Pops and clicks on a Windows 7 64 bit system

Hello Chrome,

Glad you got yourself sorted with another interface. Very interesting that you were getting issues like me and yet another USB 2 interface is fine for you!

Strangely enough, it's a Focusrite that has come along for me too, though I've gone back to Firewire. I've only had it running for a couple of hours so it's too soon to proclaim it a success but so far so good.... I've got the latency set low but not crazy low (I can't feel it) and it's doing fine and also no issues yet in iTunes, Youtube etc. Long may it continue! I keep waiting for it to do it and I do hope it doesn't bother

 

Hi Gary,

I had little choice in the matter...........I don't have a firewire port so it had to be USB 2.0. And i'm glad I opted for the Focusrite because deep down I knew my Laptop (Windows 7 x64) wasn't the issue regardless of what updates I made to it, as my previous Line6 POD2 soundcard worked pretty well.

I have been testing the Saffire 6 out as often as I could these last 24 hours and it is happily idling at around 250 microseconds on DPC latency checker (albeit a few rare jumps to 3000, but its unnoticeable to the ear). No issues with youtube either. I used to get the strange issue of anything that I was listening to and watching would slooooooow down like someone had held a vinyl record, then after 5 seconds speed back up in fast forward then return to normal pace.

The Focusrite just WORKS. The Komplete Audio 6 was a sturdy unit but it the Focusrite feels like the difference between a pretty X5 and a robust new Land Rover discovery. It's SOLID!

 

I haven't overly taxed the Saffire yet but I did my first recording with it earlier..... It was a dead simple 'just guitar and vocal plus a few effects' thing but it's been the first time I've felt like recording anything in a while - I was constantly believing it was about to click and pop and that's really offputting.

The slow down thing was curious as I didn't get that problem at all until shortly before I exchanged it. The last few days I had it, it did this a lot. No changes were made to the PC that I am aware of (of course, you can never disregard the chances of Windows doing yet another random update) but pretty much everything upset it.

3 hopes here....

1. I hope yours and my Focusrites carry on working fine
2. I hope this thread has helped someone out there to get their Komplete working
3. I hope NI discover why one or two people out here seem to be having exactly the same issue when the issues don't exist for them on other interfaces and when all of the troubleshooting guides have been followed. I am convinced that 'something' is upsetting the driver.

 

I had similar problems... clics ans popps. The thing practically unusable. After some hours of searching the following worked for me, so far at least:

1) I monitored with the DCP Latency Checker while disabling some devices

my WLan seemed to be the problem. When disabled, no clics ans popps appeared. I've an ACER laptop with an Atheros AR5B97 Network adapter.

Since I want to use the interface to play all computer sounds, anytime, disabling is not an acceptable solution: so what I've done:

2) Install the newest triber manually from http://www.atheros.cz/atheros-wireless-download.php?chipset=40&system=5

Since my Device Manager said that the triber is up to date, I installed it manually.

voilà, now it works nicely

 

Hi Gary_W.
I have the same issue like you. RK 3 coonected to a desktop computer with W7 64 bits. Did you solved the issue out?. I have created a new thread about it. I would like to comment you that I have connected my RK 3 to a desktop with W7 32 bits and it works perfect. I think the problems is the driver and it does not has compatibility with W7 64 bits.

support does not answer to me either

Regards

 

think i fixed the pops and clicks issue :/ lets give it some time

I was having the same problem with my komplete Audio 6. I have a brand new laptop ASUS K53SD - quad core i7, 8mb RAM, 2GB nvidia geforce graphics card, Windows 7 Home premium 64bit etc. When I opened media player or youtube, id give it about 10 mins then the pops would start. I Checked the latency with its inbuilt diagnostics and it wasnt even going into the yellow (nor the red) and still popping. I tried every thing you tried, went right thru the forums trying to search for a fix. It worked fine in FL studio but anything else it started popping.

I finally gave up and took it back to the shop, the guy tried it on his pc there and we waited around for an hour or so trying it with youtube, media player playing both at the same time and no pops. I was ready to swap it for the roland of the same price. He informed me the guy from NI was back at work on monday and maybe try the interface on my other laptop to see if it still had the same so they could get to the bottom of this. So i took it home plugged it in on my laptop with a I3 processor and only 2gb of ram. I t ran perfect for 3 hours only and occasional glitch when you open another program etc but no popping like my ASUS. Spoke to a friend and he mentioned something about graphics cards sometimes having probs with audio cards, so i took another direction and started mucking around with graphics cards settings. I also noticed with my ASUS it runs 2 graphics processors - the NVIDIA 610m and also the Intel HD graphics 3000 built in to the board im gathering.

Now i noticed most people having probs had laptops so maybe this might work for you if you have a similar set up with your graphics cards. I moved all my 3d settings to performance rather than quality (I guess performance is the lowest setting in it that uses the least resources) and set my preference to use the NVIDIA card for preferred graphics processor. this setting was previously set on auto to use whatever graphics processor the computer felt like. I dont know if KA6 has a problem with intels HD graphics 3000 but i tried disabling the nvidia card in control panel and running with just the intel hd 3000 and straight away it was popping like it did before in media player. Anyway its 2 days in and still no playing up with KA6 so maybe its a fix, or i have identified an issue which NI and intel needs to resolve.

 

Mines not disabled and my komplete audio 6 works 100% fine (gigabyte mb on self built desktop pc)

I have my headphone mic plugged into the mic port on my motherboard as I use my PC for gaming as well as audio and it's the easiest way to talk ingame.

