Fixed PC and DAW audio glitches and goes out of tune with digital artifacts every 10-15 seconds

Updated and tested last night. The good news: the previous audio issues are indeed fixed. The bad news: I am still getting audio issues going from USB to MacBook Pro running El Capitan and Logic 9. These issues are clearly related to buffer size. On 256, the issue is about 1 second of glitching every 1-1.5 minutes. Much lower frequency and intensity than the previous issues in 1.05. Increasing to 1024, and then to 512, appeared to resolve the issue. Issue appeared on multiple presets with FM3 cpu running 68-73% and cpu on the Mac barely budging.
i will do more experimenting over the weekend, but the latency at 512 is barely tolerable. At this point, I will just go straight into my Focusrite interface.
 
random said:
Updated and tested last night. The good news: the previous audio issues are indeed fixed. The bad news: I am still getting audio issues going from USB to MacBook Pro running El Capitan and Logic 9. These issues are clearly related to buffer size. On 256, the issue is about 1 second of glitching every 1-1.5 minutes. Much lower frequency and intensity than the previous issues in 1.05. Increasing to 1024, and then to 512, appeared to resolve the issue. Issue appeared on multiple presets with FM3 cpu running 68-73% and cpu on the Mac barely budging.
i will do more experimenting over the weekend, but the latency at 512 is barely tolerable. At this point, I will just go straight into my Focusrite interface.
Click to expand...

tried another USB cable?
 
The recorded latency is horrific still on all but 2000 samples. Literally anything I record below that number is unusable because of how off tracked it is.

The USB functionality on this product has been useless from day 1.

Quite frankly, I've been very patient about this over the past 3 months, but I've been with this company for 10 years now and have owned nearly every product. This FM3 launch has been the biggest disaster for anyone doing any kind of recording at all. The last 6 months has been the most unproductive of my life because I was stupid enough to sell my AXE III and buy this unit because of the track record of this company.
 
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james... said:
The recorded latency is horrific still on all but 2000 samples. Literally anything I record below that number is unusable because of how off tracked it is.

The USB functionality on this product has been useless from day 1.

Quite frankly, I've been very patient about this over the past 3 months, but I've been with this company for 10 years now and have owned nearly every product. This FM3 launch has been the biggest disaster for anyone doing any kind of recording at all. The last 6 months has been the most unproductive of my life because I was stupid enough to sell my AXE III and buy this unit because of the track record of this company.
Click to expand...
Yeahhh for a studio I would have kept the AXE III, no doubt. Also never would have sold before I tried the replacement of product. But understand sometimes you have to offload one item and get the cash to purchase another. With my prior Axe III experience, I may have been inclined to do the same. Have you tried running the FM3 through an interface into a DAW?

The FM3 definitely has some issues, I've encountered a few. I'm hopeful that Fractal will get things resolved. It's just taken a bit longer than most expected.

As per my issues with USB recording, it's mostly the same people are mentioning: intermittent audio glitches every 10-30 seconds or so. I'll try another USB cable and mess with the USB line level as well. Oh and sample rate.
 
I was able to successfully record with no hiccups last night by going through a USB interface connected via XLR to the FM3.
A minor pain / inconvenience as I do wish I had better luck with just recording natively via the FM3. But I can manage.
Hopefully the issue does get resolved though.

I have not tried audio playback through the FM3, but I'm going to assume I'd have some issues there as reported by a few others.
 
Just a short question: did you update the drivers? Also got glitches with 1.06, and saw the "new" (July 2020) driver. Updated and now everything works quite good (for me) on recording, even with 64 samples.
 
I have this issue with the fm3 in default sound card , cracking sound every 10 sec aprox , 1.05 version. Windows 10.
If i change to Focusrite Sound card i dont have any issue.
 
I have the latest updates and still get usb related issues in protools 2020.9.1 at any buffer lower than 512 which is not ideal.
 
Hi all,

I am also still experiencing USB audio issues when using the FM3 (1.06) as an interface with Logic Pro X (and Garage Band). You can hear the noise that comes up at random intervals when recording audio at the 1 second mark of this DI clip. The noise is not consistent (other than how it sounds), and can occur at various time during the recording:



I have used different interfaces with Logic in the past with no issues (both USB and Firewire interfaces). The sample rate is set to 48 kHz in both Logic and the interface (going through Audio Midi Setup). I have tried setting up an aggregated device that only included the FM3, with the same results. Setting the buffer size has not fixed the issue (still present using all the available buffer sizes). The issue is only present (as far as I can tell) when using Logic or Garage Band, as Audacity didn't produce any artifact.

Using different USB cables all produced the same results, as well as disconnecting any other USB device from the Mac (i.e. the FM3 was the only device connected).

Hooking up the FM3 to my other interface (FM3 output going through Apogee Duet) produces no artifacts/issues, even if the FM3 is connected through USB at the same time.

One thing I did notice, was that as soon as I would set the FM3 as the interface within Logic, the tempo indicator light on the FM3 becomes erratic (no longer blinks in time with the tempo, appears to skip beats, blink in what appears to be an inconsistent tempo, etc). If I switch back to the Apogee (even during the same recording session), the tempo light returns to normal.
 
kaiman255 said:
I am also still experiencing USB audio issues when using the FM3 (1.06) as an interface with Logic Pro X (and Garage Band). You can hear the noise that comes up at random intervals when recording audio at the 1 second mark of this DI clip. The noise is not consistent (other than how it sounds), and can occur at various time during the recording:
Click to expand...
What buffer size are you using?
 
For the specific recording, it's 128, but the result is the exact same if I use 256, 512, or 1024. For the example recording, I created a new project with just that track (CPU in Logic is not budging, same as disk access etc). Issue is present with all FM3 presets, no matter how much CPU is used in the FM3 (a simple amp+cab preset produces the artifact).
 
An update on my issue (which is still present); it turns out the problem IS present in Audacity and not just logic, as initially reported. I've tried connecting the FM3 through a powered USB hub as well as straight into the mac ports, with the same results for each. I went as far as creating a bootable Mac OS install with just logic installed, and the issue is present there as well when running a clean Catalina 10.15.7 install and default instance of Logic Pro. The noise is only present in the USB audio (both when monitoring and in the recordings), and is not present if only listening to the FM3 output.

Can someone who uses Logic Pro confirm whether or not the tempo light on their FM3 unit becomes erratic and no longer reflects the FM3 tempo (skips beats, the light "stays" on for shorter periods, etc)? As soon as Logic is opened (and the FM3 is set as the audio input/output), the light becomes erratic). This behaviour is also present when I ran the clean Mac OS install with the default logic installation.

Thanks for any help/guidance, I'd really like to get USB audio working as it was one of the reason I went with the FM3 instead of keeping my AX8.
 
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