Crackling in Garageband (starts very little, gets worse)

Alabama man

Alabama man

Inspired
Hey all

This is my current setup: 2015 Macbook pro (maxed out options) into Axe II XL (q 1.06) via USB using the most up to date version of GB (10.1).

Here's what's happening:
Listening back to a few tracks I was working on, I was hearing that crackling noise you get when the axe output is clipping. I looked at the axe and saw that it was not clipping. I went back to GB and saw that the main output on the upper right was clipping. I adjusted all my track levels and brought the main output of GB down to -6.0db - no more red in the main output bar, but still lots of crackling.

The first thing I did was restart GB, but still, the same issue persisted. I then disconnected the Axe from my Mac and listened to the track through the mac's headphone jack. No crackling.

So, I plugged the axe back in after rebooting everything and at first, it was not crackling. Over the course of several minutes though, a small crackle here and there turned into a chorus of crackling. I unplugged the axe again and shut it down. I haven't had issues since reconnecting it again and starting over, but I only sat with it for 10 minutes after that.

Can anyone help me?
 
I had this problem recently - in my case it was a simple solution - as I was laying down each guitar track - I was leaving the "monitor" toggle switched on for each layer (the third toggle one each track near the mute and headphone symbols) - and the Mac was struggling to synchronise all the monitors simultaneously - so when I toggled off the monitor switch on each track - and just had it on for the track I was laying down - the problem disappeared.
 
Smittefar said:
OK, do you get crackling, if you just play an mp3 file from iTunes?
Click to expand...

I didn't try that out as I only have the axe set as my output device for GB. I tried listening to some music outside of GB (through the axe), but I wasn't getting sound. I'll give it a shot later.
 
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Smittefar said:
Could any of the tracks or FX on them be clipping?
Click to expand...

The only track that was clipping by itself was the drum track. Clipping got worse when I introduced 3 more tracks on top. Mind you, this clipping was not manifesting as that nasty stuff I'm talking about - I just noticed the GB main output was a little more red than it needed to be. I knocked everything down (including the master output of GB) and that's not so much an issue anymore.
 
Dealmaker said:
I had this problem recently - in my case it was a simple solution - as I was laying down each guitar track - I was leaving the "monitor" toggle switched on for each layer (the third toggle one each track near the mute and headphone symbols) - and the Mac was struggling to synchronise all the monitors simultaneously - so when I toggled off the monitor switch on each track - and just had it on for the track I was laying down - the problem disappeared.
Click to expand...

I discovered early on to turn the monitor toggle off. It was really messing with the sound in the most horrible way. Thanks for the tip though.
 
Sounds like a sample rate issue. The Axe is fixed at 48kHz. It will manifest as progressively worse crackling during playback.
 
fractalz said:
Sounds like a sample rate issue. The Axe is fixed at 48kHz. It will manifest as progressively worse crackling during playback.
Click to expand...


That makes sense. I thought it was the other way around though - GB has the fixed sample rate and the Axe's can be change, no?

It hasn't happened since the start of this thread. If it is a sample rate issue, is the crackling random (sometimes it will happen, sometimes not), or should it be happening consistently?
 
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