Audio crackling / static / breaking up

[Unterry]

Hi -

Could anyone help, please? Although I can see similar questions have been asked frequently on this board before, I could really do with a pointer as to where to start to get the problem sorted out once and for all.

I've set up a basic all-ASIO audio chain with Voicemeeter Banana 2.0.4.7. A1 is a Focusrite USB interface; channels 1 and 2 of that are being processed with an application connected to the Voicemeeter Insert ASIO driver; and the audio is being sent to both B1 and B2, with two other applications receiving the audio data at the other end of the Vaio and Aux ASIO drivers. The machine running this is a dedicated, clean Core i5 box running Windows 10 and with more than enough processing headroom.

Here's the setup in Voicemeeter:



Randomly, the audio received by at least one of the end applications at B1 or B2 crackles. Sometimes one, sometimes both, or sometimes neither. It's always right from when they first start up - when they work, they'll work indefinitely. Sometimes switching them from Vaio to Aux or Aux to Vaio fixes the problem. Occasionally the crackling will be received by the application connected to the patch insert, but this hasn't happened for a while. Restarting the audio engine in Voicemeeter doesn't help.

Here's an example:
https://vocaroo.com/i/s1eXtoCO9Z4z

What can I do to sort this out? I've seen that there are problems with the Focusrite ASIO driver - is that's what causing this?

Thanks

[Agent86]

Have you tried to change the ASIO buffering default down one notch to something other then 1024 ?

Try 768 ASIO buffering instead of the default and see if there is any effect on the quality and/or crackling at all.

[Vincent Burel]

your configuration seems to be good.
you can try to change the buffer size on your Focusrite ASIO driver (512 for example) to try to find more stable parameters maybe.

you can also read the topic here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=506

[Unterry]

Thanks for the responses!

I've changed the buffer size to 768, which is working OK at the moment, but I haven't been able to check whether it still works after the machine restarts. I'll keep an eye on it and experiment over the next couple of months, and update this thread if I successfully manage to find a buffer size that I'm confident is a reliable solution.

A couple of quick questions:

1. I don't know how ASIO works internally, but can more than one application reliabily receive audio on the same pair of inputs on the same ASIO driver (eg channels 1 and 2 on the Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO driver), or can that mess things up?
2. It looks like there are new versions of the Focusrite drivers coming soon. Do you know whether these resolve the callback timing issues?