 

thanks to both of you

Dazr33: I have changed some configuration in Intel HD Graphics, but the issue persist.
Ojustaboo: I have disable the internal sound card. It was one of the first steps that I did.
I see in DCP Latency Checker that "clips and pops" are regulars in time (red colour), and I do not understand which windows proccess (hardware/software) is running in that momment. It is not clear in task manager. But it is clear the issue is with usbport.sys.

 

Do you only have the intel hd graphics or do you have a second card also? Actually there wasnt much i could change in the intel hd graphics at all, except i lowered the 3d processing. I think the main thing that made the difference was in the nvidia graphics settings and made it the preferred graphics processor. That seemed to clear it up - however i had a roland ua-25ex usb 1.1 previous to the ka6 and had none of these probs. I'm still wondering if its a problem between the ka6 and the intel hd graphics, maybe they just arent compatible with one another- has anyone had both the ka6 and intel hd graphics running well together?

 

32-bit version will only allow you can use up to 3-3.5GB of RAM, this may be causing your problem, a heavy load equipment.

 

Dazr33: My laptop computer has just Intel HD Graphic. I tried to made some changes in configuration but the issue persist.

On the other hand, I would like to install my Kontrol Rig in other laptop computer with W7 64 bits, to comfirmate or not if the driver works well. From NI Support says me that I must do the steps of "Windows 7 Tuning Tips for Audio Processing" document but I did it before to open a ticket and replay this thread.

Has Anybody installed Kontrol Rig in W7 64 bits and it is working without this issue?

Regards

 

I installed Rig 3 to Windows 7 64-bit and get constant crackling. If I lower the USB buffer any faster than 4ms then it stutters. I've tried every which way of fixing it to no avail. It worked fine on XP and Mac OS using the same laptop. I first thought it was a problem with DPC latency but ruled this out once I fixed that issue and still the same problem.

Also when contacting NI, I got the link to the tweaks page, which I'd been trying for 24 hours already. It sounds like a real issue NI have to address with the drivers because my inbuilt card works fine.

 

Ive been having a VERY similar problem to you, however its only affected flash player (youtube etc) and itunes. My DAW may get an occasional underrun, but never these random pops and clicks that get worse.

I literally tried everything in the books, so Ill spare you the details of what I tried to do....not to fix the problem, but just diagnose it.

I dont know if your audio starts popping with or without flash player, but mine seems to only start doing it if I have a flash player window open at the same time as itunes. So if I only use itunes and dont dare to touch the internet browser, I dont get this problem.
Also, the problem can be solved by just closing both programs and reopening them, but if I go out of the room and it gets out of hand it starts getting on the "speaker destruction" side of noise. Continue reading....

When I go into my KA6 control panel, and lets say WMP and itunes are both open, it tells me I have "2" Number of Clients under the > Diagnostics section.

When its only itunes open, just 1. When its only flash open (no matter how many windows or tabs that include flash) just 1.

But when both programs are open at the same time, it still only tells me "1" client, even if I play audio from both of them at the same time.

I believe at least in my case, that Ive narrowed it down to one of two things:
A) Either the NI drivers dont like flash player, or flash player doesnt like NI, and when open with another audio program, it causes a driver glitch and/or internal clock error.
B) NI interfaces are known for being able to play audio from more than one source at once, and do it well. Its possible this feature is somehow messed up a bit, and is having some problems.

Im sure theres a fix for this in either a firmware or driver update, I just hope they plan on doing it.

 

In my particular case, ACER Spain has changed the motherboard of my laptop. After that, It is working well. It was a hardware problem.

regards

Roberto Rosillo

 

Yeah but if a totally different audio interface (or most others for that matter) worked fine, then obviously there was something NI could have done to change their firmware or drivers to work with your stuff. Why get a whole new motherboard just to use an interface thats pretty much just as good as others in its price range? (besides its IO )

 

Same problem for me and still not fixed..

 

I am also having this problem, audio is fine when running under ASIO but glitches and pops are present when listening to audio through iTunes/Youtube. Running a Windows 64bit system.

 

guys im sorry to disappoint here, but unfortunately NI just didnt write that great of drivers for windows. Ive had a few other audio interfaces in the past and some had similar problems, some didnt. I ended up returning my NI because it had many more problems than just the pops and clicks.

It could be a memory leak, or just a poor line of code, we may never know. But if its annoying to you, and youre having problems I suggest looking for a new interface. The KA6 works great with most MACs I hear, and Im not dissing NI in any way. But it is what it is.

There was a firmware updater, which means the software inside the machine itself, wasnt 100% when it was released, most other interfaces Ive come across have yet to require a firmware update, which is saying something.

Ask NI for any beta drivers, or perhaps a roll-back driver it may help. Cheers

 

Still those problems right here. At first I thought those noises would be clipping as they appear only sporadically, but I don't know why and when the noises are coming, seems random to me.

ASIO mode works fine it seems, but WDM Audio has the problems.

I'm on 64-bit as well.

 

I didn't read through the whole thread, so some hints might already have been given.
But did you already ...

(1) ... check out the download area for the latest drivers/firmware
(2) ... have a look at NI's Tuning Tips
(3) ... have a look at Windows Sound Preferences:

(3A) right-click -> disable all playback/recording devices you don't need.

(3B) For the Recording devices and the 'Stereo Mix':
If you don't need it, uncheck the 'Listen to this device' option found under
right-click -> properties -> Listen Tab