Bursts of static & 'snare drum' during playback

[dawice]

I found a post in the forum as follows: "When running fade cues or simply playing the next cue, when an AC3 is playing, I get occasional very loud, short (~50ms) bursts of static, what appears to be at full sound card volume. "

I'm having a similar problem only with wav & mp3 files and tonight at tech it happend probably about 20 times, either a burst of static or what can best be described as a loud snare drum crack. Running 10.3.2 on an IBM Intellistation Pro with 2GB ram, OS is Win XP Pro Sp3. For sound card, using an M-Audio FastTrack which connects via USB. The PC is new, the FastTrack was used for a few years with our previous sound setup. This the first show with SCS. I've got a line on an M-Audio 4 channel card, the Delta 44, but won't have it for this show.

In the post I mentioned above, fix was to have playback buffer set to 200ms (which mine is) and to increase max # of audio file to pre-open. I haven't tried this yet. I did find that it 'seemed' the incidence decreased when I switched off 'Use Software mixed instead of hardware mixed', however this could be wishful thinking. It occurs at random with no apparent connection to which cue is playing, just that a cue is playing.

I noticed this same thing once or twice when I was setting up the cues on my laptop, but I figured it might be the on board sound card.

Show opens in 2 weeks (of course) and as mentioned this is first show with SCS, hoping someone can provide some advice.

Thanks

[Mike Daniell]

I can't think of any software reason for the noise you are getting and wonder if might be related to the USB cable/connection. Try (a) using a different USB cable, (b) use a different USB port, and (c) make sure both ends of the USB cable are firmly plugged in and that there is some slack in the cable. (The AC3 problem you referred to did seem to be AC3-specific.)

I've emailed you regarding additional information.

[dawice]

Problem ended up being the M-Audio FastTrack, or some part of the circuit related to it. Replaced the USB cable with no change, ended up using the headphone jack on the PC and that worked fine....for now anyway.