hearing pops/clicks during plug-in automation changes

[schmargle]

I have an independent film project for which I'm using a fair amount of automation. As the dialog moves from one person to the next, I turn on a different EQ.

I'm finding that when I bounce the tracks, I hear a pop/click when the EQ changes. This happens even when there is no audio playing--in other words I line up the automation so that it occurs between lines of dialog.

It rarely happens when I'm playing the audio, mainly when I'm bouncing.

My workaround is just to go in manually and remove the glitches after bouncing, but it's a pain. I suppose I could bounce in real time, but it's a 1.5 hour movie, so I don't really want to do that.

Any ideas why this is happening? I have something like 20 different EQs that I'm moving between. Is it a RAM issue? (There are no other memory-related problems as far as I can tell.) Currently I have plug-in preferences set to "pregen" when possible. Might that be the issue? I haven't tried changing that yet.

Any thoughts would be helpful.

[Dan Worley]

Yes, set plug-ins to real-time and that should take care of it.

[schmargle]

I forgot to say thanks for that reply. I finally got back to this project and tried changing those plug-in settings. Unfortunately, that didn't have much effect. There are still pops. I'm guessing it's either a memory issue or maybe something to do with latency compensation. Like maybe the audio engine is re-calculating the latency or something.... Or maybe it's just an audio engine glitch. It's a bummer. It means I have to bounce my dialog tracks before bouncing everything, and then manually go through and find the pops and eliminate them.

[ccrane]

I have noticed that Masterworks EQ (DP 7.24) will exhibit this behavior sometimes when automating it.

[bayswater]

Wouldn't any sufficiently large abrupt change in eq settings cause some kind of audible pop? Like one large zipper step. What happens with a quick ramp?

[ccrane]

Wouldn't any sufficiently large abrupt change in eq settings cause some kind of audible pop? Like one large zipper step. What happens with a quick ramp?

That makes sense, though I've had abrupt eq changes w/o any pops at all. During the occasional time when I do get the pops, ramping didn't help. When it happens, it's usually during a busy section of the timeline and when automating a band on or off within MW EQ, even if the band is flat. Sometimes moving the automation point a little bit, if the project allows, will get rid of the pop. Sometimes it is more persistent. Luckily it does not happen too often.

[schmargle]

I've found that the pops happen somewhat randomly (although yes, it's always with MW EQ). They're not tied to a particular type of change (say, boosting lows) or the scale of a change (like a change by 3 or more dB). And if I bounce just the section with the pop (as opposed to the whole sequence), it might or might not happen. That's why I'm thinking it's an audio engine or RAM problem. Something in there's not getting calculated ahead of time and then suddenly (pop!) gets changed.