Glitchy DAW

[Huw]

Hi

I'm currently fiddling about with home recording and stuff. I'm running a Zoom R16 as an interface to Reaper. It all worked perfectly in the beginning, but then I started work on a track with heaps of audio tracks and effects. When I was working on these tracks I thought the CPU load of all the effects and stuff were causing the DAW to make these horrible glitchy noises.

Recently when I work on something, even if it's just one track with no effects it makes these noises which kinda sound like a nasty ring modulator. It effects all audio from the DAW - playback and monitoring. The version of Reaper I'm running is the free version which expired ages ago. Could that be the reason?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks.

[toiletbag]

Hey man, make sure Reaper is using the right ASIO driver. Go to: options > preferences > then 'device' under the audio headline.

The ASIO driver selected should be the one for your audio interface, not ASIO DirectX Full Duplex or anything like that.

If it's the correct one, then you might need to adjust your audio interface's buffer/latency settings. Generally, you use lower values for tracking and higher ones for mixing. If you have a project loaded up with loads of VSTs, it'll stutter and drop out if the buffer settings are too low.

[Preid]

TB's pretty much nailed it.

Only thing I can think to add is if you've installed a new program or changed any settings recently, undo/uninstall them.

[Huw]

Hey man, make sure Reaper is using the right ASIO driver. Go to: options > preferences > then 'device' under the audio headline.

The ASIO driver selected should be the one for your audio interface, not ASIO DirectX Full Duplex or anything like that.

If it's the correct one, then you might need to adjust your audio interface's buffer/latency settings. Generally, you use lower values for tracking and higher ones for mixing. If you have a project loaded up with loads of VSTs, it'll stutter and drop out if the buffer settings are too low.

It was defs on the right ASIO driver because I also was using the interface for monitoring and tracking.

There doesn't seem to be any way of configuring any of the setting on the interface, but i think there is a way of changing the buffer settings for something. I wish I knew what i was talking about. Where's the best place to go to read stuff so I can understand things?

I tried it again last night and it was a lot better. The occassional pop which would spike the track I was recording on.

[toiletbag]

It was defs on the right ASIO driver because I also was using the interface for monitoring and tracking.

There doesn't seem to be any way of configuring any of the setting on the interface, but i think there is a way of changing the buffer settings for something. I wish I knew what i was talking about. Where's the best place to go to read stuff so I can understand things?

I tried it again last night and it was a lot better. The occassional pop which would spike the track I was recording on.

Your audio interface might come with some sort of software control panel to do it quickly and easily, otherwise it involves manually adjusting the buffer values in your DAW. I'm not at home at the moment so I dunno how to do it in Reaper. Have a look in the manual dude. Is imagine it's on the same screen as the ASIO stuff.

Try using a buffer value of 256 for tracking and something around the 5000 mark for mixing. avoid using VSTs while tracking it you can.

[Chris]

Under Preferences->Device click on the button marked Asio Configuration. The slider in the next screen controls the buffer size:

[toiletbag]

Yeah, don't use 5000 for mixing. I just realised I chucked an extra zero on there. Somewhere between 500-1000 should do you fine, even higher if you can get away with it. I think around 4000 mark is the maximum. It's been a while since I had to manually adjust buffer settings so I'm a little rusty.

[Sam 45]

2 boxes under what Chris has highlighted is the ASIO reset messages. Now if Reaper is anything like Pro Tools - which i fully believe it is not and actually has some sort of stability - ticking/unticking this box can result in improved CPU performance which can relate to the clicks/pops problems you might be having.

Could be worth a shot.

[emergency72]

Are you using a PC or laptop? I experienced this on my laptop the other night, setups which used to work were just killling the CPU which was causing all sorts of glitching and hanging....and I can usually run 24 tracks all with a lot of VST's and VSTi's no problem...I downloaded a program called CPU-ID and noticed that the core speed my CPU was running at was not the same speed my CPU is supposed to run at. Vista has some power management features which directly affect the CPU speed, so I had to disable all that (its strange because I never touched any of it). This had happened on another laptop before but I actually must have burned out that processor as the speed step was completely dead on it and could never get it running at a decent speed without overclocking it, which just goosed the whole thing...I'd check your RAM/CPU/Page File etc....run a good defrag MyDefrag v4.3.1 and disable as much windows crap as you can (windows indexing, aero, screensavers etc)...the "ring modulator" sound you mention sounded like my last laptop when i tried to just watch videos....the thing was only running like 380mhz and simply didnt have the CPU capacity to produce audio in realtime....

[Sam 45]

Oh and don't use maximum processors. Keep one for the OS.