Export mixdown has crackling noise

Cubase
1

Hi to all,
I’m trying to export a song also in MP3 and in Flac with Cubase 6.5.x. without the real-time rendering.

I suffer of ASIO latency and sometimes the song is freezing when I execute the project with many plugins inserted (I opened a thread here to find a solution ASIO latency problems - WaveLab - Steinberg Forums).

Anyway, I thought rendering it the noise about ASIO latency (slow CPU or RAM issue) disappeared, but damn the crackle noise is still there!

Any suggestions how to solve this weird problem? Is really related with the slow performance of the system (Audio card/Mac Book Pro?)

Thanks again for your infos.

Emi

2

Are you mixing down midi tracks? The reason I ask is because I find sometimes with some patches the meter won’t show any clipping (which produces crackling) and yet you will get crackling during mixdown and on the track. The solution for me has been to reduce the volume of the midi track, export it as audio and reintroduce it to the project as a wave file. Well, that’s if I want to get more volume from it.

Anyway, if you are just dealing with audio tracks, it still might pay off to lower your levels and see what kind of mixdown you get. Just a thought.

3

Hi, thanks for your suggestion.

Well, I don’t use midi in this project and I pay attention to the clipping features, so I don’t think my track (any audio tracks I recordered) volume is so high to reach it. I also put a limiter and compressor to the mixer bus to prevent this kind of bad feature, and often my volume is balanced to prevent clipping.

Anyway I’ll check it soon, maybe I got distracted.

4

You could always post the track somewhere and send a link to let us have a listen.

It may be obvious to some what the crackle is.

5

Hi thanks for your reply, here the attachment… even 160kbits mp3 I should able (even not so loud) to heard some noise around the guitar solo (beyond the GuitarRig overdrive of course), but I don’t think is about a clipping feature…

I analyzed the track with Toscanalyzer too, but seems to be all okay. What’s your impressions?
SH Forgotten Memories - Nails For PH_3.mp3 (1.79 MB)

6

Well, no crackling here. At the end, when you hear the very distorted guitar by itself, well, it’s gritty, not exactly pretty, but not crackling into or from the DAW that I can hear. What is the drum loop software, BTW?

7

Thanks for your reply and support “mr.roos”… well the guitar overdrive is very distort I know, but I want it biting and raw even can hurt at the first time. I done it with Guitar Rig trying to recreate Akira Yamaoka’s sound style mix of insane overdriven and melodic guitar.

For the drums part I usually use XLN Audio - Addictive Drums… in this case I supported it also with Toontrack - Superior Drummer (but at low output level, cos I wanted it only to fill the sound of the drums part).

8

Well, Exporting in .wav today, I get this kind of crackling sound (you can listen it across 13th-14th sec. and more going ahead) any suggestion about what causing this kind of weird problem?
Nails For Pyramid Head 8.mp3 (1.09 MB)

9

It sounds like you had a wave file, and then cut it on a high point of the wave and then glued/placed the parts back together. You are into cutting at the zero crossing point, right?

If this click is happening and you haven’t made a cut in your wave, then tell me.

10

Hi, I understand what did you say, but no… I’m not cut and paste wav pieces… Here there is only a Native Instruments (Piano) for a midi track and the guitar recorded audio track (that don’t have that clip/crackled sound)…

It’s quite weird I suppose to have this kind of problem… even if if I export the track again I have another crackled sound in an another part of the song :frowning: