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  • Sound cracking?

    Whenever there are heavy percussion parts in my songs with lots of instruments, the audio starts cracking. It's kind of like a clipping sound, only I have a P4 3.0 Ghz, Audiophile 2496, 512 DDR 400 RAM with XP SP2 on it (Gigastudio and Cakewalk Home Studio 9). If I upgrade my RAM to 1 Gig, will it fix this problem (either way I am upgrading, I just want to know if thats the source)? Thanks a lot!

  • It sounds like you're overloading your system internally if it's only during heavy percussion parts. Lower everything and see if it goes away. Be sure to check plug-ins; DAWs tend to be designed so it's difficult to clip their mix busses, but you can still overload plug-ins internally.

    Still, you can get Giga or any other V.I. to crackle if it's not getting its fix of RAM and/or DSP power. I'd put more RAM in anyway so you can load more programs.

  • Do you mean cancel some my system's proccesses in the Task Manager, or lower the volume when you say lower everything? Also, the only "plug-in", if you will, that I have running is Gigapulse.

    And what's a DAW? [:D]

    Thanks Nick.

  • I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant you may have everything turned up too loud!

    DAW = software that saves a lot of time and wastes a lot of time

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    @Nick Batzdorf said:


    DAW = software that saves a lot of time and wastes a lot of time


    hehe so true, give me pen and paper and real orchestra any day ^^b

    to be more specific, DAW = Digital Audio Workstation

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    @Another User said:

    Originally posted by Nick Batzdorf
    I meant you may have everything turned up too loud!

    I might, but for instance, when I go to them demos section on the VSL site and play a demo, it's so much louder then the songs I produce. Plus, it's not even that loud to begin with [:)]. I'll try turning it down, but once I make a *.WAV, how would I increase the volume of it when I put it on a CD, and will I need to add more EQ effects as well?

  • one way to fix the volume issue before publishing is using a mastering compressor. Although, its much more delicate work with orchestral vs pop.

  • What cmpsr says, but really you have to use some judgement about setting levels in general. The basic rule - I'm making this up as I go, of course - is to keep everything as close to its "nominal" (average) level as possible as much of the time as possible...with the exception of the cases in which you don't want/need to do that. [:)]

    If you're overloading your mixer when the percussion gets loud, well, you know what to turn down: the strings. Just kidding, the percussion of course.

    When I suggested you turn everything down, what I meant was that it's easy to say, "I can't hear this," turn it up, and then "now I can't hear that," and then before you know it everything's all the way up - and then you hear crackling.

    You might try a compressor on the percussion tracks that are overloading?

  • Alright, I'll give it a try [:)]. Thanks a lot to both of you.