Another thread about crackling noise.

S

Scottckr

Inspired
Hey, got my Axe-FX II just before Christmas and ever since then when I have plugged my headphones in the front of it and played guitar or just simply used it as an audio interface and watched movies or listened to music or whatever I get this really annoying crackling noise, the higher the audio from the computer is the higher the crackling noise gets, if the computer is silent, so is the noise.
No, it's not clipping, I've checked every input/output parameter I can find and none of them are high enough to cause clipping.
The weird thing about this is that before today the noise was only on the left channel of my headphones, but right now it's in both channels, as someone else said, it sounds like a bowl of rice crispies and milk.
I also tried plugging in a friend's monitors in the back outputs and once again there was noise only in the left channel.
This is getting extremely annoying because I can't really do anything with the Axe-FX without getting annoyed by the noise.
Fortunately the noise don't always appear when I turn the unit on, sometimes I'm lucky to have it working without noise for about 30 mins.

Anyway, if anyone got a solution or if this is a faulty unit, please let me know
Thanks in advance!
 
well, kind of solved it, apparently the usb driver doesnt work too well on windows, so raising the buffer size on the driver to an insane 4096 or whatever it is makes the noise go away... I could use 52 samples on my mac with the axe-fx and it was all smooth, why does it work so much worse with windows? yea yea, I know, windows sucks
 
Scottckr said:
well, kind of solved it, apparently the usb driver doesnt work too well on windows, so raising the buffer size on the driver to an insane 4096 or whatever it is makes the noise go away... I could use 52 samples on my mac with the axe-fx and it was all smooth, why does it work so much worse with windows? yea yea, I know, windows sucks
Click to expand...

Yek wrote in his 'tone troubleshooting wiki' that if you have single coils, it can sound like digital clipping, but you actually have to adjust some advanced 'treble' parameters to compensate.

As far as the windows drivers are concerned, I use a windows PC just fine via USB. Except if I use a patch that's very FX heavy. The USB drivers eat up some CPU cycles on the Axe so if I don't leave about 15% CPU available, then it will crackle.


Which brings to mind, Developers, is there any way to put in an option to have your PC help process the USB portion instead of eating up so much Axe CPU?
 
Well, the crackling is back, mailed G66 support to get some help, if they can't help I guess I'll contact Fractal Support.
And to answer BORNintoMUSIC: I've got 2 humbuckers on my guitars so that's not the issue.
Anyone know anything about this crackling noise?
 
Might need to mention that it's not only when I'm playing guitar through the Axe-FX that this crackling noise appears, if I'm just using the Axe-FX as interface for the sound from my computer there's the crackling. Yes, I've tried unplugging the USB cable and the problem still persists, it's not specific patches that have the crackling, it's all of them, both factory presets and my own.
 
I've heard that too and it's definitely some sort of digital noise, not interference. However, it gets worse as I get closer to my computer, acting like analog noise. I'm not sure why. No USB and only shows up on certain patches.
 
jasonwb007 said:
However, it gets worse as I get closer to my computer, acting like analog noise.
Click to expand...
This is due to RF interference from computer/monitor and will happen with any device using amplified guitar pickups. Happens on my L6, Roland and ART processors too.
If it goes away (or diminishes) when moving AWAY from your PC.. "Rule of Thumb:" don't play near your PC ! or insulate your pickups cavity... worse w/ single coil pups.
 
I've had all kinds of weird noises get into the audio from PC's over the years. I remember a while back if I moved my mouse's scroll wheel that it would make a weird noise. Sometimes you could hear the hard drive thrashing as well. I think that changing the PCI latency on a few things helped (basically giving the soundcard the highest).

One thing I just thought of though was to check you pickguard. I was playing the other night and noticed some poppig and stuff and it was static from the pickguard. A dryer sheet is the only fix for that AFAIK.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom