HELP!! Awful clicks and digital degradation

[sgingras]

When recording audio via a guitar or mic, I constantly get clicks, as well as an awful, fuzz-like digital noise that sounds like everything is being reduced to 4bit sound and run through a distortion pedal. Once this noise begins to occur on a track, the only way I have been able get it to stop is to adjust my latency settings.

OK, so it's a latency problem...BUT... I get the clicks and awful noise no matter what I put my settings to. Usually the noise starts up 3-4 minutes after I start playing. Sometimes almost right away.

I generally keep my sample rate at around 150-180, but to be honest, I have no idea really what this does, other than that a high sample rate gives me lots of latency.

I'm on an iBook G4 1GHz 648megs ram and run no other programs while running live.

If someone could give me an idea of what is going and perhaps some suggestions on how to fix it, it would be much appreciated

-stefan

[peeddrroo]

i'm not sure it is linked to latency.
the fact that the problem disappears when you change the latency value, is just that the soundcard buffers gets released, or something like that.

what soundcard do you use? ASIO driver?

[sgingras]

I'm using an M-Audio mobile pre USB soundcard with the Mac built in sound driver (coreaudio). I know it's cheap, but it should at least work...right? Ah well, I guess you get what you pay for.

[Johnisfaster]

if your problem is the same as mine (which it may or may not be) I usually just repair my permissions and then restart and the clicks go away...

[Obineg]

I generally keep my sample rate at around 150-180, but to be honest, I have no idea really what this does, other than that a high sample rate gives me lots of latency.

I'm guessing you mean buffer size . . . 150-180 is quite low , around 500 should be ok and should produce less clicks . . .