PC sound issues - can anyone help?

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SoulWeaver

SoulWeaver

Senior Member
Oct 25, 2014
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I've been fighting my computer for 2 days now.
I have sound issues that disable me from publishing more psalms.
The problem is that when I try to render a song from a program in which I compose, there is occassional strong noise and crackling in it. Also from time to time as I normally use my computer, I will hear sudden static and crackling, it will last about 5-10 seconds, then stop. Some of this gets caught on the track every time I try to render an mp3. I've finished a song and now I cannot release it.
I use FL Studio for composing.
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling my drivers, changing all I could think of. I surfed a lot online to see what it was and didnt find help or things I tried didnt work.
My machine is ASUS, the computer is about 1.5yrs old.
2.4GHz, so I doubt latency is the problem.
Thanks in advance if anybody knows the answer.
 
Maybe you need to increase the buffer length in FLStudio (Options--->Audio--->Buffer Length slider).

Maybe change some of the export settings when rendering the song? That is about all I can think to try...

EDIT: also you could try rendering it as a Wav file and converting it to mp3 in another program such as Audacity(free---needs LAME mp3 encoder though).
 
I might try that (thank you) though I have a good processor so latency probably isnt the problem. It worked great with the same settings until recently. This crackling happens even if I'm not doing anything (as long as FL is open in the background). Seems to be a driver issue but after I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers I'm out of ideas. I've tried reinstalling FL as well and it didnt help.
Could it be that the latest skype update messed up my drivers somehow?
 
SoulWeaver said:
Could it be that the latest skype update messed up my drivers somehow?
Click to expand...

Hmm, I suppose it could be. Skype tends to be weird like that. Maybe your sound card/interface are on the way out? Power fluctuations in your house? Dunno...
 
SoulWeaver said:
2.4GHz, so I doubt latency is the problem.
Click to expand...

Latency in this sort of case has nothing to do with the CPU frequency. I see this problem come up at my work where I play technical support for the laptops we sell.

Processing of streaming data in real-time is a very challenging task for Windows based applications and device drivers. This is because by design Windows is not a real-time operating system. There is no guarantee that certain (periodic) actions can be executed in a timely manner.
Click to expand...

Are you running Window 8(.1) or something older?
 
Siberian_Khatru said:
Latency in this sort of case has nothing to do with the CPU frequency. I see this problem come up at my work where I play technical support for the laptops we sell.

Are you running Window 8(.1) or something older?
Click to expand...

Windows 7.
I tried increasing the buffer length, it is still the same.
I'll try also WAV maybe the problem will disappear.
But this is not just in the rendered music.
I hear it also when I'm not doing anything in FL.
 
Just to cover your bases, look into this to see whether you're running into DPC latency or not.

Try a different driver version for your audio driver. You can even try removing it altogether, restart the computer, then see if Windows installs a native one that works better.
 
Siberian_Khatru said:
Try a different driver version for your audio driver. You can even try removing it altogether, restart the computer, then see if Windows installs a native one that works better.
Click to expand...

Tried that already. It didnt work.
The computer is relatively new, about 1.5yr old so it shouldnt be the sound card.
However, it doesnt recognize the name of the card. It only says "high definition audio device". Does that give any clue?
But idk what happened, all worked well until about a week ago. I dont remember changing anything or installing anything new.
I'm downloading this program, thank you
 
Okay tried this latency checker it was in the green. Once only spiked into yellow for a moment, that was it. No reds at all, it's pretty low. The crackling goes on when FL is opened, from time to time.
Tried to convert into WAV but still there is crackling.
 
Hmm, puzzling.

However, it doesnt recognize the name of the card. It only says "high definition audio device". Does that give any clue?
Click to expand...
That's just a generic read out. If Windows does not have a native driver, that's usually what you get. I imagine that, unless you have a dedicated sound card installed, your computer probably has integrated Realtek HD Audio. Maybe a setting in the Realtek HD software is causing the problem? Kind of hard to pinpoint when I don't have it all in front of me, but hopefully we can nip it. :o

Hopefully the audio chip isn't having a problem. You're not getting this crackling anywhere else, right? Like during playback of a song or video?
 
No. I keep getting it only when FL is open, whether I play any music or not. When FL is closed, no problem.
It is not any too expensive audio card but it has an ASIO supporting driver going with it... I downloaded it and saved it on here long ago and it worked well.
I believe too it is driver related. How do I get into Realtek HD driver settings because I dont know how to access them it doesnt show up anywhere? I tried to reinstall it but that didnt work. P.S. changing settings from FL didnt help either. But there must be some gui to access them outside of FL?
But right now I have generic driver, I uninstalled all sound drivers from device manager, then Windows installed automatically whatever it found online and still the same issue.
 
Last edited:
Ah, okay. You don't have Realtek then! You may have a software managing utility from ASIO, but I'm not as familiar with ASIO. The vast majority of computers have Realtek HD Audio integrated, so I assumed yours did as well. In any case, it is sounding (pun) like the audio driver is not the probl

Have you ever used Revo Uninstaller? It removes software similar to how Windows does it through the Windows Control Panel, except it goes deeper by removing leftover data that Windows doesn't scan for when uninstalling something. My advice at this point would be to backup your FL Studio data, then reinstall FL Studio, preferably via Revo Uninstaller. If you try out Revo, you may want to also consider using it to remove your audio driver, then go fetch the latest driver available (if you don't already have it) and reinstall it.
 
Okay. I will surely try and report back. Thank you and JDecree so much for help and advice so far.
 
Reinstalling sound drivers with Revo Uninstaller helped! The sound cleared up again.
Thanks a lot to both!
*thread locked* :D
 
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