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Old 02-07-2011, 07:18 PM   #1
ThanhLe
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Default Clicking Noise - Newbie ? - X64 setup

Hello guys,
Thanks in advance for helping me out. I'm very new to Reaper, testing it before I purchase it. Ran into problem here
First my raw setup
Dell E6410, X64 (http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-e6410/pd) -
Yamaha N8
Korg M3.
I got some song written on the Korg M3, so I use Yamaha N8 to record to Reaper, using 4 to 6 pin firewire. I'm pretty sure the sound card for the Dell E6410 is pretty sh*tty, it keeps giving me a clicking, stopping noise, every second or so. I'm not sure if I should use the sound card and only use Reaper for recording or my setup is not correct.
Please suggest a better setup for what I had and/or which soundcard is best for my case. How should I set it up thru the m3 and n8. Many thankx guys
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Old 02-07-2011, 09:21 PM   #2
RuairiAU
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Ok, let's tackle each bit piece by piece.

Firstly, a laptop aint the best thing to be using for recording; but you'll be fine for small projects. Without getting too techy on you, the hardware is not as good as what you'd get on a PC.

Next, I'd have to question why are you going through the Yamaha N8? You are converting a midi signal to audio (D/A conversion), then the Yamaha N8 is doing a A/D conversion and then you're recording this output. Wouldn't it be simpler to just plug your Korg M3 into your laptop and record the MIDI? I have to assume that it's because you like the tone of the Korg and you can't replicate it with a plugin.

Lastly, how do you deal with the crackling? You mention that the soundcard in your laptop is shitty. You shouldn't be using your soundcard at all, the Yamaha N8 is now your soundcard. You should have speakers (and headphones) connected to the N8 and all sound should be coming out of it. If this is not the case, then this is the problem.
If you do have this set up right, then the problem is throughput, the onboard firewire is does not have enough bandwidth avaiable to process the audio. In laptops, they often bunch all the USB and firewire ports on the same controller, so the more devices you have connected, the less bandwidth each gets. You can resolve this by going to your local PC store and buying a "PCMCIA Firewire controller card". This plugs into the PCMCIA slot on your laptop and gives you an extra firewire port (or 2); plug the N8 in to this.
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Old 02-08-2011, 05:50 PM   #3
ThanhLe
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Hello RauiriAU,
Thank you for your respond. It helps me assure my uncertainty. You're right on the fact that I use N8 as the soundcard from the korg M3 because I use it to record stereo not midi.
The problem probably rests on the throughput as you mentioned. I travel a lot and my recording is just to sample and shall be re-recorded by my friends, still I want it to sound nice and clear so that I can reproduce it later. Should I go with the Macbook Pro, would it fix the throughput problem?
Thankx again for your help
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Old 02-08-2011, 06:10 PM   #4
RuairiAU
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There is no need to buy a new computer.

Confirm that you are using ASIO drivers for your device, if you are using WDM or something else, you will run into problems.

Configure your ASIO drivers to have a larger buffer and make sure the bit depth/rate matches that of what you record in Reaper. For example, I have mine set to 44.1K at 24bit and it has a large buffer.

If your ASIO driver does not give you these options, download ASIO4ALL.

And most importantly, search these forums and use google. Everyone has had to deal with pops and clicks in their recordings and it's just a matter of tweaking things to suit your hardware.

The only thing I do suggest buying is a dedicated firewire port (PCMCIA - for laptops); it's around $50USD.
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Old 02-09-2011, 05:11 AM   #5
stickyfingers
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I dont know if this will help you or not. I battled the problem until I was close to murder or suicide. Then I read on here about disabling different processes. It finally boiled down to my video adapters. When I disabled them (NVDIA GT220) everything magically cleaned up. I was so happy I hugged my ma in law. I had to re-size the screen in the control panel and the view is not quite so crisp, but very usable. When I am done with Reaper, I just "enable" the driver again in the device manager.
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