Digital Jitter Problem

[cortezguitar]

Yesterday I had a tech problem in my studio. I always check the playback, but the leader wanted to press on, so we powered through a 4 hour session without checking the playback, only to find digital distortion all over the tracks at the end. The obvious moral is to insist on checking the playback.

The problem seems to be a corrupted project template file that I started with, and kept saving with a new name every time we'd move on to a new song. I loaded a different template and I cannot duplicate the problem with the new template file. The audio file waveforms appear normal visually, but when played back have digital distortion. It isn't clipping, it's digital jitter noise all over everything. I imported the jittery files into a "clean" new project template, hoping the problem was playback only and sure enough, all the files from that session are affected. New files recorded with the new template are fine. I will try again with the original template today to see if I can duplicate the problem that way. If so, I will know that template is to blame, but why? What hidden parameter could be causing that problem, without reporting a time-lock error? All lights on the interface were green, and no error messages showed up during the session.
Before I pony up and make everyone play the session again, does anyone have a potential solution to save the files I already recorded? I'm using Digital Performer 7.1. Thanks in advance. I am on a MAC 3.2 GHZ quad core Intel w/16GB of RAM, using a Fireface 800 interface, with Two Focusrite Octopre units. The 2nd Octopre unit is using the ADAT inputs on the Fireface 800. Recording at 96k/24bit.

[buzzsmith]

Chris is a local contemporary friend of mine, so anyone that can help would be much appreciated!

Buzzy

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Have you played the soundbites back in a program other than DP? Quicktime? Same results?

[burp182]

In my experience, any time jitter has been named as an issue, it evidences itself as a somewhat "harder" sound (think early CDs as opposed to well done later examples)rather than full-on distortion. What led you to identify jitter as the cause of your problem? (Not saying you're not correct - it's just a very different symptom than I've encountered.)

[Dan Worley]

Definitely do what MLC suggested, play the soundbites in something other than DP and see how they do.

Check the sample rate of your project, interfaces and soundfiles to make sure everything matches. My Focusrite will put out digital clicks when it doesn't match the sample rate of the master master clock. It boots up to 88.2 and I often forget to change it.