I can set the buffer to 256 without a problem. On Vista however, I have to set the buffer to at least 1024 or else there are pops and clicks all over the place. I think it's a driver issue, because I'm using a fresh install and it doesn't matter whatsoever.

Regards,

Rob

[mr1]

I'm hoping this install of XP on a new disk will be the solution I'm looking for. Its a faster 7200rpm drive which should help things a bit.
Done a streamlined installation disk of XP Pro using nlite. Unfortunately I could only get SP2 - I've heard this can cause some problems with firewire?

[mr1]

Done an installation of XP on the new drive and all seems to be working fine.
Now get a DPC Latency Checker readout of around 5us (my jaw dropped - on the clean and streamlined install of Vista it was around 500us).

Conclusion: I didn't think Vista was that bad. I now know otherwise

[DJ Synchro]

Done an installation of XP on the new drive and all seems to be working fine.
Now get a DPC Latency Checker readout of around 5us (my jaw dropped - on the clean and streamlined install of Vista it was around 500us).

Conclusion: I didn't think Vista was that bad. I now know otherwise

Just like I said, the latency difference on XP and Vista are huge. In my case I had to sad the audio buffer on at least 1024 with Vista to get everything working smoothly. On XP a buffer of 256 would do the trick nicely. I'm curious if this is a driver issue or just the audio stack of Vista...

[Smokehouse]

XP SP2 does pose a problem for FireWire, and the solution is to do the SP2 install, and then replace the FireWire/1394 drivers with older SP1 version drivers. There are many posts on how to do this. Check out the one on this board titled "Intel, Windows, & DAW." In particular, you're replacing the drivers and modifying a setting in the registry. Pay close attention to those sections.

- Eric

[TheRealRoach]

Done an installation of XP on the new drive and all seems to be working fine.
Now get a DPC Latency Checker readout of around 5us (my jaw dropped - on the clean and streamlined install of Vista it was around 500us).

Conclusion: I didn't think Vista was that bad. I now know otherwise

Wow pretty interesting indeed. I never ended up moving to Vista because of the horror stories about performance. To give you an idea of benchmarks regarding your laptop performance.... I used to do mobile recording with my laptop which is only an Intel M-1.73 (single processor). The internal drive was a 5400RPM, and the system had 2 gigs of ram. I had no problem running a bunch of plugins, 40+ tracks, and a buffer setting of 192 samples. So your core 2 plus a 7200 rpm drive should be able to slay this.