Audio Clicking, Popping During Playback on Audio Interface (DAW)

I am not sure if this is the appropriate forum to post this but here it goes!

I am a professional audio engineer and I am running my DAW (Digital Audio Workstations) on Windows 10 Pro 1909 (OS Build 18363. 1198). I use Pro Tools and Studio One. I also use two seperate audio interfaces for audio playback.

When I listening to my recordings or mixing or mastering I am using my Orion. When I am listening to just regular audio like through Youtube, iTunes, Media Player etc. I use my Avid Eleven Rack. So in the Windows Sound Control Panel the Default device is Avid Eleven Rack. Under Device usage: Use this device. Under Advance; its set to 2 channel, 32 bit, 44100 Studio Quality, which is the same settings as the Avid Eleven Rack Control Panel. My DAW(s) (Studio One and or Pro Tools) uses my Orion interface (for mixing and playback). Both are connected via USB.

The problem I am having is that it does not matter if I am playing audio back through the Avid or the Orion I get snap-crackles-and pops. I even tried an old Presonus interface and I am getting the same thing. So it is not hardware related, as with the interfaces, it is something within Windows I am guessing.

My computer is an older i7 3770s 3.10Ghz 28GB Ram. When these snaps and pops occur I try to see if the CPU is spiking and it is not. I have tried deleting and reinstalling drivers and it still happens no matter which interface I use. All drivers have been updated. Its real embarrassing when I am playing a mix back for a client and they hear these pops and I have to say, oh, that's not in your record. Its my computer. And I am tired of hearing them and my colleagues say that I need to get a Mac.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Or if it can be fixed? I can't even tell you when it started because I have been dealing with this for so long I just learned to work around it because I know it's not a part of the mix. I am planning on building me another Workstation the beginning of the year. But I need to try to fix this in the meantime.

And suggestions?

IIRC going for low latency by using too small asio buffer size causes clicks etc in stuff like Cubase.

badcrc said:

IIRC going for low latency by using too small asio buffer size causes clicks etc in stuff like Cubase.

Unfortunately its not isolated to my DAW. It does matter if I am using Pro Tools, or listening to music via iTunes. Nor does it matter which audio interface I use. This is really frustrating!

Thank you SO MUCH for your assistance. I really appreciate the time you took to respond.


QUOTE=dalchina;2085849]Hi, first port of call.. run LatencyMon (free) to detect possible driver latency.
If that indicates problems, analysing the root cause can be tricky.
Ok - I will try this.

Please confirm you are not overclocking, and are only using drivers available via Windows and have not used a driver updating tool (No overclocking and I dont use any tools other than Windows Update (which I am skeptical of) and when it is time to update a driver, I normally go directly to the manufactures website. But in the Pro Audio world there is a rule of thumb - once you get your system stable, never update. I am a bit more liberal and I Iike to keep my system up to date. That may be the problem)

Sometimes it's necessary to use an OLDER version of a particular driver to resolve this.
Because this seems to be windows related I wouldn't know where to begin to look for an older Windows driver. Its not isolated to a particular audio interface.

When did your PC last NOT exhibit this problem?
It had to be sometime in February I cant remember exactly but it was the beginning of the year.
With which build of Windows was that?
I dont remember
What has changed since it last did not have this problem
The only thing I can think of was it had to be a Windows update. In November of every year, for the last 20 years, I shut the studio down the week of Thanksgiving until January. During this time I will replace hard drives and do a fresh install of everything on my system. Its a pain in the rump, but it keeps my system nice and clean. I didn't purchase any new software or hardware so it had to be a windows update.
Another approach, albeit rather blind and crude, is simplification and elimination. I.e. try to eliminate possible causes by elimination.

An analytical one might use the Windows Performance Analyser (free from MS) - techinical.
Ok, I will try this and Latency Mon and see what the results say.

See examples of these by searching tenforums for
LatencyMon (in particular)
Windows Performance Analyser (if needed)[/QUOTE]
Again, I am truly grateful for the assistance, suggestions and time you took to help me. Because its that time of year when I normally shut down for the year I am about to do a fresh install of Windows and all of my programs again. I am also purchasing a new Motherboard and CPU to build another computer. But I wont rest until I know what was the cause of this because if it happens again I want to be prepared to fix it. Ill post the results of the LatencyMon and let you know what it said.

I have a recording studio, using Cakewalk (Sonar) and Presonus Studio 1 V4.6 Professional.

Since regular PC has the problem, your recording interface unit is likely not the problem.
Latency Mon is one of the first steps. Also what is running at start up? Wi-Fi is also a known cause.
I've had issues with NVIDIA video cards (or the NVIDIA drivers). EVERY PC I used or tested with an NVIDIA had problems. I only use the Intel CPU video or an AMD Radeon Video card. I do some field testing of new PC's for Dell and the last two laptops I had both had Intel video and NVIDIA video. If I disable the NVIDIA, Latency Mon ran clean. If I disabled the Intel CPU Video and used the NVIDIA latency mon showed problems. Same way with a Dell laptop (Inspiron 15 gaming 5577) that I use for client site recording, I have to disable the NVIDIA when recording.

@dalchina

I ran LatencyMon and this is what I got:

Your system seems to be having difficulty handling real-time audio and other tasks. You may experience drop outs, clicks or pops due to buffer underruns. One or more DPC routines that belong to a driver running in your system appear to be executing for too long. At least one detected problem appears to be network related. In case you are using a WLAN adapter, try disabling it to get better results. One problem may be related to power management, disable CPU throttling settings in Control Panel and BIOS setup. Check for BIOS updates.

So I disabled my Ethernet Adapter and ran it again. No problems. As soon as I enabled the Network card, I got the same message. This is REAL interesting because I remember reading on the Avid site several years ago on Optimizing Pro Tools to run on Windows and they recommended disabling the network card or purchasing a separate network card from certain vendors. But back then you didn't have to be online to activate programs or access the internet for registration like you have to do today. So I never really paid attention to that part of the Optimization process because I never used my DAW to access the internet. And all of my PCIe slots were filled so I couldn't add another PCIe device anyway.

I am going to disable the adapter and see how things work this evening. I have a mix session so this will tell if it was the adapter/driver or not. I will get back to you all to let you know if that fixed the issue.

Thanks again for all of the help. I really do appreciate it.
Stay safe and be blessed!

- - - Updated - - -

fireberd said:

I have a recording studio, using Cakewalk (Sonar) and Presonus Studio 1 V4.6 Professional.

Since regular PC has the problem, your recording interface unit is likely not the problem.
Latency Mon is one of the first steps. Also what is running at start up? Wi-Fi is also a known cause.
I've had issues with NVIDIA video cards (or the NVIDIA drivers). EVERY PC I used or tested with an NVIDIA had problems. I only use the Intel CPU video or an AMD Radeon Video card. I do some field testing of new PC's for Dell and the last two laptops I had both had Intel video and NVIDIA video. If I disable the NVIDIA, Latency Mon ran clean. If I disabled the Intel CPU Video and used the NVIDIA latency mon showed problems. Same way with a Dell laptop (Inspiron 15 gaming 5577) that I use for client site recording, I have to disable the NVIDIA when recording.

Great info!!! I ran the LatencyMon and it seem to be my Ethernet Card. I disabled it and I am going to test it this evening. I have a session so Ill see how it goes.

Thanks