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Hello Everyone,
I have a somewhat mysterious problem going on: I'm getting intermittent pops and clicks in the project I'm trying to mix. I'm mixing the last tune of 4, and will no doubt have to make some tweaks in a couple of the others, but when I opened up the project and started listening this morning, there are clicks and pops all over (in all the tunes in the project) that were never there before. They aren't recorded, either Performer (5.12) is causing it, or maybe my Mac is. (Dual core 3 Ghz; 6 gigs ram; running 10.4.11)
I've shut down several of my UAD plugins, Ivory, and shut off a bunch of voices that aren't being used. Restarted several times, and checked all connections. No improvement.
I've checked a couple other projects, and they are just fine. So, I'm thinking something got corrupted in this project. This isn't the first time something like this has happened, but I'm at a loss as to how to proceed, except to copy and paste all tracks to a new sequence.....that wouldn't be so daunting, except I have so many plug-ins with settings, that it would take an inordinate amount of time to recreate it all. + it doesn't instill much confidence that your mix is EXACTLY the same. What's up with Performer? Why does this happen? What are my options now....besides switching to a more reliable sequencer?
Thanks,
Eric

What's the buffer set to?

Are you getting clicks on playback, or are they actually in the audio, as in, can you see them?
If the latter, I would suspect bad RAM.

bb

Err A DAW cannot ADD clicks and POPS, repeat, A DAW cannot ADD clicks and POPS.

They are mainly caused by cheap converters and bad clocking, or recording to hot.

Yes, bad RAM can do it, but I'd say that's rarer.

Can you see them in the waveform, if you can, they were recorded THAT way.

I've had it happen. The audio files were fine for months while they were recording, we brought them to a different studio to mix and some point pops would appear, and then more and more. After a long freakout I figured out that it was only files that had been processed in some way, no original file that came to us had pops. I could do a gain change or consolidate a file and pops would appear, undo it they were gone. We changed out the RAM in the studio computer and it all went away. And then I had to go and fix all those pops...

bb

My guess is he's pushing the CPU too hard in this project (that causes all kinds of noise) and he needs to raise the buffer. He said the noises were not recorded.

A fragmented drive will do that too. These sequences seemed to play fine but until you added more plugs or edits... defragmentation or raising the buffers should help. Are you using anything FireWire or did you happen to do any recent installs?

The DAW is NOT doing it (unless he is pushing the master fader into the red or is not adhering to proper gain structure procedures with plugins) but lack of CPU resources is maybe a factor, yes.

THANKS to everyone who bothered to reply to my post re. pops and clicks. I checked the buffer size and it was set to 128, for recording my MIDI parts. I raised it to 1024, which is as high as it will go. Unfortunately, no difference, even after restarting a couple times. I'm still getting clicks out of both speakers, and occasional pops out of the left side. These seem to be intermittent. They happen in different places each playback. I don't think any of them got recorded. None of them appeared until we were almost finished the mix. I tried doing a "Save As" and checked the box to copy all the audio data to a new Audio File folder, thinking that maybe the new sequence might record without clicks, but that didn't work either. As I may have mentioned, my other projects don't have this problem. FYI, my Host Buffer Multiplier is set to 1, Work Priority to High. Plug-in wise, I have 22 instances of Masterwork EQ going, 5 instances of Masterwork Compressor, 2 Masterwork Limiters opened. I also have 1 instance of Auto Tune, and 3 or 4 instances of UAD Reverbs, and 1 or 2 SSL Duende plug-ins. De-fragging the hard drive sounds like fun, but honestly, I don't know how you do that in System 10. I only fix the Permissions. (which I've done) I really thought the Buffer size would make this go away. Now I'm really stumped.
Thanks,
Eric

Try setting the Work Priority to medium or low. I have mine set to low and that seems to work the best for my setup. If that doesn't work, I would suggest going to the Track Overview and just start disabling tracks. Not just muting them but disabling them so they have no strain on the CPU. See if the noise goes away after you disable a few of them. You can narrow it down from there.

Thanks Wurliuchi, I'll try it.
E.

Alright, I started shutting voices off until I had just my 8 tracks of drums up. No clicks. I decided to sub mix them to a stereo track. I then shut down all 8 drum tracks and used just the stereo sub mix. Then I added back all the other tracks. Still no clicks. I had my Work Priority set to Low. I'm now able to carry on with the mix. By eliminating the 8 drum tracks, I also eliminated 8 Masterworks EQs. I've run almost TWICE the number of tracks I'm currently running, so maybe the MW EQs are the problem? I'm happy that the clicks are gone, but I'm not really sure why they appeared in the first place. Oh, one other thing. This has happened a couple of times recently. I boot up this project, and it gets all the way to the plug-ins popping open, then it crashes, and re-boots itself. The last time this happened, it tried twice unsuccessfully, and I got an error message. I then tried it again, and it booted....hmmm.
Eric

EBikales wrote:THANKS to everyone who bothered to reply to my post re. pops and clicks. I checked the buffer size and it was set to 128, for recording my MIDI parts. I raised it to 1024, which is as high as it will go. Unfortunately, no difference, even after restarting a couple times. I'm still getting clicks out of both speakers, and occasional pops out of the left side. These seem to be intermittent. They happen in different places each playback. I don't think any of them got recorded. None of them appeared until we were almost finished the mix. I tried doing a "Save As" and checked the box to copy all the audio data to a new Audio File folder, thinking that maybe the new sequence might record without clicks, but that didn't work either. As I may have mentioned, my other projects don't have this problem. FYI, my Host Buffer Multiplier is set to 1, Work Priority to High. Plug-in wise, I have 22 instances of Masterwork EQ going, 5 instances of Masterwork Compressor, 2 Masterwork Limiters opened. I also have 1 instance of Auto Tune, and 3 or 4 instances of UAD Reverbs, and 1 or 2 SSL Duende plug-ins. De-fragging the hard drive sounds like fun, but honestly, I don't know how you do that in System 10. I only fix the Permissions. (which I've done) I really thought the Buffer size would make this go away. Now I'm really stumped.
Thanks,
Eric

128 is pretty low for a heavy plug or VI session IMO. I only go there if and when I need to.

You should always defragment an audio drive... Drive genius works good and I use iDefrag because you can specify the type of layout on the drive for specific tasks.

EBikales wrote:Alright, I started shutting voices off until I had just my 8 tracks of drums up. No clicks. I decided to sub mix them to a stereo track. I then shut down all 8 drum tracks and used just the stereo sub mix. Then I added back all the other tracks. Still no clicks. I had my Work Priority set to Low. I'm now able to carry on with the mix. By eliminating the 8 drum tracks, I also eliminated 8 Masterworks EQs. I've run almost TWICE the number of tracks I'm currently running, so maybe the MW EQs are the problem? I'm happy that the clicks are gone, but I'm not really sure why they appeared in the first place. Oh, one other thing. This has happened a couple of times recently. I boot up this project, and it gets all the way to the plug-ins popping open, then it crashes, and re-boots itself. The last time this happened, it tried twice unsuccessfully, and I got an error message. I then tried it again, and it booted....hmmm.
Eric

Unstable for sure, Eric. I haven't had a project act up on me like that so I don't really know what to suggest.

only time I ever saw this was with effects not being run in real time..

is plug in related?