Getting Crackles and Pops Despite *Significantly* Higher Buffer Than I Have to Use in Other DAWs?

[Jonny]

I've been having a problem with Ableton 10 that I CANNOT get rid of crackles and pops in my live instrument input signal unless I crank the buffer size super high (1024+ samples). However, in Cubase, for example, I can run a perfectly clean signal chain with only 32 samples in the buffer. I'm using a MOTU M4 (ASIO) and I allow the hardware to control the buffer rate for the entire computer.

I've got a decent system... windows 10, i7-8700k 3.7GHz, all SSD. I'm confident the crackles and pops are not clipping. Even a low level direct guitar line in with no processing will still pop occasionally if the buffer is under 1024. The strange thing is that these artifacts don't get recorded into the clip but *sometimes* they will appear if I throw a EQ visualizer on the track.

Obviously, trying to do anything with the latency from 1024/2048 buffer size is impossible and something is definitely wrong if I can run cleanly with low buffer in other DAWs... the question is what could possibly be responsible for it? Appreciate any ideas you folks might have. Thanks.

[Jonny]

I should add that this is a relatively new issue, though I'm not sure when it first started happening. Also, I've searched for and followed every 'how to get rid of popping' tutorial I can find and none have helped.

[DunedinDragon]

It sounds to me that your pops and crackles are coming from the playback side and not the record side of your processing. Without knowing a bit more about what your recording situation is it's going to be hard to guess at where the problem might be. It's one thing to have a project with a lot of recorded tracks and a whole different set of considerations if you're using a lot of plug ins or virtual instruments. At this point I'd definitely say you should be monitoring the source signal only and not the recorded playback on your recording track. But even then your DAW is working hard on processing something in order to do the processing required of your active recording track.

[Jonny]

I have, finally, confirmed that the issue exists on the playback side. I've updated every piece of firmware, driver, and patch on my entire computer. I've followed every troubleshooting guide I can find. I spent hours with MOTU tech support today and I'm nearly convinced it's not an interface issue. Even for a single midi VST synth, in order to get a totally clean playback in Ableton, I'm having to max out sample size at 4096, while I can run the exact same instrument in Cubase or Cakewalk at only 32 samples.

I have also noticed the crackles and pops are 100% correlated to spikes in the CPU load meter. Typically it's <10% but it will jump to 40-60% during the crackles.

Another strange thing I would add is it wasn't always this way... I've used Ableton for 5 years on this computer now, so something has changed, to cause this. I just can't, for the life of me, figure out what.

My next step is to uninstall and reinstall Ableton, which I've been trying like hell to avoid, because I'm worried about file/VST references getting broken.

[Jonny]

Happy to report I've resolved it and it was related to some old HDMI monitors I stopped using about 6 months ago. The monitors were each still listed as non-disabled 'sound devices' within Windows Sound Settings (they were greyed out but not technically 'disabled'). Once I officially disabled all of them, suddenly we're back to running smoothly!

NeuralDSP VSTs seem to trigger this specific latency issue, more than anything. Something about how those VSTs use CPU is unique. They are fine in other DAWs or being run as standalone... I can go as low as 32 samples cleanly. In Ableton, though, those VSTs in combination with having those old 'sound devices' still enabled, they were triggering 200ms DPC interruptions in Nvidia and DirectX drivers - that's what I was hearing.

LatencyMon was what helped me ultimately track it down. Cheers!

[Angstrom]

That's somewhat similar to my desktop system. I remember I had a few weird crackle and pop issues when I first set it up early last year. I think one of the weird things which resolved a lot of my issues was turning off that "fast startup" setting. I know that sounds crazy but apparently its a common issue . TBH I did a few other tweaks around that time and so it could have been a culmination of my attempts.

My desktop is an i7 12700k 3.6Ghz overclocked a bit ( I forget how much) with 32 Gb ram, and a bunch of 2Tb NVMe drives in there. MOTU ultralite 5 with 128 sample buffer at 48khz. No trouble with it for at least 18 months. Very sturdy.